Editors of ASA journals and the Rose Series submit annual reports to provide insight to sociologists. These narrative reports can be found below. This table can also be referenced for a more detailed quantitative overview of submission processes. Reports from prior years can be found here.
Annual Reports for 2025
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Journal of Health and Social Behavior |
Social Psychology Quarterly |
American Sociological Review
Submissions
From January 1 through December 31, 2025, ASR received 704 submissions, as compared to 647 submissions in 2024. We understand that many journals are seeing an increase in submissions, perhaps due to generative AI tools. Most (631) of these submissions were new submissions, although some (73) were resubmissions of invited revisions from previous years. Sixty manuscripts were given revise-and-resubmits and 34 papers were accepted. Most papers were rejected either after peer-review (227) or after internal review (337). Four papers were withdrawn by their authors, and final decisions had yet to be reached (as of April 1, 2026) on 18 papers.
Among new submissions, 294 (or 47 percent) were sent out for peer review. Of those, 220 (75 percent) were rejected, 52 (18 percent) received an invitation to revise and resubmit, and 1 paper was accepted unconditionally (the ASA presidential address).
Among the 73 revised manuscripts received in 2025, most were either conditionally accepted (29 percent) or accepted outright (45 percent). Eleven percent received a revise-and-resubmit decision, 10 percent were rejected, and the decision was pending for four manuscripts as of April 1, 2026. We work to ensure that authors are not subjected to multiple rounds of “revise-and-resubmit” that do not lead to publication. None of the 31 papers invited for a second or additional rounds of R&R were rejected.
The overall acceptance rate is slightly under five percent (4.8) based on the traditional ASA acceptance rate measure (the number of accepted manuscripts divided by the number of all decisions). This rate is slightly lower than in 2024, which reflects that we received more manuscripts in 2025 than in 2024.
Since becoming editors in 2024 we have urged accepted authors to make their underlying data, code, and other data-related materials public. In 2023, 28% of papers made data and code available. In 2025, 47% of authors made materials available and an additional 12% offered data and code on request. As of April, in 2026 82% of ASR articles have provided data (when legally allowed), code, or interview schedules (for qualitative articles). Our goal is to have a rate comparable to the data availability rate reported for articles published in AAAS’s flagship journal Science of 69%.
High-Quality Peer Review Process
We are committed to providing helpful, high-quality feedback to authors. However, there are challenges that we face. We continue to feel the effects of the drop-off in reviewing that has affected all journals since the COVID-19 pandemic. While our deputy editors, editorial board, and most of our ad hoc reviewers consistently rise to the challenge and provide thoughtful, timely feedback, we also experience reviewers who “ghost” the journal, promising to review, but never actually providing the review. Even more potential reviewers simply never reply.
Despite these challenges, ASR benefited from the generous goodwill and public spirit of many ad hoc reviewers and our editorial board members. ASR and its authors continued to benefit from the service of a remarkably talented and dedicated group of readers.
For new submissions in 2025, the average time from submission to decision was 6.8 weeks. Among papers that were peer-reviewed, the average time from submission to decision was 13.2 weeks. In 2025, the average time from submission to decision of “R&R” submissions was 9.2 weeks. We regularly seek the advice of our deputy editors as well as the editorial board to ensure that we evaluate revised-and-resubmitted manuscripts in a timely way.
Editorial Board, Reviewers, and Staff
We are grateful for our diverse and exceptionally engaged editorial board.
In 2025, the board had 5 deputy editors and 61 regular board members. The total editorial board (including deputy editors) includes 61 percent women, and 5 percent gender queer or gender nonconforming sociologists. More than half (52 percent) identify as a member of a racial/ethnic minority group, including 23% who identify as Black or Latine.
In addition to the in-person August board meeting at the annual ASA meetings, we hold a virtual board meeting in January. These meetings have served as a great opportunity to think through issues with our editorial board, such as the challenges of reviewing for the journal, Open Science initiatives, and expanding the reach of the journal, including globally. This year we continued to spend substantial time with the board thinking through the issues posed by generative AI tools. We are eager to receive the official AI policy from the ASA; we understand COPE will soon release the draft policy to Publications as well as Council. This guidance will enhance our ability to address the issues AI poses for peer review.
From January 1, 2025, through May 5, 2026, 1055 scholars from around the world provided valuable comments on papers submitted to ASR, with 213 of those reviewers serving more than once. Almost one-quarter of these reviewers are located outside of the United States. By-and-large ASR reviewers do an excellent job of providing feedback that helps strengthen authors’ research, although most of that work ultimately appears in other journals.
ASR editors could not do our work without the support of outstanding staff members. We greatly benefit from the work of ASA staff members including (recently retired) Director of Publications Karen Edwards, current Director of Publications Catherine Yim, and Publications Associate Madison Austin. We continue to be enormously grateful for the exceptional work of ASR’s managing editor, Mara Nelson Grynaviski. Our UMass staff is both brilliant and hard-working. We benefited from the excellent work of graduate student editorial assistants Helene Grogan and Juan Carmona, who took over for Shuyin Liu and Aaron Yates in September 2025.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives
One of the central challenges of the journal is how to ensure that all sociologists, including members of underrepresented groups, see themselves as potential authors as well as reviewers and editorial board members. We believe that our diverse editorial team and editorial board provide one signal and show that the journal has made substantial progress. By asking faculty from underrepresented groups, as well as those located in a variety of institutional types and global locations to review for the journal, we also hope to clarify that we value their work and hope that they submit their work to the journal. Still, many submissions continue to come from elite institutions, where authors have larger research budgets and fewer teaching and administrative responsibilities.
To extend the global reach of ASR, our editorial board continues to discuss measures to take. We think it is important to let potential authors know about ASR waiving author submission fees to authors in low-income countries, and Sage’s policy providing journal access to scholars in the global South. This information is now included in ASR online instructions to authors.
Social Media Presence
We continue to disseminate news on articles published in the journal on LinkedIn. These posts include updates when new articles come out in the “Online First” section of the SAGE website, the Table of Contents from new issues, and when ASA releases podcasts with ASR authors. We welcome you to follow ASR on LinkedIn!
David Cort, Joya Misra, Laurel Smith-Doerr, and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Editors
City & Community
Introduction
The fifth and final year of my editorship of City & Community consisted of a continuation of the journal’s upward trajectory and the preparation of transitioning to a new editorial team. The following narrative offers evidence of City & Community’s ascent through the ranks of journals in sociology and urban studies. It reflects its prestige as a selective outlet for urban sociological scholarship and as a resource for members of the Community and Urban Sociology Section. The new co-editors have been given a solid foundation to build on.
Manuscript Submissions and Decisions
In 2025, 285 total manuscripts were submitted to the journal. Of these, 11 were accepted, 41 were invited to revise and resubmit, 35 were rejected, 1 was withdrawn by the author, 2 had not been given a decision as of this writing, and 195 were rejected without peer review (that is, “desk rejected”). The latter number is high because City & Community is well-known among the large community of scholars and practitioners in the broad field of urban studies. We therefore regularly receive submissions from authors with backgrounds in such disciplines as urban planning, architecture, and policy that are not intellectual fits for the journal and often do not conform to our guidelines.
Among the 255 new (that is, first) submissions to the journal last year, 60 (or 24%) were sent out for peer review and the rest (195) were rejected without review. Among those that underwent the peer review process, 30 (50%) were rejected outright and 27 (45%) were invited to revise and resubmit. (Again, 1 submission was withdrawn by the author and 2 had not been given a decision as of this writing.)
A total of 30 revised manuscripts were submitted in 2025. Of these, 11 (36.7%) were accepted, 14 (46.7%) were invited to revise and resubmit, and 5 (16.6%) were rejected. First, of these 30 revised manuscripts, 16 were for first revisions. Ten (62.5%) of these 16 were once again invited to revise and resubmit, 5 (31.3%) were rejected, and 1 (6.2%) was accepted. Second, of these 30 revised manuscripts, 10 were for second revisions. Of these 10, 6 (60%) were accepted and 4 (40%) were invited to once again revise and resubmit. Finally, of these 30 revised manuscripts, 4 were for third and/or fourth revisions, and all 4 of them were accepted.
Using the traditional ASA indicator for the acceptance rate (the number of accepted manuscripts divided by the number of overall decisions, multiplied by 100), the acceptance rate at City & Community for 2025 was 3.9%. If we instead calculate the acceptance rate as accepted papers divided by reviewed papers with final decisions, multiplied by 100 (as suggested by England in the March 2009 issue of Footnotes), the acceptance rate was 12.6%.
Finally, we learned last year that the journal’s Impact Factor (from 2024, the most recent year available) is now 3.0. The 5-year Impact Factor is now 3.3
Editorial Board
Last year we maintained our efforts to have a broadly diverse editorial board. The 2024 board consisted of 30 people: 15 men (50%) and 15 women (50%); 10 White (33%) and 20 from racial minority groups (66%); and of these board members 10 were African American/Black, 6 Hispanic/Latino(a), and 3 Asian/Asian American, with one board member preferring not to state their racial identity. And of these 30, 3 were deputy editors who help handle the review process for several manuscripts per year and 2 were book review co-editors. The 2025 board also consisted of 30 people: 14 men (46.7%) and 16 women (53.3%); 12 White (40%) and 18 from racial minority groups (60%); and of these board members 9 were African American/Black, 4 Hispanic/Latino(a), and 2 Asian/Asian American, with one board member preferring not to state their racial identity, one identifying as bi-racial (Black-White), and one identifying as multiracial. In short, the number of White board members increased while more identities are represented by non-White board members. And of these 30, 3 were deputy editors who help handle the review process for several manuscripts per year and 2 were book review co-editors.
Initiatives and Features
Webinar Series
Last year we continued with our webinar series with a primary aim of professional development for early career scholars. It focuses on the basics of academic journal publishing. Topics have included writing manuscripts (“How to Write (and Not Write) Journal Articles: A City & Community Perspective”), reviewing manuscripts (“How to be a Reviewer: Reviewing Papers for Journals”), and revising and resubmitting (“Great, but Now What? How to Handle R&Rs”). I conducted each of them with assistance from Daniela Tagtachian, the journal’s managing editor. All events were well attended and most of registrants were doctoral students and junior faculty.
Graduate Editorial Assistants Program
We began this program in the 2023-24 academic year. It is a mentorship and professional development opportunity for doctoral student members of CUSS. The aim was to expose doctoral students to academic publishing, help them to become professional evaluators of academic writing, and support them in their own work. Students learned how academic publishing works through seminar-like sessions with me and hands-on tasks as part of the editorial team. They helped to evaluate new submissions to the journal to determine their fit and who some potential reviewers may be, helped make final decisions and draft decision letters for manuscripts that were reviewed, and did some light copyediting. We also met regularly as a group to discuss journal matters and academic publishing and to workshop drafts of their own papers.
We selected two students out of eight applications and invited one student from the previous year to remain in the program. They each received a $333 stipend for their participation, and we ensured that they were not overburdened. The response from the students to the program was positive.
Podcasts
ASA’s interviews with authors who publish in City & Community are posted on our website. I am also a host of “New Books in Sociology,” a channel on the “New Books Network,” for which I conduct podcast interviews with book authors. I have been periodically interviewing urban sociologists about their recent books, giving them, the journal, and the subfield some broader attention. I also recruited two other hosts to join us in promoting urban books whose authors they interview. This initiative is being conducted in collaboration with CUSS. We hope both podcasts generated some additional attention for the journal and the work we publish.
Editorial Transition
We devoted much of the final quarter of 2025 to preparing Brian McCabe and Ann Owens, the next co-editors of the journal, to take over editorial duties. This included regularly meeting with them in the fall semester, discussing all facets of running the journal (e.g., inviting reviewers, communicating with authors, making final decisions), and gradually giving them more and more responsibility over the process. The aim was to expose them to as much of the day-to-day and month-to-month operations as possible, and to serve as a source for questions, so that they could hit the ground running on January 1. This made for a smooth transition in leadership.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Addressing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the journal has been a priority since I began my editorship. Our mentoring program and webinar series and our efforts to diversify the editorial board and expand the urban sociology discourse through special issues are examples of the work we’ve been doing to reach these goals. We have also changed our editorial board selection process so that people can self-nominate and so that the Community and Urban Sociology Section’s Publications Committee is included in the decision-making. We hope this will continue to address concerns in our board membership. Finally, we have also been aiming for diversity along multiple axes when it comes to who we send our invitations to review to.
Richard E. Ocejo, Editor
Contemporary Sociology
Introduction
Throughout 2025, Contemporary Sociology was active in producing quality book reviews, review essays, and other engaging longer review pieces. This was the first year that CS was housed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In the lead-up to 2025, the new editorial team received virtual training sessions with the outgoing team so that we could continue uninterrupted operations at a high standard.
During the 2025 calendar year, 288 books were considered. The new editorial team implemented a standardized system to categorize book topics in the Index and Publications Received list according to ASA sections. The editor regularly corresponded with academic publishers to receive sociology-related titles, and those books received that did not fall within the scope of the journal were donated to the university library. Most publishers continue to mail hard copies to the CS office, as opposed to e-Books, and reviewers tend to prefer print over virtual for the books they review.
In Volume 54, in 2025, we published six issues including 223 regular reviews (averaging approximately 37 regular reviews per issue) and 27 longer review essays of 21 books (averaging 4 essays per issue). Some of the review essays included comparative analysis of multiple books on the same theme, while some had discussions of multiple perspectives on the same book (such as the symposium in Issue volume 54, number 3 on Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender? that included a response from the author). We continued to do podcasts in 2025 to create more engagement, featuring authors of books reviewed in the journal. For example, in one podcast, Hajar Yazdihia discussed her book, The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transform the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement, and in another, Martha Martinez gave advice on career paths for sociology majors based on her book, The Employable Sociologist: A Guide for Undergraduates.
Some of the longer essays from the previous couple of years have become the most cited essays in the journal (such as Hartmann’s comparative essay on public sociology and Meghi’s extended review of Victoria Reyes’ Academic Outsider), while the regular reviews that have garnered the most citations include Hynes’s review of Rogers Brubaker’s Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents and Atay’s review of Roberta Katz et al.’s Gen Z., Explained.
Editorial Board Members
In 2025 we had 60 editorial board members. Our editorial board members are diverse across gender and racial categories and represent a wide range of sub-specializations in sociology. We expanded our editorial board to reflect some of the underrepresented areas and include some substantive areas we receive more books in, such as sociology of development. We also have representation from a wide range of institutions including research and teaching-focused colleges/universities in the United States and abroad. The full composition of the editorial board can be found on our website.
DEI Initiatives
To ensure the diversity of the reviewers and to ensure the reviewers are not limited to the editor’s networks, Contemporary Sociology shares bi-monthly lists of the books to be reviewed with the editorial board to ask for suggestions. All editorial board members are asked to send in suggestions for possible reviewers. This practice expands our pool of potential reviewers and ensures the reviewers are not limited by the editor’s academic networks. The editorial board can also make suggestions of books and publishers, as well as potential editorial board members to ensure that the board and books reflect the diversity in our field. The editor has also reached out to different section chairs to diversify our reviewer pool.
I would like to thank my editorial team: managing editor Jean Littlejohn, editorial associates Alena Bruzas and Joe Wiebe, our editorial board, and the team at ASA for their invaluable support.
Kelsy Burke, Editor
Contexts
In 2025, Contexts: Sociology for the Public continued to build on the first two years’ successes. Our editorial team largely stayed the same – Culture (Jooyoung Lee), In Briefs (Parker Muzzerall, Colter Uscola, and Elena van Stee), Policy Briefs (Laura Beth Nielsen), and Photo Essays (Ryan Centner), Trends (Reginald Byron), and Book Reviews (Kyle Green) editors.
In terms of raw numbers, we published Q&As with all former Contexts editors (Claude Fischer as the inaugural editor and then, in alphabetical order: Seth Abrutyn and Amin Ghaziani; Syed Ali and Philip N. Cohen; Jeff Goodwin and Jim Jasper; Doug Hartman and Chris Uggen; Jodi O’Brien and Arlene Stein; Fabio Rojas and Rashawn Ray).
Published volumes in 2025 also included the following:
- 18 Features
- 9 Culture pieces
- 9 Trends pieces
- 5 Photo Essays
- 5 Policy Briefs
- 5 Books pieces
- 4 One Thing I Know pieces
- 28 in briefs featuring research from 13 journals
- 14 blog posts
Several themes have consistently defined our editorial term:
First, the repeating references to published work outside the U.S. context affirms our editorial team’s commitment to presenting the public face of sociology in more international tones.
Second, we emphasized accessibility through our memorable mnemonic device of the “4 Rs” (Contexts celebrates work that is rigorous, relevant, readable, and rad). We reinforced accessibility with our quarterly “digest,” an email blast we send to all subscribers once a new issue is published.
Third, we continued to stress diversity and inclusion in all of our decisions. As our editorial board shows, we balanced representation by gender, race/ethnicity, the inclusion of scholars from varied institutions and with an array of substantive areas of expertise.
Finally, we worked hard to align these values with our choice of reviewers as well. Although we were not able to control who agreed to review, we ensured our invitations were representative (and roughly one in three reviewers we approached completed a review). These efforts repeatedly reinforced the identity of the magazine.
Several qualities set Contexts apart from other ASA journals: dynamic images, in-depth, collaborative editing, approachability, topical breadth, and engagement across journals. These signatures have had measurable impact: 312,049 Full-text HTML downloads, 138,881 Full-text PDF downloads, and 37,829 Full-text EPUB downloads via Sage.
Moving forward, we recommend that editorial board members pitch their own pieces and experience the unique editorial process for themselves, talk with colleagues and students about Contexts as a venue for their work, teach with our pieces, share our issue “digests” with others, post on social media about our new issues, favorite articles, and how individuals use the magazine, and download and cite from each new issue.
Our editorship was defined by numerous creative and impactful initiatives that, without doubt, elevated the profile of our professional association and its one and only public-facing periodical.
Amin Ghaziani and Seth Abrutyn, Co-Editors
Journal of Health and Social Behavior
The Journal of Health and Social Behavior has long been recognized as the flagship journal of medical sociology in the U.S. Our 2024 one-year impact factor was 3.6, a substantial decrease since 2023 (6.3) and 2022 (5.0) yet a considerable improvement over 2019 (2.4). This downward tick, while disheartening, is consistent with nearly all other social science journals, and our relative rankings and five-year impact factor (6.0) have been stable over time. We provide further information on changes in IF calculations below. (Note: 2025 impact factors are not released until mid to late-June, and thus are not incorporated into this report)
In 2025, JHSB published 33 articles and four open-access policy briefs across four issues. These articles included qualitative and quantitative studies of the US and other countries. The subject matter spanned the breadth of medical sociology and intersected with other disciplines such as public health and health policy, and other subdisciplines within sociology including gender and sexuality, criminology, demography, race and ethnic relations, immigration, and more. The journal content also reflects timely topics including LGBTQ health, genocide, the political context of reproductive health care, incarceration, race and socioeconomic health disparities, immigrant health, work-family influences on health, health care delivery, health policy, and more. For each issue’s policy brief, the editor-in-chief selected one paper with clear implications for policy or health care practice and invited the author(s) to craft a one-page jargon-free summary tailored to policymakers, media outlets, and the general public. These briefs appear prominently in each issue of JHSB and on the journal’s home page.
Journal Operations
Editor-in-chief Deborah Carr (Boston University) was appointed for the three-year term 2023-25, and agreed to stay on for one additional year (through 2026), per the request of the ASA Publications Committee. In 2026, Jennifer Karas Montez, Syracuse University, will take over as editor-in-chief, following a competitive selection process.
In 2025, JHSB received 505 new manuscripts, a modest increase over 2024 (494), and a 19 percent increase over 2023 (423). Because of this increase in the number of submissions, the journal requested and was approved to receive a 95-page increase in 2025. This increase in pages will help publish the modest backlog of papers in a timely manner, and enables the journal team to maintain a highly selective yet not punishingly low rejection rate. The journal is highly selective. After initial review by the editorial team—either by the editor-in-chief alone or in consultation with a deputy editor—59.8 percent were “desk rejected” without being sent out for peer review. The average time between submission and desk-rejection was 1.5 week. This rapid response is slightly higher than 2024 (0.9 weeks). Of the 203 (40.2%) papers sent out for peer review in 2025, 18.2 percent received a revise and resubmit decision. Overall, the average time between initial submission and first review decision was 10.4 weeks, slightly higher than 9.7 weeks in 2024. This slight delay in review time largely reflects awaiting responses to reviewer invitations, and the ever-rising number of invitations required to secure two to three reviews. The editor regularly makes decisions with two concordant reviews in hand, especially when the third reviewer is tardy, in order to expedite the review process.
For papers that were eventually accepted, production time (i.e., the time between a paper being accepted and appearing in print in an issue) was 10.9 months. This is similar to the 10-month time from acceptance to print publication in 2024 and represents a backlog that enables us to select articles carefully to create thematically organized subsections of each issue. JHSB’s production time is superior to many other journals. The average time from acceptance to online publication (Online First) was 3.8 months.
Impact Factor
The editorial team was initially disappointed by the drop in the one-year impact factor from the journal’s high of 6.4 in 2023 to 3.6 in 2024. The editor consulted with the support team at SAGE to understand and develop strategies to turn around this drop. These conversations revealed that the journal’s relative standing remained constant since 2023, despite the IF drop. For instance, JHSB was 11th out of 210 sociology journals ranked, 9th out of 78 social psychology journals, and 5th of 48 among social science (biomedical) journals. SAGE experts attribute the drop to how Journal Citation Reports (JCR) counted citable items, using online publication rather than issue date. The number of JHSB articles with 0 citations remains unchanged. However, one very highly cited article (“Structural Intersectionality as a New Direction for Health Disparities Research”, cited 51 times in 2023) was identified as inflating the 2023 IF.
Deputy Editors, Editorial Board, Peer Reviewers, and Journal Staff
JHSB’s operation depends on more than just the efforts of the editor. It requires contributions from an extensive team of individuals who keep the publication process moving along efficiently.
The team of Boston-based Deputy Editors has worked hard to assist with desk reject decisions, identify potential reviewers, make decision recommendations, and draft decision letters. The Deputy Editors span multiple areas of methodological and substantive expertise that represent important “classic” and new areas in medical sociology. The Deputy Editors are Wen Fan (Boston College, work and health, quantitative cross-national studies with an emphasis on China); Neha Gondal (Boston University; network approaches, big data, and social inequalities); Joseph Harris (Boston University, global health, health care systems, and qualitative methods); Tiffany Joseph (Northeastern University, U.S. health policy, immigrant health, and qualitative methods); Andrew Stokes (Boston University School of Public Health, population health, COVID and advanced quantitative methods); and Sara Moorman (Boston College, social relations, early-life influences, and cognitive health).
Editorial board members are selected on the basis of the quality and promptness of reviews they submit to the journal, and areas of expertise. We have taken care to increase the number of EB members who bring expertise consistent with those topical areas and methods in which we have seen an increase in the number of submissions (including LGBTQ health, networks, immigrant health, and race disparities, as well as ‘big data’ and qualitative approaches).
To further create opportunities and promote diversity in our editorial board, the Editors also issue an open call for nominations. This process is intended to reduce network-based selection bias and allow the team to recruit from a wider pool of scholars. In practice, however, the vast majority of self-nominations are from R1 universities. Overall, the 2025 editorial board composition remained diverse in terms of gender (58 percent women) and race-ethnicity (47 percent racial-ethnic minorities). The complete list of editorial board members is listed on the JHSB website (https://journals.sagepub.com/editorial-board/HSB).
JHSB values its many supportive and attentive peer reviewers. The Editor extends her sincerest gratitude to the outgoing, continuing, and new editorial board members and the many ad hoc peer reviewers who have generously contributed their time and expertise to JHSB.
Deborah Carr acknowledges her talented editorial office team: Managing Editor Ryan Trettevik; Copyeditor Michaela Curran; and Editorial Assistant Elinore Avni. Ryan brings deep expertise and institutional knowledge of all aspects of the journal’s operations and is an invaluable member of the team. Michaela Curran is our talented and thorough Copy Editor. We have been delighted with the work of Elinore Avni, who stepped into the role of editorial assistant midway through 2024. She wears many hats and carries out all tasks expertly, including processing new submissions, responding to some author queries, working with Michaela in copyediting, and expanding JHSB’s social media activity. For instance, she posts new and reposts older JHSB articles in commemoration of particular months, such as mental health-themed articles in May, which is Mental Health Awareness month.
The Editor also thanks Catherine Yim and Madison Austin at ASA along with Paula Cantos and Rose Vimala at SAGE for their invaluable assistance and our readers for their continued support.
Deborah Carr, Editor
Journal of World-Systems Research
Rose Series in Sociology
The ASA Rose Series in Sociology publishes highly visible, accessible books that integrate substantive areas in sociology, such as inequality, environment, immigration, and criminology. The books are designed to offer synthesizing analyses, challenge prevailing paradigms, and offer fresh views of enduring controversies. Because of their broad scope and policy relevance, the volumes published in the Rose Series are disseminated in areas beyond their focus to the broader professional and intellectual communities.
The Rose Series offers its authors a unique opportunity to combine the intellectual rigor associated with refereed journals, the visibility of publishing with a major press, and the benefit of a sustained marketing campaign that extends beyond sociology into related disciplines and relevant policy circles. The books are jointly published by the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the Russell Sage Foundation (RSF), and our editors work closely with RSF’s Director of Publications, Suzanne Nichols. Each manuscript is evaluated through a meticulous review process and is chosen for its quality, sophistication, and policy relevance. Only a few selected volumes are added each year.
Two manuscripts were submitted, reviewed and approved:
- Race and Gender Discrimination in the Stalled Revolution by Reginald Byron and Vincent Roscigno. The seminar took place in November 2025.
- The Great Dispersion: Geography, Diversity, and Opportunity among Hispanics in the United States by Emilio Parrado and Chenoa Flippen. The manuscript was approved in November 2025 for the next stage of the editorial process. The seminar took place in March 2026.
Books currently under contract with the Rose Series are:
- Immigrants, Entrepreneurs, and Urban Redevelopment by Angie Chung and Jan Lin
- Through the DNA Looking Glass: The Impact of Genetic Ancestry Testing on Race, Ethnicity, and Family by Wendy D. Roth
- The Debt Divide: Student Loans, Inequality, and What to Do About It by Arielle Kuperberg & Joan Mazelis
- Sojourners by Design: How Temporary Labor Migration Has Transformed the United States and Why it Matters by David Cook-Martín
- Unspoken Injustice: How Prison Gerrymandering Shapes U.S. Electoral Politics by Brianna Remster and Rory Kramer
We are grateful for the 23 members on our 2025 editorial board and would particularly like to thank outgoing members for their service: Elizabeth Berman, Susan Brown, Christopher Dum, Ruben Hernández-León, Tomas Jiménez, Daniel Lichter, Roberto Suro, and Jessica Vasquez-Tokos.
We brought on 4 new members who started January 2025: Rogelio Saenz, Zakia Salime, Kate Strully, and Matt Vogel.
There will be eleven editorial board vacancies for the 2027-2029 service period. We will continue to broaden its diversity.
Rose Recruitment Activities
- A Call for Book Proposals was published across 15 ASA Section newsletters to broaden outreach and visibility.
- We initiated an outreach strategy to local higher education institutions, identifying potential authors in 5 different institutions.
- Over 43 direct email contacts were made with potential authors to encourage submissions and discuss project ideas.
- 8 one-on-one meetings with potential authors (in person or on Zoom).
- 2 proposals received and contracted in early 2025, marking a strong start to the year’s recruitment efforts.
- Proposals contracted:
- Sojourners by Design: How Temporary Labor Migration Has Transformed the United States and Why it Matters by David Cook-Martín
- Unspoken Injustice: How Prison Gerrymandering Shapes U.S. Electoral Politics by Brianna Remster and Rory Kramer
The ASA Rose Book Speaker Series
The ASA Rose Book Speaker Series is a lecture series established by the University at Albany Rose Editors. Rose Series books, as potentially translational research works, are clear examples of the connection between social science research and policy initiatives or more broadly academia and public policy. In addition to disseminating the research of Rose authors to diverse audiences, a central goal of the Series is to profile the potential policy influence of their research.
The second Rose Series in Sociology lecture took place on October 22, 2025, featuring Dr. Robert Crosnoe (The University of Texas at Austin), co-author of The Journey into Adulthood in Uncertain Times. The event was conducted in a hybrid format, with attendees joining both in person at the UAlbany Campus Center and virtually via Zoom. It was widely advertised across the SUNY system and among other higher education institutions. The event drew an audience of approximately 60 participants. In addition to the lecture, Dr. Crosnoe participated in a meet-and-greet session with graduate students from the UAlbany Department of Sociology, offering them the opportunity for informal dialogue and mentorship.
The Rose Series in Sociology will continue in the upcoming academic year, featuring Dr. Veronica Terriquez’s book Learning to Lead: Grassroots Organizing in Immigrant Communities.
Editorial Efforts on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
The Rose Series is committed to recruiting, investing in, and empowering a diverse and equitable scholarship. Our current manuscripts deal with pressing issues of equity, race, gender, and immigration.
We are equally committed to ensuring that our editorial board reflects this diversity: 10 out of our 23 current board members (43.48%) identify as coming from minority racial or ethnic backgrounds. In addition to maintaining a strong representation of scholars from underrepresented groups, including across race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic background, disability status, and more. We have also made a concerted effort to reach out to seasoned scholars who may not yet have had the opportunity to publish a book. This dual focus helps ensure that Rose remains an inclusive and supportive platform for a wide range of voices and scholarly contributions.
Joanna Dreby, Aaron Major, Steven Messner, and Katherine Trent, Editors
Sex & Sexualities
In 2025, the first two issues of this new ASA journal, Sex & Sexualities, were published. S&S was established as the official journal of the American Sociological Association’s section Sociology of Sexualities after almost two decades of research and advocacy. The journal publishes social science research and commentary on sex and sexualities by fostering space for rigorous intersectional, interdisciplinary, transnational, feminist, and critical research.
The co-editors in 2025 were Dr. Krystale Littlejohn and Dr. Amy L. Stone. At the end of 2025, Dr. Littlejohn had to step down from editorial duties, and the editorial team recruited two new additional co-editors, Dr. Anima Adjepong and Dr. Rebecca Plante, who began in March of 2026. In 2025, the co-editors Littlejohn and Stone published two issues of S&S in May and November, which included 23 invited commentaries. These invited commentaries brought scholars in dialogue with one another around themes like pleasure and the body; understanding this contemporary moment; sexuality, race, and empire; sexual identities; space, place, and time; and queering data, queering thought. The publication of refereed research articles did not begin until May 2026.
One of these commentaries focused on methodological approaches to studying pleasure and meaning in childhood sexualities. This article was the target of a media campaign to oppose the content, and the co-editors met with the Executive Director of ASA about the backlash.
Journal Operations
The S&S SAGE website was not available to the public until April of 2025. In 2025, the journal received 116 manuscripts, including the 23 invited commentaries and an introduction co-authored by Littlejohn and Stone. Of these submitted manuscripts, 38.8% were rejected without peer review, often due to content and fit issues. Emails from our Assistant Editor Dr. Benjamin Weiss specified what the content or fit issue was with the submission, often focused on how the manuscript did not focus on sex, sexualities, and/or sociological approaches. These manuscripts typically were a better fit for a humanities journal. The editorial team is experimenting with a “soft desk reject” in which submitted manuscripts are rejected with editorial feedback and no peer review, and the authors are allowed to resubmit the manuscript as a new submission.
Of the 31 new manuscripts we sent out for review, 64% were invited to revise and resubmit. In 2025, the average time from submission to decision for manuscripts that went out for review was 57 days. All manuscripts accepted in 2025 were published in 2026.
Editorial Team and Editorial Board
The successful management of S&S depends on the work of our Deputy Editors and Editorial Board Members, along with the management of our Assistant Editor Dr. Benjamin Weiss. Rather than using a managing editor model, Assistant Editor Weiss has authority to manage all desk reject decisions and assigning manuscripts to deputy editors and editors-in-chief. Deputy editors Drs. Jamie Budnick, Desmond Goss, Ying-Chao Kao, Katrina Kimport, Tony Silva, and Kristopher Velasco expertly managed selecting reviewers and making recommendations for manuscripts. We also thank the new editorial board for the S&S journal, who have been instrumental in reviewing the new submissions to the journal.
Editorial Efforts on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
The inaugural editorial board includes intentional diversity in race and gender. One-third of our editorial board self identifies as Black, Latino, Asian, or mixed race. One-third identify as a woman, and one quarter identify their gender as queer, nonbinary, or a trans man. In identifying board members for 2026, attempts were made to recruit more scholars doing research internationally, along with scholars doing work on diverse aspects of sexualities. The editorial team includes racial and gender diversity, as five out of the nine editorial team members identify as White and four team members identify as a woman or nonbinary. When inviting authors to write commentaries in 2025, co-editors attempted to invite methodologically and geographically diverse scholars. A majority of the authors are members of racial or gender minoritized groups. Invited scholars were heavily encouraged to share authorship with graduate students and junior scholars, and nine commentaries included undergraduate or graduate student co-authors.
Amy L. Stone, Anima Adjepong, and R.F. Plante, Editors
Social Psychology Quarterly
Editorial Team and Board
The incoming Social Psychology Quarterly (SPQ) editorial team, Lisa Slattery Walker and Joseph Dippong, started their official term in January 2025 but began accepting new manuscript submissions in the summer of 2024. The managing editor organized the day-to-day operations of SPQ, ensuring that manuscripts were processed in a timely manner and that production went smoothly. Carleigh Laxton, a University of North Carolina – Charlotte graduate student, served as managing editor from January 1, 2025, until August 1st, 2025. Jay Targett served as managing editor starting August 1st, 2025. Gianna Mosser continues in her long-standing role as copyeditor, ensuring that SPQ articles are clearly written and that they follow ASA style and editorial guidelines.
We are fortunate to have two outstanding Deputy Editors to support SPQ operations. In this role, David Schaefer and Amanda Gengler conducted reviews, served as primary manuscript editors, and acted as editor-in-chief when the co-editors had conflicts of interest. Further supporting the editorial team are members of the editorial board. In 2025, the board had 36 members. We have made concerted efforts to diversify our editorial board and in moving forward we plan to seek data on the diversity of our board, our submitters, and our reviewers.
Journal Operations
Editorial Statistics. From January 1 through December 31, 2025, SPQ published 27 research articles. We received 161 submissions. Of these, 119 were new (first) submissions to the journal. Of those, 66 percent were sent out for peer review. Among those that underwent peer review, 53 percent were rejected outright, and 44 percent received an invitation to revise and resubmit. Of the first revision submissions received in 2025, 42 percent were accepted unconditionally, 16 percent were accepted subject to minor changes, 36 percent received a second revise and resubmit decision, and 7 percent were rejected outright.
Using the traditional ASA indicator for the acceptance rate (the number of accepted manuscripts divided by the number of overall decisions, multiplied by 100), the acceptance rate for 2025 was 14.5 percent. The average number of weeks from submission to decision in 2025 was 9.9 weeks, up from 7.4 weeks in 2024. The average time from acceptance to Online First was 2.2 months.
Lisa Slattery Walker and Joseph Dippong, Editors
Society and Mental Health
In August 2024, I became the new Editor of Society and Mental Health. Thanks to the previous Editors, Alex Bierman and Scott Schieman, the transition process was a smooth one. I am very grateful to them for their invaluable advice and assistance.
In 2025, Society and Mental Health entered its 15th year of publication. Since its inception, SMH has published papers covering a range of subjects relevant to the study of mental health and illness from a theoretically informed sociological perspective, including contributions to the study of the stress process, the causes and consequences of mental illness, mental illness and the life course, as well as articles on public policy and mental health services.
Currently, SMH is ranked 24th out of 220 sociology journals, with a two-year impact factor of 3.0 and a five-year impact factor of 4.5. This accomplishment could not have been achieved without the support of our highly qualified deputy editors, editorial board members, external reviewers, and the authors who submitted their exceptional work to the journal.
During 2025, SMH published 14 articles, including the Leonard I. Pearlin Award Paper. We are especially interested in publishing papers that integrate, test, and advance sociological theories of mental health and illness using strong causal designs. We are committed to a rigorous peer review process in order to publish the highest quality work. Papers are routinely subject to several rounds of revision before they are published.
Journal Operations
From the beginning of 2025 through the end of the year, SMH received 252 new manuscripts. Of these, 205 (81%) were rejected without further review. The primary reason we reject manuscripts without review is that they are submitted without a sociological grounding or focus. While many of these papers are more appropriate for public health or psychology journals, many others appear to be submitted without any consideration of SMH’s sociological orientation. Of the 47 new papers sent out for peer review, 11 (23%) received an invitation to revise and resubmit. The average time to decision for peer-reviewed papers was about four weeks. Overall, the acceptance rate was 4%. In terms of production time, due to tight limitations on the number of issues and pages, papers accepted in 2025 were generally published in the journal around 14 months after acceptance.
Deputy Editors, Editorial Board, Peer Reviewers, and Journal Staff
The success of SMH depends on the work of our Managing Editor, Gale Cassidy, a position she has held for most of the journal’s existence. Our Deputy Editors—Robyn Lewis Brown, Jong Hyun Jung, and Kei Nomaguchi—provide exceptionally high-quality service to the journal. We are grateful to the Editorial Board, who cover a broad range of substantive and methodological expertise. Critically, SMH depends on ad hoc reviewers who provide invaluable input. Without their assistance, we would not be able to advance the mission of SMH and publish a wide range of quality scholarship on the sociology of mental health and illness.
Fred E. Markowitz, Editor
Sociological Methodology
Sociological Methodology (SM) is the premier methods journal of the American Sociological Association. SM publishes only a select number of high-quality papers that are at the cutting-edge of methodology in sociology and related social sciences. SM seeks contributions to qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods that address the full range of methodological problems confronted by empirical research in sociology and related social sciences. The current editorial team prioritizes publishing methodological developments in the following areas but also welcomes submissions in other methodological areas.
- Methods for studying social inequality
- Methods for social network analysis
- Causal inference and computational methods (especially artificial intelligence, machine learning, Bayesian analysis, and text Analysis)
- Qualitative and mixed methods
Editorial Team
The SM editorial office was relocated from the Ohio State University in Columbus, OH to Emory University, Atlanta, GA in August, 2024. The transition went smoothly, thanks to the invaluable assistance of the Sage staff and the outgoing co-editors, David Melamed and Mike Vuolo. The current editorial board includes Editor Weihua An, Deputy Editors Scott W. Duxbury, Guillermina Jasso, and Cassidy Puckett, and 26 other board members. Lisa Savage is the managing editor and Anqi Hu (a doctoral student at Emory Sociology) is the editorial assistant. We purposely cultivated diversity in our editorial team, balancing faculty ranks, institutional types, methodological approaches, and demographic backgrounds. We will continue to encourage involvement of underrepresented scholars on the editorial team and as manuscript authors and reviewers.
Manuscript Flow
For the entire year of 2025, 84 manuscripts were considered, 71 of which were new submissions, and 13 were resubmissions. Of the 71 new submissions, 25 (35.2%) were rejected without peer review and 46 were sent out for peer review. Of the 46 manuscripts reviewed, 35 were rejected, 8 were invited to resubmit a revised manuscript, 2 were accepted subject to minor changes, and 1 was with a pending decision (as of 4/1/2026).
The acceptance rate based on all the submissions and resubmissions in 2025 was 16.7%. The average number of weeks to decision was 8.1, ranging from 1.9 weeks for papers rejected without peer review, to 10.1 weeks for papers rejected after review, and to 8.8 weeks for papers accepted subject to minor changes. Among new submissions in 2025, 35.2% were rejected without peer review within 1.9 weeks on average, and 64.8% were peer-reviewed and received a decision within 11.9 weeks on average. The two issues for Volume 55 were published in February and August 2025, respectively.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the authors and manuscript submitters who entrusted SM with their best methodological research. We are also deeply appreciative of our reviewers, whose timely and thoughtful evaluations have been essential to maintaining the journal’s high standards and advancing its mission.
New Initiatives
Based on our editorial experience over the past year, we have identified several challenges and opportunities and will take appropriate steps to address them. First, the quality of submissions has been highly uneven. While we receive a small number of excellent manuscripts, a much larger proportion of submissions clearly do not meet the standards required for publication in SM. To address this issue, the editorial team plans to substantially increase the desk-rejection rate for new submissions. This measure will also help reduce the reviewing burden on our relatively limited pool of reviewers. Meanwhile, we will explore strategies for attracting more high-quality submissions. We have worked closely with Sage to strengthen the journal’s marketing efforts and will continue to do so. In addition, we will continue promoting newly published SM articles through social media to expand the journal’s reach and highlight cutting-edge methodological research. We also plan to collaborate with the ASA Methodology Section and other relevant organizations to establish an online forum where SM authors can present and discuss their recent publications. Furthermore, we may engage with scholars in related social science disciplines and research communities to encourage broader submission to SM. Finally, we plan to organize two to three special sections or symposia focused on AI and social science research methods, encompassing both quantitative and qualitative approaches.
Weihua An, Editor
Sociological Theory
2025 was a very busy year for our editorship of Sociological Theory. We came in with the goal of broadening the purview of sociological theory and increasing coverage of underrepresented areas, and submission numbers seem to indicate success. In short, the number of submissions rose sharply compared to previous years. While we received 155 new submissions in 2023 and 148 in 2024, in 2025 this number more than doubled to 349 new submissions. Indeed, there has been a steady growth in new submissions beginning in July of 2025, ranging anywhere from 50% to 125% over average submissions for the same month over the past few years. Of the 349 total submissions for the year, while 153 were for the special issue Sociological Theorizing from the Global South, 196 were regular submissions, indicating an increase in regular submissions of about 33% from the previous year.
We published 16 papers in 2025, comparable to the 15 published the prior year. Our acceptance rate was approximately 9.5 percent, close to the historical norm of around 9 percent. Given the increased number of submissions for 2025, however, this acceptance rate will decrease in the following year. While it is too early to predict if this increase in new submissions is permanent, we note that we have exceeded our current allotment of pages for 2026. If the increase in submissions is permanent, the journal will require a greater annual allotment in order to maintain current acceptance rates.
Building on the efforts of the previous editorial team, one of our primary aims was to reduce the time to make the first decision on manuscripts submitted for review. We are pleased to report that we continued to make progress in this regard compared to previous years, as the average time to first decision on all new manuscripts has decreased to 34 days, just over a month, representing a one day improvement over the previous year (35 days) and a significant improvement from two years prior (49 days). Among the newly submitted manuscripts that we decided to send out for peer review, the time to first decision for 2025 is 70 days, only a few days above this number for the previous year and still an improvement compared to 79 days in 2023. The slight increase in 2025 over 2024 is no doubt related to the increased number of manuscripts we assessed.
Along those lines, and like previous editorships, we have continued to desk-reject a large number of submissions when either the fit was problematic, we deemed that there was an extremely low chance that the manuscript would survive past the first round of peer review, or the paper was primarily empirical in aims and goals. In that regard, our new guidance to reviewers includes language reflecting the journal’s focus on papers whose primary contribution is theoretical, rather than empirical. This year, we desk-rejected approximately 52 percent of new submissions, which is about the same as last year (53 percent). While this is not a welcome outcome for authors, we have continued to make it a priority to return these desk-rejections as fast as possible, and to try to write substantive constructive feedback that would allow authors to either re-work their paper for submission at Sociological Theory at a later date, or to submit their work to a more appropriate journal. The average time to receive such a desk rejection decision is 9 days, down from 11 the previous year.
We have continued to diversify the makeup of ST’s authors, reviewers, and editorial board. The current editorial board is comprised of 68% female-presenting individuals (19 out of 28) and represents a diverse range of ethnic and national backgrounds. In the following year, we plan to publish a special issue focused on the theme “Sociological Theorizing from the Global South,” which should help further our diversification and representation goals.
Finally, we would also like to thank the reviewers who made our work possible and engaged with the submissions to ST last year with equanimity and wisdom, as well as the members of the editorial board who have gone above and beyond to review and provide advice on difficult decisions on multiple occasions. Last but certainly not least, we would also like to extend our deep gratitude to ST’s continuing managing editor, Joe Wiebe. His organizational acumen, institutional memory, and care continue to guide us. Joe continues to be an irreplaceable resource when we encounter the occasional rough waters.
Vrushali Patil, Zine Magubane, Omar Lizardo, and S.L. Crawley, Editors
Sociology of Education
Sociology of Education (SOE) remains a vital outlet for sociology of education scholarship. Sociologists in this subfield use diverse theories, methods, and epistemological approaches to understand education in the United States and internationally and the papers published this year certainly reflect that diversity and range. In 2025, SOE transitioned editors, moving from the leadership of John Diamond and Odis Johnson to the co-editorship of William Carbonaro and Anna Haskins at the University of Notre Dame. As co-editors, we’ve sought to publish manuscripts that examine a range of substantive issues and methodological approaches, highlighting the sociological significance of education. These efforts have been supported quite robustly by the constructive and helpful engagement of SOE reviewers and Associate Editors, and we have begun a number of exciting initiatives to showcase the work of journal authors and bolster engagement with the journal.
First, to augment our pool of reviewers and recognize their work, we implemented personal outreach efforts and in 2025 honored Editorial Board members and MVP reviewers (individuals who reviewed 3+ manuscripts over the course of the year) with an “Outstanding Reviewer” mug at the Sociology of Education section meeting at ASA. We plan to continue both of these efforts throughout our tenure as editors as the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
Second, we transitioned the Twitter/X account we inherited to BlueSky and continued our social media efforts. Our postings follow a weekly theme – Message Sharing Mondays, Tips from the Editors Tuesdays, New Work Wednesdays, Throwback Thursdays, and Fresh Take Fridays – and we have steadily increased our number of followers. We will continue these efforts in the next year.
Finally, we submitted a proposal for a special issue to celebrate SOE’s 100th year in print (2027). The proposal was accepted, and we have begun planning the special issue (to be published in Oct of 2027) to commemorate this milestone. It will cover 15 substantive topics, with each contribution co-authored by two prominent scholars in that area. We will also include an original descriptive analysis of the full corpus of papers published in the journal. We anticipate the special issue will be widely read and heavily cited, and we expect the essays will shape future theory and research in our subfield for many years to come.
Manuscript Flow
This report covers the journal’s manuscript activity from January 1, 2025, through December 31, 2025. We continue to receive a large number of submissions. This year, we received a total of 270 manuscripts, including 220 new submissions. This is a slight increase from previous years. The average time from submission to decision was 4.6 weeks, nearly half of the previous year’s 9-week average. Reducing time-to-decision was a primary goal of our editorship and we are very proud that our efforts toward this goal are materializing in our first year as editors. We also saw reductions in our production lag time, that is, the average time from acceptance to publication. In 2025 it was 6.1 months (down from 8.3 months), and the average time from acceptance to “online first” availability was 3.5 months (down from 4.3 months).
Under our editorship, we implemented a strict 10,000-word first submission limit in efforts to maximize the number of manuscripts we can publish in our limited page allotment. In 2025 we published a total of 15 research articles. We hope these efforts will bear fruit in the coming years, increasing the total number of papers we can publish in the journal during our editorship.
In 2025, Sociology of Education accepted 20 of 270 submissions, resulting in an acceptance rate of 7.4%. This is an increase of about 2% in comparison to accepted manuscripts in the previous year (7.4 versus 5.6). However, the Revise and Resubmit rate declined to 9.5% (down from 11.2% in the previous year). Out of the 220 newly submitted manuscripts, the percentage of manuscripts rejected outright (e.g. desk rejected) was 60%. The higher desk rejection rate tracks with our increasing number of submissions, which has resulted in manuscripts that are either not an appropriate fit for the journal or require significant work before warranting peer review. Overall, these shifts reflect our efforts to curate what we send out for review to minimize reviewer burden, reduce multiple rounds of R&Rs, and maximize the likelihood of successful publication for the many high-quality manuscripts we receive.
Editorial Team
As editors, we are supremely grateful to continue to benefit from Shannon Vakil’s outstanding leadership as managing editor. Her deep editorial experience and expertise have been invaluable, especially this year during our editorial transition. We would like to also thank Odis Johnson and John Diamond and their editorial team for their support and leadership of the journal during the past three years and are grateful to our six new deputy editors: Julia Burdick-Will, Jessica Calarco, Eve L. Ewing, Roberto Gonzales, Andrew Halpern-Manners and Catherine Reigle-Crumb. At the end of 2025, Jessica Calarco cycled off as a deputy editor in order to assume the role of incoming ASA Vice President, and Derron Wallace and Laura Hamilton agreed to join in 2026. As deputy editors, this group assisted us in making difficult decisions, reviewed manuscripts in their respective areas of expertise, and helped streamline the editorial process when conflicts of interest arose. We are indebted to their willingness to serve the journal and discipline in this way.
We thank the outgoing Editorial Board members who rotated off in December 2025 for their outstanding service to the journal: Ebony Bridwell-Mitchell, Rebecca Cruz, Nilda Flores-Gonzalez, Chantal Hailey, Yader Lanuza, Edward Morris, Chandra Muller, Lara Perez-Felkner and Richard Welsh. In 2025, SOE invited several new members to join the editorial board starting in January 2026. These outstanding scholars include: Yi-Lin Chiang, Anna Katyn Chmielewski, Vanessa Delgado, Hanna Dumont, Amy Hsin, Tony Jack, Jennifer Jennings, Lauren Schudde, Blake Silver and Marissa Thompson. Editorial board members commit to aid in the review of 6-8 manuscripts a year (about one every other month) within their methodological or substantive areas of expertise and we are indebted to their volunteer service.
Reviewers and Reviewing
We sincerely thank all of those who reviewed for SOE in 2025. The journal receives a large volume of annual submissions, and we could not handle this without the commitment of our ad hoc reviewers and editorial board members.
SOE and its authors continued to benefit from the service of a remarkably talented and dedicated group of readers. From January 1, 2025, through December 31, 2025, 236 scholars from around the world provided valuable comments on papers submitted to SOE, and 83 of those reviewers served more than once during this time, either on R&Rs or new submissions. We as co-editors have been so impressed with the commitment, quality and content of reviewers’ feedback. It is clear SOE reviewers take an interest in helping authors to develop their work, even when that work does not ultimately appear in the journal.
Diversity and Inclusion Efforts
As co-editors, we have worked to ensure diversity throughout the editorial process, activating our networks to identify and invite a diverse editorial board as well as seeking diversity and range in our reviewers. In 2025, 60 percent of SOE’s editorial board identified as female or gender queer, and 40 percent as male. Regarding race, 56 percent of the board members identified as members of minoritized groups, and 44 percent identified as white. During our editorship, we’ve engaged in outreach efforts to encourage submissions from a diverse set of scholars through personal and professional networks.
Conclusion
This has been an exciting year for us as new editors of SOE. The journal remains a valued venue that scholars rely on for rigorous and important scholarship related to the sociology of education. We’ve worked hard to reduce time-to-decision numbers, encourage high quality submissions that fit the scope and focus of the journal, and reengage scholars, reviewers, and the public with the important work being done by sociologists of education. We look forward to the next two years of our editorship, especially with 2027 commemorating 100 years of Sociology of Education being in print.
William Carbonaro and Anna Haskins, Editors
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Manuscript Submissions
In 2025, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity received 363 submissions, roughly the same number of submissions from the previous year. Most of the submissions (n=333) were original research articles. In addition to original research submissions, the journal received 13 pedagogical articles in 2026. The average timespan between manuscript submission and acceptance was approximately eight (8) weeks. In addition to original research and pedagogy articles, the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity received and published 25 Book Reviews.
In 2025, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity accepted 32 of 333 original research article submissions, resulting in an acceptance rate of just under 9.6%. This is about a 1% increase in comparison to accepted manuscripts in 2024. The editorial team is satisfied with this acceptance rate.
One aspect that the editorial team prides itself on is finding qualified peer reviewers for each submission. In general, we have worked to increase the number of qualified peer reviewers by (1) extending requests to scholars not previously in the journal’s network of reviewers; (2) extending requests for peer review to scholars from institutions where peer review is more valued (e.g. community college faculty, faculty at institutions with lower research output expectations, etc.); and (3) extending requests to non-US based scholars. This latter step is also aligned with our expressed aim to increase Sociology of Race & Ethnicity’s international reach and audience.
Like other academic journals, we have found it more difficult this past year to secure an adequate number of peer reviewers in a timely fashion. For instance, it is now routine to extend ten or more review invitations to secure just three reviewers. We believe the American Sociological Association, and other scholarly and professional organizations, need to have more open, honest, and transparent discussions about this ongoing dilemma. We will do what we can from our limited position to continue to encourage our colleagues to serve as peer reviewers, and to encourage timely reviews so that authors can receive timely decisions on their manuscripts. Given the constraints the entire academic journal publishing world faces, we are especially proud of our past year’s work.
Editorial Board
Our current editorial board is comprised of members of varied gender identities and expressions, race, and ethnicities. The 2025 editorial board reflects 22 men (47%) and 25 women (53%).
DEI Plan for 2025
Founding editors David L. Brunsma and David G. Embrick made diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) central pillars of Sociology of Race & Ethnicity. Current co-editors B. Brian Foster and James M. Thomas continue to build upon their enormous and important efforts. The makeup of the SRE editorial board affirms the intersection of individual and organizational identities and helps ensure we have a transformational community of scholars. Additionally, the makeup of the SRE editorial board affirms a stance meant to address the social, systemic, and institutional barriers faced by members of our communities. SRE editorial board members help to create and cultivate a scholarly outlet that promotes inclusivity, and affirms a diverse range of voices, identities, and experiences. Coeditors B. Brian Foster and James M. Thomas remain committed to ensuring that SRE continues to serve as an important scholarly outlet for underrepresented scholars and cutting-edge scholarly content.
B. Brian Foster and James M. Thomas, Editors
Socius
Review Process
Socius, ASA’s only fully open-access online-only journal, is an outlet for innovative, rigorously reviewed scholarship that spans sociology subfields and provides free and rapid access to users across the world. In the calendar year of 2025, we continued the founding editors’ vision for publishing high-quality research online with fast turnaround time.
Socius received a total of 541 submissions in 2025, of which 358 were original submissions and 183 were resubmissions. We desk-rejected 144 of those original submissions, with a desk-rejection rate of 40.22%. Of the resubmitted papers, we accepted 181 of them. Our desk-rejection rate is higher than for most traditional journals because two important objectives for Socius are a fast turnaround (from submission to publication) and relatively limited R&Rs. Both goals are intended to respect the time of authors and reviewers, to move promising papers through the review process more efficiently, and to avoid spending inordinate reviewer and editor time on manuscripts that are unlikely to be published. In that respect, we have been very successful. For example, our mean number of days to decision is 28.77 and our median number of days to decision is 17.00 for new submissions; our mean number of days to decision is 12.48 and our median number of days to decision is 3.00 for resubmissions.
The online format of Socius means that articles are not restricted by print page limits or traditional manuscript format. We can, for example, easily accommodate papers that do not necessarily follow the traditional structure (introduction, literature, data & methods, etc.), include multiple color figures, have various linked appendices, etc. We have continued to see submissions that take advantage of both flexibilities, and we anticipate that authors will become even more creative as they grow accustomed to the new publication format. These two flexibilities were two of the key visions of the founding Editors Lisa Keister and Jim Moody.
Impact and Visibility
Our published articles did very well in terms of visibility and attracting citations. In 2025, Socius papers were highly cited. In fact, according to ASA’s report of Top 5 Cited Articles Published in 2025 across all ASA journals, our papers made the first, the second, the fourth, and the fifth positions (Top Cited Articles | American Sociological Association).
Range of Submissions
The topics of manuscripts submitted to and published in Socius have been wide-ranging, reflecting the diverse ideas and issues studied by sociologists. We have received papers from nearly all sociological subfields and using various forms of methodology and analysis, including emerging topics such as research on AI and society.
Editorial Board, Editorial Staff, and Reviewers
We have a strong and diverse Editorial Board. Both our board and our published articles are diverse—the Editorial Board members are of diverse backgrounds and represent different types of institutions and subfields of sociology. These types of diversity are also mirrored in our published papers. Socius is blessed with a small yet efficient editorial staff. We have one parttime Managing Editor who oversees the logistics of running the journal including corresponding with reviewers and giving biweekly reports to the editorial staff and two 50%-time Editorial Associates provided by our host institution, Sociology at Illinois, senior graduate students who help evaluate new submissions, with the input of the board sometimes, and help suggest potential reviewers. They also help identify additional reviewers when needed and broadcast Socius publications on three social media platforms. We are very lucky to have supportive reviewers from a multidisciplinary base, most of whom provide on-time and informative reviews.
Tim F. Liao, Editor
Teaching Sociology
Teaching Sociology (TS) remains at the forefront of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) in sociology. We continued to offer free virtual webinars on topics from recent TS articles that are relevant to higher education in general as well as sociology specifically. Topics this past year included: The Future of Teaching Sociology with Melinda Messineo (TS editor), Publishing in and Learning with TRAILS with Stephanie Medley-Rath (TRAILS editor), Exploring Open Pedagogy with Michele Lee Kozimor past TS editor), Teaching Sociology in the Current Context with Diane Pike (past TRAILS editor) and Your Summer Scholarship to do List – Writing Book, Film, Series Reviews for Teaching Sociology with Barbara Prince (TS Deputy Editor). These webinars were attended by over 75 different individuals including people from outside of the discipline of sociology, directors of centers for faculty development, and sociologists of all ranks representing all institution types. A special effort was made to reach out to graduate students and faculty of underrepresented groups.
Under the editorship of Melinda Messineo and with deputy editor Barbara Prince, Teaching Sociology Volume 53 (2025) published 41 works, including conversations (2), articles (18), notes (7), editorials (2), as well as book, film, podcast, and website reviews (12). We are now publishing more articles, notes, and conversations and slightly fewer book, film, and podcast reviews than in the past. Currently, most issues of the journal contain 6-7 articles, notes, and conversations, and 3-5 book, film, and podcast reviews. There was a healthy number of accepted or conditionally accepted manuscripts in the queue for the next year. The editor, deputy editor, and editorial board have worked to encourage submissions and increase the quality of submissions by holding free virtual webinars and, when possible, conference sessions on a variety of topics, including demystifying the publication process for the journal.
As noted above, the Teaching Sociology editorial team continues to work with the editorial team of the Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology to create linkages between these two resources. Searches performed in TRAILS identify Teaching Sociology citations. A reciprocal arrangement began in Summer 2017, with citations for new TRAILS resources published in two three-page promotions in each issue of Teaching Sociology as an ongoing practice. Our sincere appreciation to Stephanie Medley-Rath for her efforts.
Manuscript Flow
In 2025, excluding reviews, 99 manuscripts were received (56 new manuscripts and 43 revised manuscripts). The submissions for this volume are slightly higher than last year which reflects a recent trend of increased submissions. For new submissions, 9 percent were rejected without peer review. Most rejections were accompanied with guidance from the editor to encourage future submission of a manuscript that would have greater prospects of receiving favorable reviews, often requiring new data collection or more rigorous assessment efforts. Of those manuscripts sent for peer review, 1 was accepted unconditionally, 3.9 percent were accepted conditional on minor changes, 60.8 percent rejected but invited to revise and resubmit, and 15.7 percent were rejected outright. These statistics on acceptance and revision decisions are comparable to recent previous years.
The mean time from submission to decision for 2025 is comparable to 2024. The challenges of finding reviewers and reviews taking longer to be submitted due to the many challenges teaching faculty are facing still continues to be a barrier. The mean time from submission to first decision of all manuscripts submitted in 2024 was 16 weeks with revised manuscripts just 14.8 weeks. For new manuscripts that were rejected without peer review, decisions occurred within 1 week of receipt.
Editorial Board
There were 34 members on the Editorial Board comprised of 55.9 percent women, 41.1 percent men, 3.0 percent gender-queer/gender-nonconforming/other, and 35.3 percent were minorities. Individual members of the editorial board commonly performed 3-4 reviews in 2025.
Upcoming Special Issue
We have started work on our next Special Issue “Pedagogies for our Planetary Futures: Teaching Sociology in the Age of Climate Crisis” with co-editors Sadie Pendaz-Foster and Julie Pelton.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives
The free virtual Teaching Sociology webinars have been designed to build a community of teacher-scholars, make the publication process in Teaching Sociology more transparent, increase the quality of submissions, and provide mentoring and resources. The goal of these webinars is to attracted a more diversified pool of submissions to the journal from unrepresented scholars and a set of different topics. A special effort was made to reach out to graduate students and faculty of underrepresented groups. We also worked to bring in faculty from community colleges and Hispanic Serving Institutions. We advertise the webinars on the journal’s Twitter (X) account, in various teaching and learning listservs, and through an email list of individuals interested in Teaching Sociology news that the journal maintains. Beginning In 2023, and continuing through 2025, a new initiative was undertaken to further diversify the editorial board. In addition to taking recommendations for new editorial board nominations from the current board members, Teaching Sociology accepted self-nominations. A call for self-nominations was distributed through the Teaching Sociology email list. This initiative was found to be successful resulting in more high-quality self-nominations than open positions.
The team expresses gratitude to the American Sociological Association for its continued support of the journal. A special thank you to Deputy Editor Barbara Prince; past ASA Director of Publications Karen Gray Edwards and new ASA Director of Publications Catherine Yim; the Sage team; and editorial assistants Emilee Schmidt and Willow Emig for their outstanding contributions to the work of the journal.
Melinda Messineo, Editor