Social Studies of Science

• 1. Introduction

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  Social Studies of Science began in 1971 as a journal with a mission its founders described in unusually sweeping terms. Roy MacLeod and David Edge, the founding editors, declared in that first issue that the journal would devote itself to original research bringing fresh light to bear on the concepts, processes, and consequences of modern science. That opening statement set a tone of deliberate ambition. Not a single discipline staking its claim, but an invitation to a conversation across fields that rarely shared a table.

  What does it take to study science itself as a human activity, shaped by politics, money, institutions, and culture? That is the question this journal has been asking for more than five decades. It launched under the name Science Studies, then took its current title in 1975. Today it ranks first out of 111 journals in the category of History of Philosophy and Science. How a small academic experiment became the field's leading voice is a story worth following.

• 2. A Broad Interdisciplinary Invitation

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  MacLeod and Edge did not simply call for more papers on science. In that 1971 inaugural issue, they named the disciplines they wanted to hear from: political science, sociology, economics, history, philosophy, social anthropology, and the legal and educational disciplines. That list itself tells you something. Most academic journals define themselves by a home discipline and borrow selectively from others. This journal did the opposite. It defined itself by the subject, science, and then invited almost anyone with something rigorous to say about it.

  The founding statement also drew a careful distinction between kinds of scientific work. Fundamental research, applied research, and development were all in scope. University science, industrial science, and science in government were all welcome. The editors were signaling that science was not only a laboratory phenomenon. It was a social institution, a practice embedded in money, power, and expertise, and they wanted research that took all of that seriously.

  Whether the work was empirical or theoretical, the editors said, was less important than whether it brought fresh light. That phrase, repeated in the original announcement, points to a founding value: novelty of insight mattered more than methodological purity.

• 3. From Science Studies to Its Present Form

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  The journal's original name, Science Studies, was direct and plain. By 1975, a name change arrived, and with it a clearer signal about what kind of scholarship was taking shape. Social Studies of Science foregrounded the word social. It announced that the object of study was not science in the abstract but science as practiced by people in societies, institutions, and historical moments.

  SAGE Publications now handles its publication, and the journal appears on a bimonthly schedule. That rhythm, six issues per year, is typical for journals at this level of specialization, giving editors and reviewers enough time to maintain the peer-review standards that make the impact factor meaningful.

  Nicole Nelson, Associate Professor in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, now serves as one of the editors-in-chief. She shares that role with Sergio Sismondo, Professor of Philosophy and Arts and Sciences at Queen's University. The pairing of a scholar rooted in the history of medicine with one rooted in philosophy of science reflects the journal's persistent commitment to working across boundaries.

• 4. Standing in the Field

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  Scopus and the Social Sciences Citation Index both abstract and index Social Studies of Science, which matters in practical terms. Indexing in these databases determines whether researchers around the world can find the work, and whether citations to it get counted in the metrics that shape academic careers and funding decisions.

  The journal's impact factor, as reported by the Journal Citation Reports, stands at 4.038. In a field of 111 journals, that places it first. Impact factors are imperfect tools, contested for good reasons, but a top ranking in a category of more than a hundred journals is a concrete signal that researchers across many disciplines are citing this work and treating it as a reference point.

  That standing matters for the journal's founding ambition. MacLeod and Edge wanted the journal to be genuinely interdisciplinary, which creates a real challenge: work that crosses fields can struggle to find audiences in any single field. A high citation ranking suggests that challenge has been met, at least in part, and that the journal's influence reaches beyond any one corner of the academy.