Dear All,
Three thoughts:
1) Having one paper rejected is not very good evidence for base for any
"trend" in the policy or publication pattern of JASSS. Even having it
published in a paper with a higher IF doesn't necessarily make it a
better paper. (This is a worryingly common delusion amongst academics:
See "“Censorship”, Early Childhood Research Quarterly and Qualitative
Research: Not So Much Aced Out as an Own Goal?" on
https://leicester.academia.edu/EdmundChattoeBrown.)
2) JASSS can only publish what it receives. It is possible that, for
example, psychology is less aware on average of this as a publishing
outlet than sociology is. That is certainly something that could be
investigated (and ESSA is already offering money to reach new
communities) but I doubt it is a "policy" nor resolvable by policy.
3) I am not sure that the pursuit of impact factor is a very wise goal.
A free online journal will always get a "boost" over a print journal
(because increasingly people cite what they can get not what they need.)
It may be a tactless example but an IF of 1.733 puts JASSS at 29 in the
138 journal sociology list. That is pretty good for such a specialist
journal. Many of the journals above it are general and the specialist
ones usually have large practitioner readerships (Journal of Marriage
and the Family, Sociology of Education.) There are a few exceptions to
these patterns but on the whole I doubt we would _expect_ to be able to
beat most of these journals in impact. Let's submit, review and publish
the best articles we can (so that people will want to cite them) and the
IF will take care of itself.
I think there are useful discussions to be had about reaching and
including small or nascent ABM communities (history, criminology,
education, Social Network Analysis) both for JASSS and ESSA/WCSS but
this is a matter of "marketing" and personal contact/persuasion not
JASSS "policy". Inviting these groups to put together themes, tracks or
special issues is an option (as would be commissioning rolling subject
area reviews: See American Behavioural Scientist 1999, 42(10) for four
examples) but this doesn't really bear on the bulk of JASSS business.
(To get JASSS rolling back in 1998, we did a lot of persuasion to get
credible submissions until after a year or so people would do it
themselves. If we want more psych - or whatever - in JASSS, who knows a
really good "mainstream" psych who would be willing to be persuaded to
put something in?)
All the best,
Edmund
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Edmund Chattoe-Brown
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