Reflecting on Sociological Research Online

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on my history, relationship, and experiences with Sociological Research Online (SRO), its role in and influence on different aspects of my career, including being the journal where I published my first academic article and first served on an editorial board, as well as its importance within academic publishing and Sociology itself. The piece is divided into two sections representing different aspects of my connection: Research, Publishing, and Teaching and Editing and Engagement.

Aaron Winter (Lancaster)

When I received the invitation to contribute to this special issue of Sociological Research Online (SRO) to mark the journal’s 30th anniversary, I immediately said yes. It was a great honour and opportunity. It felt even more so as I began to think about my connection with the journal and its role in and influence on different aspects of my career: it’s the journal where I published my first academic article and first served on an editorial board. In this article, I reflect on my history, relationship, and experiences with the journal, as well as its ongoing importance, in two areas: Research, Publishing, and Teaching and Editing and Engagement.

Research, publishing, and teaching

My first connection with SRO came in 2000, during the first year of my DPhil in Social and Political Thought at the University of Sussex, where I was researching the American far right in the 1980s and 1990s. My particular focus was how the far right in this later period related to its predecessors in the civil rights era and its contemporaneous mainstream new right. I was particularly interested in how the far right of this era rejected the system-supportive and loyal identities, ideologies, and affiliations of its Ku Klux Klan predecessors in favour of system oppositional and more insurgent ones. This move also involved a rejection of the mainstream right, but ironically found overlap with the politics of Reaganism and the US new right. I was particularly frustrated by theories of the far right which saw it as system oppositional and a threat to the mainstream without looking at the actual overlap with it, or the contingency of that relationship (and of the definition across contexts). Such definitions both made sense and were somewhat ironic considering how much of the focus in the field was on electoral far-right parties as opposed to social movements organisations. The focus on parties and political systems was largely down to the fact that Political Science, as opposed to Sociology, dominated the field. It was one of the reasons, along with a desire to examine race and class in particular, that I moved from Political Science to Sociology. As I tried to find my way through the minefield this was, and still is, in the first year of my DPhil, and wanted to get my work published in a Sociology journal, my supervisor William Outhwaite, sent me a CFP for a SRO Rapid Response section on The New Right. I took it as an opportunity to test my ideas, problematise and debate definitions and hopefully get an article published in my new discipline. The article, ‘The New Right: Definition, Identification, Differentiation’ (Winter, 2000), did that job, although it also had all the hallmarks of a recovering Political Scientist still pre-occupied with labels, categories and definitions (far/extreme/radical right, etc.), perhaps exacerbated by reading a lot of Derrida at the time (and I am also still working on these issues . . .). While I am ambivalent about the article, I am not ambivalent about the journal. In addition to being important to me, I would also argue it has been for academic publishing in Sociology and more broadly.

SRO was launched in 1996, through a consortium chaired by Nigel Gilbert at the University of Surrey, and including Stirling, the British Sociological Association (BSA) and Sage. It was funded by the Electronic Libraries Programme to study and support the electronic information revolution, including e-journals which sped up publication and allowed for more innovative and more accessible formats. Rapid Response represented a great example of the possibilities of this format, as did SRO’s Sociology in Action section. Where the process from research to publication can be a long one, the digital reduces that time, but not always enough to address social phenomena in a timely manner or in a format that allows for shorter work-in-progress pieces. While we are all now familiar with the blog format that many journals offer, as well as blogs that operate independently, this was not an option for many in the 1990s and early 2000s. In fact, it was not until the 2010s that multi-author blogs emerged. SRO’s Rapid Response provided that opportunity for academics, such as myself early in my DPhil. I was so impressed with the Rapid Response format and experience that I jumped at the opportunity for one on the London 2012 Olympics. The article, ‘Race, Multiculturalism and the “Progressive” Politics of London 2012: Passing the Boyle Test’ (Winter, 2013) was not directly in my research area so a shorter piece on a popular topic that I had been thinking a lot about and teaching about in my module The Politics of Race and Ethnicity at Abertay University, seemed like an ideal platform for it. It was also something I could later share with my students and resource packs that I developed for A-Level Teachers of Sociology and Criminology. The exciting and timely topics, excellent sociological analysis, shorter reads, online format and open (or easy) access made Rapid Response pieces ideal for teaching. I remember how well my students engaged with those on The Stephen Lawrence Murder and the Macpherson Inquiry and Report Issue (1999), Olympics (2013), and The Charlie Hebdo Attacks and Their Aftermath (2015), as well as the Special Section on the 2011 ‘riots’: Collisions, Coalitions and Riotous Subjects (Allen et al., 2013), in particular.

Editing and engagement

After having published with the journal twice, when the opportunity to join as an Associate Editor presented itself in 2013, I applied. It was an opportunity to contribute to my wider discipline, community, and scholarship, learn more about academic publishing, and develop my CV. I served as Associate Editor from 2014 to 2018. In that capacity, I did a lot of peer reviewing and contributed to decision-making around special sections and strategy. The experience was great and helped prepare me for modes of working during and following Covid lockdowns. This was a great working and learning experience that I really value. It also prepared me for future roles. In addition to editing several books, some while I was at the journal, I have since gone on to be an Associate Editor (AE) and Co-editor, along with Nasar Meer and a great team of AEs, of the journal Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power (and our Identities Blog) and Co-editor of the Manchester University Press (MUP) book series Racism, Resistance and Social Change with Satnam Virdee and John Solomos, as well as serving on the International Editorial Board of Ethnic and Racial Studies. I have taken what I learned at SRO and a love of not only editing, supporting, and facilitating research and researchers, and innovation in online publishing, with me.

In addition to my editorial role, I also did other, quite different work with the journal in my overlapping role as a Trustee of the BSA between 2015 and 2019. This included serving as a judge for the SAGE Prize for Innovation/Excellence in 2015. I was also involved in BSA discussions about the REF, the challenges and opportunities of open access and a journal review, which I helped facilitate as a BSA trustee and former SRO AE. My last contribution to and involvement with the journal in that capacity was a major one which saw the end of one important period of this great journal’s history into its next. This was when the journal moved to from its original publisher and platform to Sage and the BSA in 2017. The process, involving the BSA Board of Trustees and Publications Committee, under the guidance of Alison Danforth, addressed a range of complex issues such as open access, ownership, strategy, finance, professional recognition, archiving and much more, central to preserving and respecting the journal’s history, protecting its legacy and guaranteeing its future. I learned a great deal and was happy to see the journal continue to thrive and reach that important milestone, as well as this one that we are now celebrating.

These experiences gave me new perspectives on academic publishing, including how we address the challenges of the changing landscape and future of not only publishing, but also of the discipline of Sociology and higher education. This is something that I am also reflecting on a lot recently as we are currently experiencing a crisis in HE and new pressures and challenges which directly impact journals. These include: AI; a reactionary backlash that targets academia and the social sciences (specifically research in areas that many of us work on and care about such as racism and inequality); increasing concerns about the free labour we do as authors, reviewers and editors for corporate publishing companies; institutional pressure to publish in a context of increased job precarity and insecurity; and the next REF. These are pressures and challenges that journals must adapt to, but also hopefully address. I do hope that SRO can do this and provide an example of adaptation, innovation, and accessibility, as well as good practice with authors, editors, and reviewers, as we go through this tough period and into a future where what we do needs to be supported and valued. I know I always felt that it was at SRO. Thus, I want to end by saying thank you for this invitation and opportunity and for all the journal has done for me, other scholars, our discipline, research, and academic publishing.