Sociology Journals

Journals are an indispensable part of the accumulated scholarship in any discipline. They offer some of the most current thinking in the field. Through journal literature we can follow intellectual debates on issues of the day. Many journals include book reviews that help us keep abreast of the burgeoning literature in the field, and a few journals are devoted exclusively to this task. Thus, reviewing the journal literature is indispensable to doing sociology.

There are a bewildering number of journals being published these days, due in part to pressures facing academic sociologists to publish in order to obtain tenure and promotion. It is not sufficient, therefore, to simply collect all the journal articles related to a particular subject. You must develop the ability to critically evaluate the literature for its quality as well as for its relevance to your interest.

Journals distinguish themselves from one another in numerous ways. Some--like the American Sociological Review, Journal of American Sociology, and Social Forces--include articles and reviews on a wide variety of subjects relevant to sociology. Others--like the Journal of Marriage and Family, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology--are devoted to a narrower range of topics, as their titles imply. Many journals become known for an editorial policy that emphasizes a particular theoretical or methodological approach. For example, the American Sociological Review, the official journal of the American Sociological Association, typically includes articles making use of sophisticated quantitative research techniques that today predominate in the discipline. The Journal of American Sociology, published at the University of Chicago, often features articles drawing on the symbolic interactionist paradigm that originated there. Identifying the particular editorial policy of a journal can help guide you to relevant material. The Kenyon library currently subscribes to and maintains back issues of a number of important journals in sociology:

American Journal of Sociology (v.1- ; 1895- ) (also available in JSTOR)
American Sociological Review (v. 1- ; 1936- ) (also available in JSTOR)
British Journal of Sociology (v. 26- ; 1975- )
Contemporary Sociology (v.1- ; 1972- ) (also available in JSTOR)
Critical Sociology (v. 15- ; 1988- )
Daedalus (v. 87- ; 1958- )
Gender and Society (v. 1- ; 1981- )
International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy (v. 18- ; 1998- ) (OhioLINK EJC only)
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (v. 1- ; 1961- ) (also available in OhioLINK EJC)
Journal of Marriage and the Family (v. 22- ; 1960- )
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (v. 1- ; 1965- )
Law and Society (v. 23- ; 1989- )
Sex Roles (v. 6-17, 29- ; 1993- ) (also available in OhioLINK EJC)
Signs (v.1- ; 1975/76- )
Social Forces (v. 1- ; 1922- )
Social Problems (v. 1- ; 1953- )
Social Research (v. 1- ; 1934- )
Social Science Quarterly (v. 63- ; 1982- )
Social Theory and Practice (v. 16- ; 1990- )
Society (v. 10- ; 1972- )
Sociological Quarterly (v. 15- ; 1974- )
Telos (v. 1 ; 1968- )

You will also find many journals in related fields and back issues of other sociology journals to which we no longer subscribe.