For further details on the information presented below, please see the Summary of Editorial Activity table. To see editors’ reports from previous years, click here.
American Sociological Review
In 2005, the American Sociological Review published 41 papers and 4 other, smaller items, such as comments and replies. We had the second highest number of submissions since 1990 (when ASR articles were first entered into the current database). (The highest total of new manuscript submissions was recorded in 2004.) The acceptance rate is below 10 percent (8.58 percent). The average (mean) editorial lag time fell to below 10 weeks (9.7).
ASR articles continue to be influential. They are highly cited, as measured by the impact scores reported in the ISI’s Journal Citation Reports. ASR papers also frequently win ASA “best paper” competitions. A partial listing of ASA section Awards in 2005 includes six papers garnering such recognition. In addition, Mark Chavez and colleague’s 2004 paper on government funding for nonprofit organizations won the best paper award of the Academy of Management’s Public and Nonprofit Division.
The editorial board was diverse: 47 percent female, 22 percent minority.
One theme in recent years has been the inclusion of many multi-method papers. This theme is developed in a short essay in the December 2005 issue of Footnotes.
ASR helped to celebrate the Centennial Year of the American Sociological Association with the publication of “ASR’s Greatest Hits,” a note by the editor which discussed the most frequently cited articles in the history of the journal. A longer version of this piece, featured on the ASR journal Web site, was consulted frequently by scholars who sought to find out if their favorite articles made it onto the list. The editors of the American Political Science Review are following ASR’s lead by conducting their own historical review on the occasion of the Centennial of the American Political Science Association. (For those who may be curious, ASR has many more “greatest hits” than does APSR, if the same yardstick is employed.)
During 2005 we continued to place Online Supplements to selected articles on the ASR journal Web site. My assessment is that this practice has been a success. These Online Supplements provide additional information, typically tables and figures, for specialist readers without unduly clogging up the pages of the journal. Statistics provided by the ASA indicate that scholars frequently consult these Online Supplements on the ASR journal Web site.
We have been working closely with the ASA office garner public attention for articles published in ASR. In 2005, The New York Times discussed two ASR articles: the February 2005 article by Jason Kaufman and Orlando Patterson on the cross-national diffusion of cricket, and the October 2005 article by Julia Wrigley and Joanna Dreby on mortality rates in childcare settings.
We have been working closely with Teaching Sociology Editor Elizabeth Grauerholz to make ASR articles more accessible and useful in the classroom setting. Teaching Sociology has created a new “applications” section in which papers discuss how ASR (and potentially other research) articles can be used in the classroom. For example, in July 2005, TS featured an applications piece by Diane Purvin and Edward Kain, which featured a discussion of how sociology faculty could use the December 2004 ASR article by Andrew Cherlin and colleagues on violence and abuse in families. Purvin and Kain note that only about 1 percent of references in TS papers over the period 1995- 2004 are to articles published in ASR. This collaboration with TS seeks to build stronger bridges between sociological teaching and research.
Jerry A. Jacobs, Editor
Contemporary Sociology
Books Considered: The editorial office of Contemporary Sociology received 1288 new books to consider for review in Volume 34. In addition, 71 books were carried over from the previous year. The total number of books that the editors examined was 1359.
Review Process: 370 books were screened by editors and accepted for review for the year and the number of reviews received for the year was 338. 354 reviews were finished and published for Volume 34. 512 were either rejected or classified as Take Note.
The new editorial team at the University of California-Irvine reorganized and created new categories into the following:
Inequalities
Intimate Relationships, Family, and Life Course
Work, Organizations, and Markets
Cognitions, Emotions, and Identities
Ideology and Cultural Production
Population, Communities, and the Environment
Politics and the State
Social Control, Deviance and the Law
Social Movements
Health, Illness and Medicine
Theory, Epistemology, and Methodology
Global Dynamics and Social Change
Education
Editorial and Production Lags: The editorial office, on average, schedules reviews, articles, symposia, and review essays for publication within eight weeks after the materials arrive. The journal’s managing editor, Barbara Puetz, and thereafter Jenny Fan, edits and formats all the work received in preparation for publication. Most contributors send electronic copies of their work. The production lag, about thirteen and a half months, represents the time between receipt of the contributor’s materials (the books) and the publication date.
Items Published: The breakdown of the items published in Volume 34 contain the following: 325 book reviews, 10 symposium essays, 15 review essays, 7 comments, and 4 other. The total number of items published is 361.
Editorial Board Members and Reviewers: 7 women, 14 men, and 8 minorities compose the outgoing editorial board.
The outgoing editors wish to thank the book reviewers, the featured essay writers, and the symposia organizers who made our work for Contemporary Sociology informative and generally a lot of fun. We are grateful to the members of the Editorial Board who made suggestions for book reviewers. A small number of Board members could be singled out for their extraordinary work. We hope they are aware of their unusual level of commitment to CS.
JoAnn Miller and Robert Perrucci, Editors, with the assistance of Valerie Jenness, David A. Smith, and Judith Stepan-Norris, Editors- Elect
Contexts
During our first (and quite enjoyable) year as editors of Contexts, we changed the design, format, and content in a number of small ways aimed at making the magazine more lively and readable. Our first issue of 2006 introduces some changes to the cover design to match these interior developments. All the changes are aimed at making Contexts look more like a magazine and less like a fancy journal. On the other hand, we also launched some new features and renamed some old ones, with the intention of making the magazine more appealing to professional social scientists at the same time it retains its readability by nonprofessionals. Founding editor Claude Fischer was kind enough to consult with us on these transformations.
We also inaugurated a series of forums meant not only to entertain live audiences but to generate materials for our “conversations” feature. Our first forum, held at New York University during a blizzard in February 2005, treated more than two hundred audience members to a debate over culture wars by Thomas Frank, Patricia Williams, Eli Anderson, and moderator Eric Klinenberg. This coming summer we are sponsoring a forum at the ASA meetings on mass violence and an independent event on crime and punishment.
The largest market for Contexts aside from ASA members has proven to be undergraduate students. Increasing numbers of instructors are requiring articles or asking students to subscribe to the magazine. Kathy Edin is spearheading an experiment in using subscriptions in intro courses, and talks are underway with W. W. Norton to compile a reader of our best articles. A forthcoming Footnotes article will detail the several ways that you can get Contexts into the classroom, and there will soon be a page on our website (www.contextsmagazine.org) to help you do this.
The four issues of volume 4 were published on time, in February, May, August, and November, containing more than twenty feature articles, more than a dozen book reviews, and a dozen culture reviews, in addition to various other features unique to Contexts. Among these, our “conversations” provide interviews or group discussions of timely issues. We introduced “keywords” to allow top scholars to think about the history of the concepts we all use in our work. “Backstage” is about what else academics do in addition to their research. The magazine is also sprinkled with fillers we call “nanofeatures,” small facts or quotes meant to make readers stop and think. It was our great fortune to attract a number of editors for these various features whose hard work has made the magazine possible.
During 2005 we received approximately one hundred proposals for feature articles of varying degrees of formality, fewer than half of which we asked to proceed to full submissions and peer review. In most cases, the author had not formulated a hook for the piece that we thought would have broad appeal. A small number of authors were asked to revise their pieces from feature articles into culture reviews. Of those submissions peer reviewed, a slight majority were accepted for publication. Our peer reviewing process was severely hampered in the fall due to the grad-student strike at NYU, which has lost us the invaluable labor of our assistant editor. Our review time has accordingly expanded from approximately two months to around four. Our production procedures unfold continuously, but the time between the copy editor’s receipt of materials and their publication remains between four and five months.
We encourage all readers to email us with their comments and suggestions as we continue to try to expand the magazine’s reach to new audiences and deepen its appeal to existing ones: [email protected] and [email protected].
Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, Editors
Journal of Health and Social Behavior
Personnel. During 2005 we had some changes in personnel at the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Ranae J. Evenson, an advanced graduate student at Vanderbilt University (with PhD defended and soon to be filed), took over the position of Managing Editor for Reviews in May from Jennifer Moren-Cross, who decided to work full time on her dissertation research. Ranae specializes in the sociology of mental illness and has considerable background in medical sociology. Brent Winter assumed the Managing Editor for Production position in October, taking over from Gretchen Decker, who entered a new career in shelter- animal care. Brent is an editor and writer who has many years of experience in production and copyediting for magazines and newsletters; he also works as a freelance dissertation editor. Dr. Andrew Cognard-Black, Assistant Professor of Sociology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, continues as copyeditor for the journal.
Overall Operations and Manuscript Flow. JHSB published 25 articles in 2005. The number of new submissions in 2005 (N = 140) was very similar to that in 2004 (N = 142) and was consistent with the mean annual number of new submissions received by the journal from 1990 through 2004 (mean = 148, which includes papers for special issues).
In 2005, 311 manuscripts were considered. I made editorial decisions on 213 papers (68 percent), with 96 (31 percent) remaining under review and 2 others (1 percent) withdrawn by authors. Of the 213 decisions made, about 45 percent were “reject,” 11 percent were “reject without review,” 19 percent were “revise and resubmit,” 14 percent were “conditional accept,” and 10 percent were “accept.”
The mean time lag between manuscript submission and editorial decision in 2005 was 10 weeks (median = 12 weeks), considerably lower than the mean time lag in 2004 of 22 weeks when the journal was at Virginia Tech and then migrated to UNC. Our goal was to return the editorial lag for JHSB to a mean of 12 weeks, or three months, and we are pleased to have met and even exceeded this goal.
The mean production lag (i.e., the time between acceptance of a paper and its appearance in print) was 6 months in 2005, lower than in 2004 (mean = 13 months) and consistent with ASA editorial guidelines.
Special Projects. No special projects were undertaken in 2005, as our attention has been focused on keeping journal operations on schedule. A special section of an issue in 2006 may be devoted to papers on a special topic that will be decided by a discussion among editorial board members.
Changes in Journal Procedures. The managing editors for the journal have instituted two innovations in our procedures. Ranae now offers reviewers the option of receiving an electronic copy of a manuscript rather than a paper copy by regular mail. We find that many reviewers prefer electronic versions. Our office converts papers to read-only PDF files before being emailed to reviewers. (It has long been our practice to provide electronic review forms to reviewers for returning comments; most reviewers prefer this.) Brent has introduced electronic copyediting of manuscripts. Our copyeditor has been comfortable with this change, and now our authors are correcting their copyedited papers electronically as well. This shift from paper to electronic processing appears to be going smoothly.
Editorial Board and Deputy Editors. Eight editorial board members rotated off the board at the end of 2005: David M. Almeida (Arizona), Chloe Bird (RAND), Phil Brown (Brown), Kenneth F. Ferraro (Purdue), Jo C. Phelan (Columbia), Elaine Wethington (Cornell), Helen Raskin White (Rutgers), and Kristi Williams (Ohio State). I am deeply grateful for their extraordinary service and commitment to the journal. I also thank the continuing editorial board members and the many, many additional ad hoc reviewers who have contributed their time and expertise so generously to the journal. Without their contributions, we simply could not fulfill the goal of publishing the very best papers in medical sociology submitted to the journal.
The editorial board has 12 new board members whose terms run from January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2008. New board members include Angelo A. Alonzo (Ohio State), Carol S. Aneshensel (UCLA), Jason D. Boardman (Colorado), Deborah Carr (Rutgers), Ruth C. Cronkite (VA Palo Alto), Mary L. Fennell (Brown), Mary-Jo Delvecchio Good (Harvard), Mark D. Hayward (Texas), Allan V. Horwitz (Rutgers), Pamela Braboy Jackson (Indiana), Felicia B. LeClere (Michigan), and Eric R. Wright (Indiana-Purdue). I have already begun to rely heavily on the professional guidance of these new editorial board members along with our faithful continuing board members.
The editorial board in 2005 was a diverse group, not only in terms of gender (43 percent female) and race/ethnicity (11 percent minority), but also in terms of methodological skills and substantive specialties. The 2006 editorial board maintains an equivalent range in its composition demographically (44 percent female, 15 percent minority), methodologically, and substantively.
Current Problems and Issues. If one goes back 10 years and examines acceptance rates at JHSB, these have averaged about 15 percent of submitted papers. In 2004 (under Michael Hughes’ editorship) and in 2005 (under my editorship) acceptance rates have been lower, 9 percent and 10 percent respectively. Despite these more stringent rates, by the end of 2004, 3.5 issues of 2005 had been filled with accepted or conditionally accepted papers, and by the end of 2005, all four issues of 2006 had been filled. I believe I am accepting only outstanding papers, and I would be hard pressed to turn away more papers than I am now. To reject more would force me to work against my reviewers’ judgments, turning away papers that a majority evaluates as serious contributions worthy of publication. Therefore, I will be requesting a one-time allocation of 96 journal pages from the ASA, equivalent to one issue of JHSB, or 6 additional articles of 16 pages each. (Our average article length in 2005 was 16.2 pages; I have been holding authors to very strict limits in length.) My plan would be to expand the four issues in 2007 from the usual 6 to 7 papers per issue to 7 to 8 papers per issue. This would allow me to ease the backlog of papers that I have now and to begin the process of handing over JHSB to a new editor in July of 2007 with only the first two issues of 2008 filled, enabling the new editor to determine the content of the remaining two issues as he or she assumes editorial duties from July 2007 to the official start date in January 2008.
Peggy A. Thoits, Editor
Rose Series in Sociology
This was the fifth and final year for the University of Massachusetts- Amherst editorial team, and it was our busiest. Two books will appear soon: Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson, and Melissa Milkie’s Changing Rhythms of American Family Life and Jeremy Hein’s Homeland Diversity and the Adaptation of Immigrants: Responses to Race, Ethnicity, and Discrimination Among Refugees in Small and Large American Cities.
In addition, five author teams visited the University of Massachusetts- Amherst to present their books-in-process. These visits take place at the point the manuscript is half to three-quarters complete, when enough is written to provide a basis for feedback, but in time to incorporate suggestions and make revisions to what is still a work-inprogress. The visits were by Paul Attewell and David Lavin, Passing the Torch: Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay Off Across the Generations?; Pam Oliver and James Yocom, Racial Disparities in Imprisonment: Patterns, Causes, Consequences; Sean O’Riain and Chris Benner, Reworking Silicon Valley; Brian Powell, Catherine Bolzendahl, Danielle Fettes, Claudia Geist, and Lala Carr Steelman, Who Counts as Kin? How Americans Define the Family; and Gay Seidman, Citizens, Markets, and Transnational Labor Activism. The Rose Series now passes to a team of Long Island editors who are (except as noted) at the State University of New York at Stony Brook: Said Arjomand, Javier Auyero, Diane Barthel-Bouchier, Cynthia J. Bogard (Hofstra University), Michael Kimmel, Naomi Rosenthal (SUNY-Old Westbury), and Michael Schwartz.
Douglas L. Anderton, Dan Clawson, Naomi Gerstel, Joya Misra, Randall Stokes, Robert Zussman, Editors
Social Psychology Quarterly
There were both successes and failures for the Social Psychology Quarterly (SPQ) in 2005. We continued to publish outstanding social psychological scholarship from around the world that employed a wide variety of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. However, we were disappointed that our attempts to decrease our editorial lag time were not only unsuccessful but that our editorial lag actually increased notably over 2004.
SPQ published 17 articles and 7 research notes in 2005. These employed or drew upon a variety of theoretical perspectives and used varied methodological strategies, with the notable exceptions of unstructured interviews and participant observation. As the year progressed, we did receive more submissions employing those two methods, and I do expect manuscripts employing such methods will be better represented in forthcoming volumes. Although most of the articles and notes published in SPQ in 2005 were written by North American authors, I was heartened that work from authors in Argentina, Finland, The Netherlands, and Japan also appeared in volume 68.
The number of submissions to SPQ declined slightly in 2005. We received 124 new submissions in 2005, down from the 141 received in 2004. Of the 124 manuscripts submitted in 2005 and the 63 carried over from 2004, I reached a decision regarding 130 or 70 percent, leaving 56 manuscripts under review at the end of the reporting period.
The official acceptance rate for 2005, which refers to acceptances as percentage of all decisions, was 10.69 percent. This is down sharply from the 21.09 percent acceptance rate reported for 2004 which was consistent with acceptance rates over recent years. I have no ready explanation for this decline in the acceptance rate. We have no difficulty filling issues with quality work and publishing those issues on time. I suspect that this is a temporary fluctuation and not a cause for concern at this time.
As mentioned above, I was deeply disappointed that our editorial lag time actually increased in 2005 to a mean of 19.58 weeks from a mean of 15.38 in 2004. This occurred despite our efforts to improve our tracking of manuscripts that get delayed at various points in the review process such as in finding agreeable reviewers or obtaining tardy reviews. We clearly were unsuccessful in our attempts and will need to redouble our efforts in order to reduce our currently unacceptable editorial lag time.
The mean production lag time, or time from final acceptance to publication, rose slightly from a mean of 9.24 months in 2004 to 10.57 months in 2005. I am not at all alarmed by this increase. In order to publish issues on time, we need to be two issues, or six months, ahead in the production process at all times. That means that, on average, manuscripts are accepted for only four months before the long process of their publication begins. This seems a reasonable lead time for the editorial staff and little burden for authors.
I do want to thank a number of people who contributed to the success of SPQ in 2005 (and who bear no responsibility for my failures). First, I thank our Managing Editor, Brenda Shawver, who continues to do an excellent job overseeing the editorial office and impeccably producing issues on time. I am also indebted to our former graduate editorial assistant, William Ryan Force, and our current graduate editorial assistant, Susan Kremmel, for their professionalism in all aspects of their varied and vitally important jobs. In addition, I wish to acknowledge the outgoing members of SPQ’s editorial board for their three years of exemplary service: Lawrence Bobo, Rebecca Erickson, Richard Felson, Pamela Braboy Jackson, Melissa Milkie, Sarah Rosenfield, Michael Schwalbe, Shane Thye, and David Williams. Last but certainly not least, I express my deep appreciation to the many other colleagues who reviewed manuscripts for SPQ in 2005 for their thoughtful, constructive, and, more often than not, timely comments and reviews. Without their scholarly dedication and collegial courtesy, there would be no SPQ.
Spencer E. Cahill, Editor
Sociological Methodology
Your editor reports a year of drama and success in preparation of his final volume of Sociological Methodology. This year will see the publication a wide variety of articles in Sociological Methodology, on topics ranging from cohort analysis to the safety of interviewers and field researchers. I have tried to broaden the scope of articles published in Sociological Methodology, and to improve the appearance of the book. I hope that my efforts have been successful. Editing Sociological Methodology has been a satisfying experience, and sometimes a pleasure. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to do so. I offer my thanks and praise to managing editor Ray Weathers, the editorial board of Sociological Methodology, the ASA for its support, the Publications Committee of the ASA for its extraordinary and generous support, and Craig Coelen, president of NORC, for providing resources that were essential to my work as editor.
This has been a year punctuated by drama. Your editor seems to have encountered once again a small, previously unrecognized, nascent social movement that he calls the Thin-Skinned Scholar Movement (TSSM). TSSM serves the needs of scholars who object to publication of opinions that contradict their own. Your editor believes that the goals of TSSM are misguided, as his own professional fortunes have been advanced by the publication of debates about his own research. More important, disagreement is fundamental to scholarship, making the suppression of disagreements a fundamental violation of the purpose for which Sociological Methodology is published. Indeed; every paper published in Sociological Methodology includes clear statements of dissatisfaction with previous studies; it is this dissatisfaction with previous work that motivates and justifies the production and publication of new contributions.
Your editor is deeply distressed by the style of the TSSM. In particular, consider the following incident: Several weeks ago, I encountered a thin-skinned scholar, who was driving in his car as I walked to my own car in a parking lot. Apparently unimpressed by the writings of Miss Manners, this scholar opened his car window, loudly and repeatedly declared strong views about the composition of my head and the phylum in which I should be classified, and rapidly drove his car so close to me that it did, on the third such maneuver, brush against my pants. I wonder still, is this thin-skinned scholar just a talented and kind-hearted stunt-driver with unusual ideas about parking? Or does he reveal true malice, a will to evoke fear and a willingness to use his car to damage a pedestrian? These are questions that I cannot answer. But answers are suggested by his emailed statement (with copies to others) that he would be pleased to see my body lifeless and in pieces. More to the point, these are questions that no editor should have to consider. This thinskinned scholar has wasted great volumes of an editor’s time and effort, reviled the editor in numerous hostile email letters (with copies sent to a variety of others), delayed publication of Sociological Methodology, wasted hours of time by talented and highly-paid lawyers, and badly strained relations between an editor who sought to uphold the principles under which scholarly journals are published, and the ASA executive officer, who sought to save the ASA the expense and trouble of a lawsuit by an enraged scholar.
With all due respect, it is your editor’s humble opinion that the most effective and efficient way to avoid future law suits by thin-skinned scholars is to use the full force of the law to guard the integrity of the editorial process in refereed journals. American courts have a tradition of protecting free speech, and a longstanding distaste for frivolous litigation by selfappointed censors who seek to suppress publication of views they dislike. And it is your editor’s humble opinion that the ASA and similar organizations need to protect their editors from those who would use fear and intimidation to manipulate the editorial process.
Ross M. Stolzenberg, Editor
Sociological Theory
This past year was the first in which we were in full control of the journal’s content. We are pleased with the result. Our vision, when we took over ST, was of a high quality, intellectually pluralistic journal with international reach. Looking back at the articles we have published in this past year’s issues, as well as those that we have scheduled for the immediate forthcoming issues, we feel that we have made substantial strides towards achieving this vision. The articles include many different visions of what theory is—deductive and inductive, general and middle range, formalistic and interpretive, scientific and normative—and speak from many different subfields: social psychology, organizational sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of religion, among others. They are intellectually very strong. Where we have so far been somewhat less successful than we had hoped is in recruiting authors from outside the United States. While many of our authors are foreign-born, only a few work at foreign universities.
As for the day-to-day operations of the journal, they are now working quite smoothly and efficiently, due mainly to the valiant efforts of our managing editor, Jason Mast, who has created a clear and logical routine for us. This is reflected in our short editorial lag, which ranks just behind the ASR. Our biggest task, in this area, is recruiting reviewers. But this is a problem faced by all professional journals. In this regard, we owe special thanks to our editorial board, whose members not only review for ST but also came together at last year’s ASA meeting for an intellectually stimulating and productive meeting that continues to help guide us in our work.
Our one major desideratum would be a slightly higher page allotment that might allow us to publish the occasional symposium or comment. As it stands, we often struggle to fit all of our regular articles into each issue.
Julia Adams, Jeffrey Alexander, Ronald Eyerman, and Philip Gorski, Editors
Sociology of Education
This year Sociology of Education begins its 43rd year as an ASA journal of empirical studies focusing on sociological questions in education. Reviewing the journal’s history, one is struck by the interrelationships between sociology and education, not only in relation to social stratification, but also in relation to health, deviance, and job training and advancement, particularly for minorities and underrepresented groups. For sociology of education to evolve as an intellectual field, it is important that the articles in the journal tackle educational problems from a broader perspective, expanding both in intellectual content and methodological approaches.
As Rubén Rumbaut and I take over the editorial leadership from the excellent hands of the prior editorial team of Karl Alexander and his deputy editors, Linda Grant and Suet-ling Pong, we hope to achieve the same high level of quality that has characterized the last three years. Consistent with its history, the journal will continue to address the educational needs of all groups and how they are being served by our educational institutions. Questions of social justice, equity, and fairness are central to sociology of education, not only in elementary and secondary school but also in higher education where concerns of affirmative action and admissions practices are shaping occupational opportunities in unprecedented ways. Additionally, sociologists both within and outside the U.S. are studying the expansion of schooling, including the increasing growth of religious schools, conflict over religious practices in public and private schools, and schooling options perceived as undesirable and inconsistent with cultural norms. Because of the importance of global interests in education, the journal will make a concerted effort to encourage submissions from scholars in both the U.S. and abroad on these topics and others in this area.
We took over the journal in July 2006 just as I was making the transition from the University of Chicago to Michigan State University. Please send your manuscripts and reviews to: Editor: Barbara Schneider, Michigan State University, College of Education, 516 Erickson Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824. The University of Chicago is being very helpful, and they have been forwarding and keeping all my contact information and will continue to do so throughout my tenure as editor.
As might be anticipated with transitions, there have been a few bumps in the process.
There were a considerable number of manuscripts that had been in the revision stages for several years, and with the change in editorship there were several delays, especially in locating the original reviewers for these manuscripts. To facilitate the recordkeeping procedures of the journal, Rubén and I are pleased to announce that Sociology of Education joins the other ASA journals in using ASA’s electronic manuscript tracking system. We hope to institute a web-based system where authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript during the review process. Another addition we are planning on making is following Jerry Jacobs, editor of the American Sociological Review, in maintaining a web-linked site where authors will be able to place additional supplementary tables, figures, and other material relating to their manuscripts so as to free up more pages for the journal. Jerry Jacobs has been a tremendous help in this transition process; we thank him for his assistance.
Manuscript flow. This report covers the manuscript activity of the two offices so that it encompasses the entire year. Please refer to the summary of editorial activities for more details. The total number of manuscripts submitted during the 2005 calendar year was 175. This total represents a 12 percent increase over 2004, and exceeds the annual totals going back to 1997. Just under 53 percent of the 2005 submissions (N =109) were processed under the outgoing Editor. Thirty eight of the 109 were invited resubmissions, and 51 of these manuscripts were left pending in the review process during the transition. A total of 59 manuscripts were carried over from the previous editorial offices, most of which were pending original reviews. As a result, the review process for these manuscripts was longer than usual, causing the editorial lag time to average about eighteen weeks. Most accepted manuscripts are drawn from resubmissions, and this is reflected in the 2005 acceptance figures: 28 resubmitted manuscripts were either accepted outright or accepted pending minor revisions. This compares with a 2004 total of 23.
Editorial Board. The 2005 editorial board consisted of 24 members, of whom 13 were women, and 6 were members of racial/ ethnic minority groups. Maintaining a diverse board is a goal of ours and we welcome our new board member, Cynthia Feliciano, University of California, Irvine. This summer a third of the board will be rotating off, and we thank them for their efforts. We are actively seeking new board members who represent a diversity of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.
Special issue. One feature that was introduced under the prior editorship was solicited commentaries. One of these commentaries addressing resistance to schooling will be published this year. Although we will not be continuing the solicited commentaries, we are planning a special issue that Rubén will edit. This issue will focus on education and the life course, and we will solicit potential contributions from scholars who work with longitudinal datasets. More information on this initiative will be forthcoming.
Acknowledgments. As outgoing editor, Alexander is indebted to his Deputy Editors, Linda Grant and Suet-ling Pong, and his editorial assistant, Anna Stoll. Both of us thank Karen Edwards, the ASA publications director, and Wendy Almeleh, our managing editor, who will be continuing her good work with the journal. At Michigan State University, Michelle Llosa is doing the day-to-day work of the journal as the editorial assistant. Michelle and I have been working together on several of my research projects, including the Data Research and Development Center, for the past two years. Michelle manages the new online database that tracks the flow of manuscripts, maintains the journal’s physical files, oversees its budget and expenses, and does most of the correspondence with authors and reviewers.
As Rubén and I forge ahead with the journal, we are asking our over-extended and incredibly busy colleagues to please review for the journal. The quality of the journal depends on the quality of peer review. We look forward to receiving your manuscripts and your reviews. Barbara L. Schneider, Editor-Elect
Teaching Sociology
Activities in 2005
Among the journal’s notable activities of the past year were the relocation of the editorial office, a special issue in recognition of the discipline’s centennial, and the introduction of a new feature in the journal called “Applications.”
Relocation: In July, the editorial office was moved from Purdue University to the University of Central Florida. Despite a slight change in personnel (namely, the managing editor) the transition was seamless. Thanks to the hard work of Jori Sechrist, the previous managing editor at Purdue (who even managed to have a baby in the middle of the move!), the learning curve for the new managing editor, Monica Mendez, was relatively flat.
Special issue: A portion of the July issue contained manuscripts surrounding the theme “100 Years of Teaching Sociology.” These included articles on the history of teaching sociology in high schools, the current state of scholarship of teaching and learning featured in Teaching Sociology, and the future of teaching graduate statistics.
Applications: This new feature in the journal is designed to bridge the gap between research and teaching by helping instructors integrate current sociological research into the undergraduate curriculum. We contacted several authors of articles that appeared in recent ASR issues and invited them to develop (in collaboration with award-winning teachers in the discipline) manuscripts that guide instructors in using their research in undergraduate courses. The first application (based upon Cherlin, Burton, Hurt, and Purvin’s article) appeared in July; the second (based upon Pager and Quillian’s article) appeared in October. Others are forthcoming in 2006.
Manuscript Flow
In 2005, 165 manuscripts were processed. Although this number is lower than that in 2004 (199), the decrease was due primarily to fewer manuscripts in the review process at the end of the year. The number of new manuscripts received in 2005 has remained fairly constant. Among the manuscripts considered in 2005, 99 were new manuscripts, 45 were revised manuscripts, and 21 were still in review from the previous year. In 2005, 36 manuscripts were accepted or conditionally accepted for publication, 37 were revise and resubmits, 56 were rejected, and 5 were not reviewed (31 were still in review by the end of the year). The acceptance rate was 22 percent. The average time between initial submission and editorial decision was 13.73 weeks—longer than desirable but perhaps inevitable given the relocation that took place mid-year.
Editorial Board
The editorial board in 2005 consisted of 25 members—13 men and 12 women, 5 of whom were minorities. Eleven new members will join the board in 2006, raising the total to 28. Special thanks go to outgoing board members Deborah Abowitz, Carol Auster, Elizabeth Hartung, Lena Wright Myers, Stephen Sweet, Ramon Torreciha, Gregory Weiss and John Zipp. These individuals were the last of the editorial board members who served under the previous editor and ushered me in as new editor in 2004. Their continual support and advice has been greatly appreciation.
Liz Grauerholz, Editor
