The cover of our last issue by artist Jeff Soto.
As of Fall 2022, Rashawn Ray and I are done editing Contexts magazine. We have a little paperwork to do, and we’ll assemble the next edition of the Contexts Reader, but we are otherwise “mission accomplished.” In this post, I’ll offer a few reflections on the experience.
First, Rashawn and I decided that the way most journals run is wildly inefficient and unfair to authors. Papers get stuck in peer review for years and authors spend insane amounts of time trying to make anonymous peer reviewers happy. We countered this trend by doing two things: increase desk rejections and limiting most papers to a single round of reviews. Desk rejects are a bitter medicine, but we simply refused to have authors waste years of time with a paper that Rashawn and I believed was not ready or appropriate.
The “1 round” rule also helped make things fairer for authors. The issue with multiple rounds of review is that the paper is probably not ready for publication, the reviews are simply too conflicted, or the editor is just being indecisive. We thought that dragging out papers in these situations was unfair. Better to assert authority and either accept contingent on mild revision or just reject. Also, if Rashawn and I could not decide if a short 3,500-word article is appropriate for the journal, then we’re probably failing at our job.
As a result of these two rules - increased desk rejections and limiting peer review - we were able to get papers reviewed relatively quickly and with few complaints. We typically said, “we conditionally accept as long as you revise according to the following recommendations.” Since we actively edited articles, authors did not need to worry about conflicting peer reviews. They just needed to follow directions. Of course, we did make mistakes. If we overlooked your paper, once again, I apologize.
Second, Contexts is a very flexible platform that we could use to promote new or under-served areas of sociology. Let me explain why Contexts is flexible. Normally, journals are at the mercy of authors and, to a lesser extent, peer reviewers. Journals tend to publish whatever is trendy and the peer review process makes innovation hard because innovative or unusual ideas often attract negative reviews. Journals are 90% consensus and 10% innovation.
Contexts is not subject to these pressures as we are a magazine rather than a gatekeeper journal. As long as we produced a peer reviewed core, we can experiment with the magazine and make it speak to a wider range of sociology. Rashawn and I decided to make every issue have a theme. A number of issues had open calls for papers in overlooked areas, such as the sociology of Asian-Americans (edited by Anthony Ocampo), ethnography of the Global South (edited by Victoria Reyes and Marco Garrido), the social impact of COVID , and the sociology of the future (both edited by the Contexts office).
Early on, we learned that Contexts could be sociology’s rapid response outlet. The website could be used for instant reactions, and we could accelerate production of articles that addressed current events. The COVID issue was a way to quickly document sociology’s response to a major global crisis. We had a symposium on the rise of the alt.right and the violence at Charlotteville (part 1 and part 2).
We used the sections of the magazine, such as op-eds, book reviews, policy briefs, and interviews, to highlight issues we cared about. We also went out of our way to invite people to write articles on topics that needed more attention. For example, I believe this article by Jonathan Portes to be the first full blown defense of an open borders position in a sociological journal. I hope these editorial activities have improved the intellectual scope of modern sociology.
Third, we decided to continue developing Contexts as an all-purpose media platform. Previous editors had created a very nice website and maintained accounts on Instagram and Twitter. We continued to expand the blog and we made some videos, such as this video interview with Cornel West. Also, in keeping with the spirit of a fun magazine, we worked hard on making Contexts fun to look at. We had great photo essays and we obtained permission to reproduce this super cool painting by Kehinde Wiley. The efforts worked; each year, we exceeded one million combined views and downloads.
Even though I see our editorship in very positive terms, I do feel that we fell short in a number of ways and maybe future editors can do better. One issue is that we didn’t build a better bridge to the policy world and build a non-academic audience. We managed to have one joint conference with the Brookings Institution but then future events were cut-off by COVID. We managed to publish one symposium on criminal justice reform, but I don’t think the magazine has a readership beyond sociology. Basically, sociologists write and read Contexts - and that’s it.
Another issue is that Contexts is not part of the publishing ecosystem for many research-oriented sociologists. I don’t expect articles in an outreach-oriented publication to have the same career impact as an article in a general interest scholarly journal, but if we want sociology to have the broadest impact, the most elite scholars need to understand that Contexts is part of the process. Once you hit a big journal and produce an op-ed, then you should repackage your result as a policy brief or article that can go in Contexts (which is freely distributed after 1 year) and the Contexts Reader, which is used by thousands of students.
I will end on a note of admiration and friendship. Editing a journal is often tedious and occasionally stressful but the experience is made better by our colleagues. Alisha Kirchoff (managing editor/interview editor), Carson Byrd (book reviews), and Mike Bader (trends editor) worked with us for all five years, and they did so with professionalism and good humor. The leadership at ASA, Karen Edwards and Nancy Kidd, deserve thanks for their support. Finally, special appreciation goes to my co-editor Rashawn Ray. A gentleman and a scholar, Rashawn approached each issue with an incredible level of enthusiasm and creativity. I could not have asked for a better partner.
I invite all of you to follow Contexts as the new editorial team, Seth Abrutyn and Amin Ghaziani, take over. All new issues are free for 30 days and all issues are free after 12 months. So please check it out.
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My books: Grad Skool Rulz - cheap advice manual for grad students / The history of Black Studies / Obama and the antiwar movement / A Social Theory book you will enjoy reading / Intro Sociology for $1 per chapter