Gender and Publishing in Sociology

124

To what extent do sociologists collaborate? Has this changed over time? What factors contribute to research collaboration among sociologists? To answer these questions, we examine trends in collaboration over a 70 year period and empirically test a variety of explanations for the increase in collaboration that we find. We analyze data collected from a stratified random sample of articles in two leading sociology journals between 1935 and 2005 (n=1274). Most of our analyses are descriptive and display trends over time. However, we pool the data across all years and estimate logistic regression models to assess the relative contribution of various factors. We find that the importance of geographical location has been waning since the 1950s, although the growth in cross-place collaborations stagnated between 1980 and 2005. We find that quantitative research is more likely to be collaborative, as are projects requiring data collection, though this may change because the collaboration rate among secondary data users is increasing at a faster rate. We find no significant gender differences in rates of collaboration, although male sole-authorship remains the most common form of publication. We also find the institutional prestige of coauthors is typically higher than that of sole-authors. Our results elucidate the extent of collaboration in sociology and reveal how several factors have contributed to this major shift in work organization.

Section: Gendered Patternsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Collaborative Research in Sociology: Trends and Contributing Factors

Hunter

Leahey

2008

124

“…In more recent eras, women also have been more likely to focus their scholarship on women and other disadvantaged groups (Ward and Grant 1991), and a concern for linking activism and scholarship is important in the lives of sociologists who identify as feminist, especially in younger professional generations. For example, Sociologists for Women in Society, the organization that sponsors the journal Gender & Society, at its midyear meetings has focused much of the program on links between scholarship and activism.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although there is variation in the type of sociological scholarship produced by women, scholars have suggested that women show significant differences from men in the theoretical approaches they employ (Cancian 1992;Kramarae and Spender 1992;Nielsen 1991;Stacey and Thorne 1985;Ward and Grant 1991b), the ways in which they organize research teams and other intellectual collaborations (Ward and Grant 1991a), the topics they select (Roby 1992;Ward and Grant 1985), the methods they employ (Reinharz 1992a(Reinharz , 1992b, the types of evidence they bring to bear on sociological inquiry (Fonow and Cook 1991;Grant, Ward, and Rong 1987;Grant and Ward 1991;Reinharz 1992aReinharz , 1992b, and their perspectives on the links between research and praxis (Cancian 1992;Platt 1983;Reinharz 1992aReinharz , 1992bRoberts 1981;Stanley 1992Stanley , 1990Stanley and Wise 1983). Women sociologists are more likely than men to critique traditional "mainstream" social theories, to value experiential knowledge, to write data-based rather than theoretical or conceptual articles, to challenge the perspective that objectivity is possible or desirable, to work in collaborative, nonhierarchical research teams that sometimes include those who are the focus of the research, to concentrate on gender as a topic for serious sociological inquiry (and to critique the exclusion of gender in much sociological research), to use qualitative, interpretive methods more often than men do, and to advocate links between research and praxis, especially applications of research that benefit women and other disadvantaged groups.…”

Section: Women and Sociological Researchmentioning

confidence: 97%

Women’s sociological research and writing in the AJS in the pre-World War II era

Grant

Stalp

Ward

2002

Self Cite

Recent revisionist scholarship on the history of sociology suggests that women scholars in the pre-World War II era made distinctive contributions to the development of the field of sociology. Most research, however, has focused on women prominent in their era, whose works might or might nor be typical of all women who published during the same periods. Furthermore, few studies have made explicit comparisons between works by women and by men writing in this same era, so it has been difficult to sort out gender effects from historical era effects. This study explores writings by women and men in the first volumes of the American Journal of Sociolog~ from 1895 through 1940. As the oldest continuously published sociology journal in the U.S., AJS played a central role in the development of American sociology. We find that women authors were present in AJS from the earliest days, though their share of authorships never was large, and fluctuated year byyear. Women's work was distinctively different from that of men, with more women than men writing empirical, evidence-based articles, focusing on women, children, immigrants, the poor, and other have-not groups, and advocating for social reform. Writings of rank-and-file and prominent women sociologists were similar in methods, content, and form, and their distinctive contributions to sociology paralleled many of the concerns of feminist sociologists today.

“…Most studies of journals use random samples (McNamee, Willis, and Rotcheford, 1990) or focus on periods (Crase 1992;Grant and Ward, 1991;Mehdizadeh, 1993). Given the short publication history (10 years) and number of volumes (n=10) of TGPS relative to more established specialty, state, regional, national, and international sociology journals, our study captures the total population of articles, early in the journal's tenure.…”

Section: The Great Plains Sociologistmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting regional traditions: An emerging sociology of the great plains

Ender

Huang

1999

Meliorism, empiricism, ethnography, locality, and reform characterized Midwestern American Sociology at the turn of the twentieth century. Almost a century later, the mini-regional Great Plains Sociological Association, through its refereed publication, The Great Plains Sociologist (TGPS), maintains a variant of this tradition. We examine the first decade (1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997) of published articles (N=52) in TGPS with a focus on authorship, affiliations, editorship, and components of the earliest Chicago sociology and its diffusion to the University of North Dakota and the region through the work of John Morris Gillette. The results show that TGPS is uniquely a publication representing empirical studies, of homespun social issues, involving local samples, by sociologists and criminologists affiliated with a range of colleges and universities in and around the Dakotas and that a sociology of the Great Plains is emerging. Implications for the journal, state and mini-regional associations, and the discipline are discussed.American sociology departments and courses are rooted in the Midwest (Ritzer, 1988). One such department is located at the University of North Dakota (UND) whose first president, Webster Merrifield, a student of William Graham Sumner at Yale, taught the first sociology course in 1885 (Dawes, 1983). Merrifield recruited and hired John Morris Gillette, who in 1908 established the Department of Sociology at the University of North Dakota---one of the first departments of sociology in the United States. Gillette had studied under Albion Small, a social reformer and meliorist who had established both the first graduate program in sociology in the world at the University