Action Items from the Committee on Publications Meeting
December 11, 2014
Hilton Garden Inn, Washington, DC
Elected members present were Jennifer Barber (chair), Kathleen Blee, Douglas Hartmann, Erin Kelly, Annette Lareau (ASA Past President), Mary Romero (ASA Secretary), Vincent Roscigno, and Amy Wharton.
Editors present for the open session were Lee Clarke, Philip Cohen, Larry Isaac, Tim Futing Liao, Holly McCammon, Michael Sauder, Richard Serpe, and Jan Stets.
Present from the Executive Office were Sally T. Hillsman (Executive Officer), Karen Gray Edwards (Director of Publications and Membership), and Janine Chiappa McKenna (Journals and Publications Manager).
The Committee voted to:
- Approve the meeting agenda. Carried unanimously.
- Recommend to Council new editors of the American Sociological Review and Sociological Methodology. The Committee recommended the new editor of Sociological Theory following the meeting. ASA Council subsequently appointed the following editors:
- American Sociological Review: Omar Lizardo, Rory McVeigh, and Sarah Mustillo (Notre Dame)
- Sociological Methodology: Duane Alwin (Penn State)
- Sociological Theory: Mustafa Emirbayer (Wisconsin-Madison)
- Decline a proposal to require authors to provide information about IRB approval as part of the manuscript submission process.
- Establish a subcommittee (Blee—chair, Lareau, Roscigno) to consider policy on ethics related to research in journal articles.
- Approve a proposal from the outgoing editors of Contexts to proceed with a reader of Contextsarticles on gender and sexuality, pending modifications in the financial structure for payment of royalties.
- Approve a proposal from the incoming editor of Teaching Sociology for two special issues, one on “Teaching Sociology in the Community College Context” in 2016 and one on “Incorporating Globalization in the Sociology Curriculum” in 2017.
- Propose to Council not to continue the three-year experiment of asking anonymous vision statements from editor candidates to be posted online for ASA member input.
- Establish a subcommittee (Romero—chair, Kelly, and Wharton) to review the current Guidelines on the ASA Publications Portfolio, including consideration of the financial structure of section journals, international submissions, and how to consider gaps in the current stable of ASA journals.
- Accept the City & Community “state of the journal” report from the ASA Section on Community and Urban Sociology, including its selection of new co-editors Lance Freeman and Sudhir Venkatesh (Columbia).
- Request a one-year extension of the current contract with SAGE Publications to publish Contexts, to provide the incoming editors and the ASA with the opportunity to consider alternative publication models (both print and online).
- Ask ASA editors to prepare both the current annual summary table of journal activity and also the new proposed table for the 2014 calendar year to consider whether the new table should become the standard for reporting in 2015 and beyond.
- Allow ASA editors flexibility in including issue numbers in journal citations.
- Recommend to EOB and Council 50 additional pages for Contemporary Sociology in 2015 in order to help clear the transitional backlog from the previous editor.
- Recommend to EOB and Council increasing the number of members of the Committee on Publications elected by the ASA voting membership from six to nine.
- Establish a subcommittee (Hartmann—chair, Roscigno, and Serpe) to develop guidelines for the Committee on Publications to periodically and routinely review ASA journals.
- Approve the proposed survey of ASA members on the impact of changing the archive policy of manuscripts and reviews.
- Approve nominations for new editorial board members.
- Approve the August 2014 meeting minutes.
