Abstract
More than eight years ago, the Executive Committee, presidents and membership of the Southern Sociological Society took a gamble—a gamble to start our own journal. Now we sit eight years later and after a five-year editorial term with a very successful journal in hand. We could not be more delighted and thankful to Social Currents’s authors, reviewers, readers, and editorial members.
We agreed to be founding co-editors of Social Currents with great enthusiasm and humility, albeit also nervousness and uncertainty as to whether the journal would succeed, what the job would entail and how much time it would take. With this final issue, we end our editorial term with even more enthusiasm than we began with, and certainly no less humility. It would have been impossible to read the thousand plus articles submitted, representing some of the best sociology has to offer, without being profoundly impressed with the breadth of the field and the incredible depth of analyses. Based on the vast body of steady submissions and their content over the last five years, it is clear that Social Currents will continue to thrive!
Our enthusiasm for Social Currents and the field, of course, takes several forms, all of which are worth stating loudly and proudly. Foremost, as indicated by the wealth of submissions during our term, is that the content of Social Currents remains thoughtful, encompassing, rich, and creative. We are incredibly proud that the articles gracing the journal’s pages under our editorship have reflected this breadth, theoretical power, and methodological innovativeness. No less noteworthy, but perhaps not as obvious to those not privy to the day-to-day workings of the journal, have been the incredible citizenship displayed by our reviewers, editorial board members, and SSS membership, without whom the journal simply would not exist. We have been amazed by the keen insights and endless, uncompensated hours that reviewers have devoted to making the cutting-edge work of others in the field even better. For our part, as editors, we have taken these reviewer insights seriously.
Editors, of course, are positioned to receive the sting of critique for the content, character, and flavor of a journal during their term, and we accepted this burden. We did so (1) with confidence that all manuscripts and reviewer insights would be treated seriously; (2) with a realized and consistent commitment, in all of our decisions, to standards of breadth, rigor, clarity, innovation, and contribution; and (3) with serious effort and energy to provide good feedback and an expeditious review process. In this last regard, we are proud to report that over our five-year term and contemplation of over 1,000 decisions, our average time from submission to decision has been 34 days. Staying this course would have been impossible without the heroic work of reviewers as well as the thoughtful insights and incredible work by our Deputy Editors, George Wilson and Linda Renzulli, as well as the graduate student associates who have worked on Social Currents’s day-to-day operations—Jill Yavorsky, Rayanne Streeter, and Sadie Giles.
We will miss editing Social Currents, and have been honored by the faith put in us to make fair decisions in a timely way. It has been an intellectually rich experience that we both have treasured. We now bid adieu, with confidence and pleasure, in handing the journal over to the next editors, Martha Crowley and George Wilson, wonderfully enthusiastic themselves and sure to maintain the excellence and visibility of Social Currents on regional, national, and international fronts. Along with assembling an excellent group of Deputy Editors and editorial board members, Martha and George bring diverse intellectual energies that will guarantee that the vitality and richness of the field will continue to be enunciated in the pages of Social Currents.