Abstract
I am very happy to announce that Social Studies of Science will have a new Editor-in-Chief, starting in September of this year. Nicole Nelson, currently one of the journal’s Collaborating (i.e. Associate) Editors and an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin, will be stepping into the role, and is in an excellent position to take the journal into its next phase.
Social Studies of Science has had only a few Editors over its slightly more than five decades. Launched under the title Science Studies in 1971, Co-Editors David Edge and Roy MacLeod assembled a wide variety of articles on science as a social activity, from disciplines ranging from economics to social anthropology. David and Roy had excellent senses about developing ideas and approaches and about what was simultaneously provocative and well-grounded. That team stayed in place for two decades, until Roy stepped down, in part because of the challenges of long-distance communication (to and from Australia) at the time. David Edge continued as Editor until 2002, putting joy into his work until health issues led him to pass the position along to Mike Lynch. Between 2002 and 2012, Mike skilfully and with a sure hand led the journal as it and STS grew in scope and became more institutionalized. I, who had been a Collaborating Editor on the journal since 1999, was impressed by just how thoughtful Mike could be about articles on any topic in STS. So, when I was appointed to the position of Editor, having worked under both David and Mike, I had excellent and challenging role models, and I tried to follow both. But on the length of the tenure, I much prefer Mike’s example over David’s, and so I agreed to a five-year term, followed by only one further five-year term.
The journal has been doing well. By standard measures, people are reading, downloading and citing our published articles at levels we would hope for in this field, finding them useful and maybe even interesting. The number of submissions to Social Studies of Science has increased substantially, especially in the past few years. That increase in submissions has posed some serious challenges, including challenges to the breadth of the journal: With fascinating submissions coming from all directions, I have had to make decisions on a case-by-case basis about what fits the scope of the journal. In addition, especially since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, the journal developed backlogs. As of this writing, we’ve dissipated the backlogs, and things are moving along smoothly.
At each of the recent transitions, applications and invitations for the position have been handled by people or committees other than the current Editor-in-Chief. Lucy Suchman led the process this past year, and thank her profusely for her commitment and good judgment. The Advisory Board recognized that good judgment when it unanimously endorsed Lucy’s nomination of Nicole Nelson as the next Editor.
I got to know Nicole when handling her submission to Social Studies of Science, ‘Modeling mouse, human, and discipline: Epistemic scaffolds in animal behavior genetics’. This ethnographic article is in the tradition of classic lab studies in STS, in this case exploring scaffolds for the construction of scientific knowledge. That article was followed by Nicole’s book, Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders (Chicago, 2018), which shows a non-reductive side of behavioral genetics. Nicole’s largest current project is a study of the ‘reproducibility crisis’ in psychology and other fields; using a variety of methods, she has been showing that there is no single reproducibility crisis, but instead a number of different kinds of problems, challenges and claims, on which STS has and can have insights. Replication is, of course, one of the most prominent topics at the origins of STS, especially with the profound work of Harry Collins on the TEA-laser and gravitational waves, published in this journal and elsewhere.
Nicole was briefly the Reviews Editor for Social Studies of Science, but when the journal stopped having a regular book reviews section I asked her to become Collaborating Editor instead. In that position, she has shepherded the reviews and made decisions on manuscripts on a broad array of topics, including in her core research areas, such as on laboratory studies, animal experimentation, psychology and genetics, but also on topics much further afield. She served, for example, as the journal’s editor for the special issue on ‘Toxic politics: Acting in a permanently polluted world’, which has been one of the journal’s most successful recent issues. I’ve come to know Nicole well over the past decade, and have worked with her on several projects. I have tremendous respect for her knowledge of the field, acuity about the arguments people make, energy and organizational abilities. Social Studies of Science is lucky to have her as incoming Editor.
Nicole is planning on returning the journal to a co-editorship model, that is, returning to the structures of its first few decades. With this in mind, I will continue on as Co-Editor with her for roughly the next two years, giving Nicole time to set up some new processes, bring more people on board and replace me.
Nicole is also planning to add more Collaborating Editors, to take on more of the new submissions. Social Studies of Science has been fortunate to have a talented and dedicated group of Collaborating Editors, but it has, unfortunately, shrunk. Catelijne Coopmans recently decided to concentrate on other projects, and has left the journal – thank you, Catelijne, for all you put into it! With Catelijne’s leaving, and Nicole’s taking the position of (Co-)Editor, we are left with only three Collaborating Editors: Adam Hedgecoe, Lucy Suchman, and Stephen Turner. I am sure that Nicole will find some excellent people to add to the group.
On other matters, in the week in which I am writing this note it was announced that Sheila Jasanoff has won the Holberg Prize for 2022. The Holberg Prize, funded by the Norwegian Government, is one of the largest and most prestigious of research prizes awarded to scholars in the humanities, social science, law or theology. The Holberg citation for Sheila recognizes her development of a strong notion of co-production, the principle that solutions to problems of natural order must be connected to solutions to problems of social order. It also recognizes her work on public reason, on how legitimated claims are made and how claims are made legitimate in areas of public interest and public accountability, and an array of other concepts and empirical studies. Congratulations, Sheila!
The recognition of Sheila also helps to solidify an acknowledgment that STS is one of the most dynamic and creative fields in the social sciences and humanities. In 2013, the Holberg Prize was awarded to Bruno Latour, mostly for his work in STS. And before that, the 2009 Prize was awarded to philosopher Ian Hacking, whose work has intersected with STS in various ways. This seems to me extraordinary for a field as young and as small as this one is. I hope that we can all value this award to one of our own colleagues. Incidentally, both Sheila and Bruno are on the Editorial Board of Social Studies of Science.
With STS thriving and developing in so many directions, I think that it is excellent that Social Studies of Science, one of the field’s longstanding journals, is welcoming a new Editor-in-Chief with new visions for the journal and the field. Welcome, and thank you, Nicole Nelson!