anon
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Post by anon on Jun 14, 2012 14:27:56 GMT -5
I was thinking about submitting a paper to Social Forces. I've heard from a few colleagues that I should be prepared to wait a long time for a decision. Anyone care to share their experiences?
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Post by drbearjew on Jun 14, 2012 14:54:38 GMT -5
Never submitted, but know a former editor, and know many people who were affiliated in the past with this journal.
It went through a major transformation at one point about six or eight years ago, and for a time was much more open to a variety of sociological topics (as a generalized journal should be). Recently, it has become very much an SOS journal (same old shit). For some this is great - they can publish a lot of their work in a journal that is very receptive to mainstream sociology. But it alienated a lot of researchers who were doing cutting edge work in their sub-disciplinary areas.
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Post by notsos on Jun 14, 2012 15:33:19 GMT -5
I've found the current editor at Social Forces to be very fast with turnaround. Twice I've submitted and both times I've gotten a decision within 2.5 months. And when I've reviewed for them the turn around has been even faster sometimes.
Don't expect a helpful editor letter, but do expect them to be quick about it.
And for Social Forces being SOS, I think that describes almost every generalist journal. "Cutting edge" stuff generally only appeals to a small segment and thus is most appropriate in a specialist journal. Unless of course it's innovativeness, robustness, and usefulness are so apparent that everyone should read it immediately. But I don't think anyone can tell that until it's come out and some reactions have formed.
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Post by Rejected on Jun 14, 2012 15:38:01 GMT -5
I've been rejected from SF plenty of times under both of the recent editors. I've received high quality reviews each time, and the wait was very reasonable (3-5 months). I have another paper under review there now, and I'm hoping for better luck this time around.
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Post by drbearjew on Jun 14, 2012 15:53:03 GMT -5
I've found the current editor at Social Forces to be very fast with turnaround. Twice I've submitted and both times I've gotten a decision within 2.5 months. And when I've reviewed for them the turn around has been even faster sometimes. Don't expect a helpful editor letter, but do expect them to be quick about it. And for Social Forces being SOS, I think that describes almost every generalist journal. "Cutting edge" stuff generally only appeals to a small segment and thus is most appropriate in a specialist journal. Unless of course it's innovativeness, robustness, and usefulness are so apparent that everyone should read it immediately. But I don't think anyone can tell that until it's come out and some reactions have formed. Let me clarify SOS and you correct me where you feel I'm wrong... If you go through the table of contents of Social Forces over the past three to four years, you'll find a series of articles that deal with (and I understand I may be overstating here) racial segregation in neighborhoods, patterns of assimilation, the achievement gap in education, a variety of "disparity" articles, and so forth. I'm not suggesting that this research is not important. It is. But how many times do you need to demonstrate a negative beta coefficient over and over again before we can say as a discipline that we get it? It's not innovative. It's not new. It's definitely adding more knowledge to the general field, which is crucial, but there are other and more creative ways to do so in my opinion. Of course this is a matter of personal taste to a large degree. But since we're sharing opinions on journals, I thought I would share mine.
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Post by sf on Jun 14, 2012 18:49:07 GMT -5
If it helps, I submitted an article in late January and am still waiting on the reviews.
Also, I pretty much agree with drbearjew that Social Forces is becoming an SOS journal. It isn't as bad as ASR was under the Ohio State editorship, but it is much more conservative in the types of articles that are published. The sole purpose of the top journals is to publish articles that get responses like 'wow, that'd be a huge finding if it replicates,' and not to publish all the replications, unless they too are game-changing. It is exactly the place for cutting edge stuff.
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Post by knifes edge on Jun 14, 2012 19:02:51 GMT -5
There's probably a difference in usage here between "cutting edge" and "novel".
It seems to me drbearjew and sf are arguing that the novelty of general journals are low, while notsos might be arguing that cutting edge isn't the same as novelty.
There's lots of cutting edges: methods, theory, topic, some combination thereof, etc. Journals can be publishing the same old shit topically but not by method or theory, or could be publishing the same old shit theoretically but not topically.
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Post by cmon really on Jun 15, 2012 7:46:30 GMT -5
[ If you go through the table of contents of Social Forces over the past three to four years, you'll find a series of articles that deal with (and I understand I may be overstating here) racial segregation in neighborhoods, patterns of assimilation, the achievement gap in education, a variety of "disparity" articles, and so forth. I'm not suggesting that this research is not important. It is. But how many times do you need to demonstrate a negative beta coefficient over and over again before we can say as a discipline that we get it? It's not innovative. It's not new. It's definitely adding more knowledge to the general field, which is crucial, but there are other and more creative ways to do so in my opinion. So you privilege creative ways of expressing something over offering new evidence/ideas on big issues just because we've thought about those issues before? Or you're sick of regressions? Your two critiques are not related--either its about the subject area (the first quoted paragraph) or about the methodology. Which is it that you have a problem with? Because saying we shouldn't be studying racial segregation or assimilation or disparity (notice a trend in what you're complaining about?) in generalist journals doesn't merit a response, imo, but the argument for different methods might have value--if you can express an alternative that would be better.
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novelty alone is not enough
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Post by novelty alone is not enough on Jun 15, 2012 10:20:14 GMT -5
If it helps, I submitted an article in late January and am still waiting on the reviews. Also, I pretty much agree with drbearjew that Social Forces is becoming an SOS journal. It isn't as bad as ASR was under the Ohio State editorship, but it is much more conservative in the types of articles that are published. The sole purpose of the top journals is to publish articles that get responses like 'wow, that'd be a huge finding if it replicates,' and not to publish all the replications, unless they too are game-changing. It is exactly the place for cutting edge stuff. What, exactly, was your objection to ASR when it was edited at Ohio State? Is it your impression that groundbreaking submissions were being rejected while mundane research replaced it in the journal's pages? Also, there certainly is much room to explore things that we have thought about before. The reason people do lots of research on these things is because they are of consequence, and advancements of knowledge in these areas can mean more. Sometimes, "novel" stuff isn't truly undiscovered, but rather ignored for a reason. This isn't to say that we all should follow the tried and true path in order to advance, but rather that "We've never looked at this before" is not, in and of itself, reason to be interested in research. It seems to be a default now in damn near every abstract to say "While people have researched X, little attention has been paid to X in the context of Y," and this is left alone as though this alone makes the research worthwhile.
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Post by mechanisms on Jun 15, 2012 10:30:20 GMT -5
Fully agreed that social forces is a SOS journal. On of the primary mechanisms for that is the fact that they automatically reject anything over 10k words, even if it is over by a couple hundred words. This effectively screens out a majority of interesting qualitative articles and any quantitative or mixed methods articles that are doing something novel, which requires an in-depth explanation.
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Post by drbearjew on Jun 15, 2012 15:49:57 GMT -5
[ If you go through the table of contents of Social Forces over the past three to four years, you'll find a series of articles that deal with (and I understand I may be overstating here) racial segregation in neighborhoods, patterns of assimilation, the achievement gap in education, a variety of "disparity" articles, and so forth. I'm not suggesting that this research is not important. It is. But how many times do you need to demonstrate a negative beta coefficient over and over again before we can say as a discipline that we get it? It's not innovative. It's not new. It's definitely adding more knowledge to the general field, which is crucial, but there are other and more creative ways to do so in my opinion. So you privilege creative ways of expressing something over offering new evidence/ideas on big issues just because we've thought about those issues before? Or you're sick of regressions? Your two critiques are not related--either its about the subject area (the first quoted paragraph) or about the methodology. Which is it that you have a problem with? Because saying we shouldn't be studying racial segregation or assimilation or disparity (notice a trend in what you're complaining about?) in generalist journals doesn't merit a response, imo, but the argument for different methods might have value--if you can express an alternative that would be better. I think you misunderstand me. I privilege new ideas. I don't privilege creative ways of expression, i.e. a nifty rhetorical argument. The example of the enormous amounts of negative betas is not unrelated. They are the exact same negative betas that previous studies found, on the same topics. That isn't a new idea. It's a replication of a replication of a replication. Let me give you an example - for years, sociologists (and other social sciences) have pursued three general lines of inquiry in the study of race and ethnicity (with few exceptions): Stratification Studies, Identity Studies, and Movement studies. Each of those tracks has important contributions to our picture of the sub-discipline. But at this point, very little of what is done is new or innovative. Either it documents how things have changed since before (duh); or it looks through an existing lens at a suddenly exciting/new/neverbeforestudied population. What IS cutting edge, and is not getting published, are the studies on racial and ethnic minorities that intersects with human rights scholarship. Or that intersects with scholarship on the body and embodiment. Or that intersects with the new turn in the social sciences to affect. The latter would constitute new ways of doing and seeing the field. The former constitutes SOS.
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Post by bored on Jun 15, 2012 20:34:38 GMT -5
I have to say I find SF, ASR, and (most) AJS articles very boring. But there's got to be a place for "normal" science where knowledge accumulates in small increments over time.
No matter where you stand on the issues discussed, it does seem that critiques of a journal's contents always have a bit of sour grapes feeling to them.
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Post by moulah rouge on Jul 19, 2012 10:20:45 GMT -5
I do understand that some journals require submission fees for their operating costs, but the $50 that Social Forces charges is a lot of money for some people.
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Post by deterrent on Jul 19, 2012 11:13:04 GMT -5
Yeah, I thought about submitting something to SF recently and decided not to, in part because of the submission fee. There were other reasons, though. But it did cross my mind that it could serve as a deterrent intentionally -- maybe it reduces the number of submissions they get and keeps the quality a bit higher, saving the editors and reviewers time and energy. I don't know. Maybe they just suck or it's an expensive journal to run.
Security Check: good riddance
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Post by Anon on Jul 19, 2012 11:24:12 GMT -5
The fee for students is $20. FWIW, Social Problems charges $25.
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