Issue #4 Spring/Summer 2016 p 2-3 Supporting the Author’s Voice p 4 Innovative Leading the Charge in Approaches from SAGE p 5 Methods Innovation New to SAGE Image taken from Adventures in Statistics: The Reality Engima by Andy Field, both a statistics textbook and novel enriched with graphic elements. p 6 Behind the Scenes p 7 Author in Profile p 8 Research methods are the connective tissue Quantitative Social Science at Harvard, focusing Tips that binds together the work of scholars across on data intensive social research, showing how for Authors disciplines, across geographical boundaries and institutions can reconfigure themselves to respond across levels, from an undergraduate student to this opportunity. As Gary King, the institute’s embarking on a dissertation through to a senior director, has put it: professor working with a team. The social sciences are undergoing a dramatic While not a discipline in its own right, this activity transformation from studying problems to solving p 9 – the design, collection, analysis and presentation them; from making do with a small number of of data – is the foundation upon which knowledge sparse data sets to analyzing increasing quantities Celebrating claims must sit. SAGE has throughout our history of diverse, highly informative data; from isolated SAGE authors committed to publishing research methods to scholars toiling away on their own to larger support researchers as they develop their fields scale, collaborative, interdisciplinary, lab-style through journal articles, textbooks and now a suite research teams; and from a purely academic of born digital products. Throughout this time, pursuit focused inward to having a major impact p methodological innovations have reshaped the on public policy, commerce and industry, other 10-11 nature of research and SAGE responded creatively, academic fields, and some of the major problems Journal for example by publishing in evaluation, qualitative that affect individuals and societies. News methods, mixed methods and new statistical An example comes from the University of California, techniques. Berkeley, where Nick Adams and his team are Further innovations are only going to grow in analyzing how violence breaks out in protest number and scale, triggered in part by the rise of movements. It’s an old sociological question, but p big data and new technology. Social researchers now with a database (thanks to the number of 12 are agog at the chance to listen to millions of voices, Occupy movements in the US) that is so large the SAGE Video observe billions of interactions, and to analyze only way to analyze the material feasibly requires patterns at a scale never seen before. But to a Crowd Content Analysis Assembly Line, which engage seriously requires new methods and forms combines crowd sourcing and active machine of collaboration, with a consequent erosion of the learning, to code vast corpora of text. This new once insurmountable barrier between quantitative form of social research, drawing on computational and qualitative research. linguistics and computer science to convert large amounts of text into rich data, could lead to insights Moreover these shifts might stick if we continue to in a vast array of social and cultural themes of see centers of excellence, such as the Institute for our time. Continued on backpage 2 Supporting the Author’s Voice Responding to the changing and challenging authors using Kudos sharing tools saw an process. SAGE, who has been a Publons landscape of scholarly research, SAGE average of 19 percent more downloads for customer since 2015, shares the belief that Publishing is addressing debates around their published work. We’re not the only ones peer review is a pillar of the scholarly process enhancing methodological rigor, research seeing the value of getting your work into more and fundamental for the creation of scholarly validity and metrics through extended hands: Kudos won the 2015 Association of knowledge, yet reviewing efforts often go partnerships with both Kudos and Publons. Learned and Professional Society Publishers unrecognized. It is worth noting that since Award for Innovation in Publishing. October 2015 Publons have partnered with ORCID, and using the unique ID Publons- To further enhance the author’s visibility and verified review records are automatically Kudos benefits, we are strongly encouraging displayed alongside other research activities Kudos, a third party web-based service for authors to utilize their existing (or register for a on your ORCID record. authors, allows them to explain, enrich, free today) unique ORCID identifier with each share and measure the impact of their article journal submission. For more information We consider Publon’s work as an important (www.growkudos.com). Following a pilot with on the Kudos and ORCID benefits visit missing piece in our academic publishing 10 journals, SAGE has signed an agreement to www.growkudos.com/about/orcid. industry, and its product is one that will benefit include all of our journals in Kudos until 2018. all publishers as well as the entire academic At SAGE we are dedicated to supporting the Through Kudos – which is free for authors community. SAGE’s investment in Publons (and growth of academic innovators who think – you write a plain language explanation of partnership with Kudos) reflects a commitment outside the box to improve scholarship – even your research, which is then used to create to exploring new ways of supporting robust, when their influence disrupts long-established trackable links for sharing online via email, efficient science and acknowledges the practices, such as peer review. In early 2016 Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can changing research landscape. SAGE invested with a minority stake in Publons, supplement your original work with podcasts or a company founded in 2013 specifically to raise There are other ways SAGE supports – and at videos on your Kudos page, and measure your the status of peer reviewers in large part by times defends– the academic voice. Websites own impact by seeing citations and Altmetric making peer reviews a measurable research Social Science Space and MethodSpace, scores for your work. A 2013 study found that output and by speeding up the peer-review sponsored by SAGE, provide those respective 3 communities both a convening place and a the foundational principles of academic Our advocacy also emphasizes proactive venue for discussing the infrastructure of their knowledge, such as peer review. In the United attempts to win hearts and minds on the craft. One particular initiative at Social Science States, we have watched warily as some importance of social science research and Space has been the acclaimed Social Science members of Congress call for reducing funding the role it can play in responding to societal Bites podcasts produced by philosopher Nigel for some disciplines, such as social science challenges. In that spirit, on May 11 SAGE will Warburton and journalist David Edmonds. or geoscience, that can produce outputs at host a session on Capitol Hill where Gary King Now in its fourth year, the audio series has odds with their politics. Congressman Lamar of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social now spawned a print collection – Big Ideas Smith of Texas, who heads the House of Science will detail the possibilities presented in Social Science – of transcripts from some Representatives Science Committee, has by the academic analysis of big data – and of its most fascinating interviews with world- introduced several bills that have been opposed how that scholarly knowledge augmented leading academics such as Stephen Pinker, by a collaboration of scholarly societies because by innovative methods can hugely benefit Nobel Prize winning economist Robert J Shiller, the legislation targeted specific disciplines or important priorities such as national security and gerontologist Sarah Harper. Big Ideas, straight-jacketed the merit review process by and economic competiveness. Approaches to like the graphic novel statistics textbook by which the National Science Foundation funds social research are changing and SAGE is not Andy Field, steps away from the type of books research grants. only engaged in addressing these changes, but SAGE traditionally publishes and embraces an also on the frontline supporting our authors, SAGE has responded to this in several ways, innovative approach to our mission of serving editors and research community as a whole. such as signing letters from umbrella groups the community and supporting the author’s like the Coalition for National Science voice. Funding to increase science funding overall For more on Kudos, read the interview on page 7. Our mission also calls for SAGE to advocate for or by hosting quarterly webinars (archived our authors’ and editors’ interests in keeping at Social Science Space) to explain the research and its dissemination in the vanguard, process and importance of the federal funding whether socially, technologically or financially. process to a shell-shocked community that SAGE continues to press governments may need to be shown how to stand up for its worldwide to fund basic research and protect own interests. © 2016 Richard Pasley Professor Gary King, above, develops and applies empirical methods in many areas of social science research, focusing on innovations from statistical theory to practical application. 4 Innovative Approaches from SAGE SAGE has always prided itself as being an innovative publisher, both in developing and leading new research fields and in finding the best ways to deliver scholarly knowledge. One such new idea is SAGE Recommends, which takes advantage of a proprietary 63,000-word social science taxonomy we’ve developed with the help of Expert Systems to mine the 1.5 million journal articles, more than 250,000 book chapters and reference works, and much more contained in the online scholarly resources: SAGE Knowledge, SAGE Journals, SAGE Research Methods, SAGE Stats, US Political Stats, SAGE Business Researcher, and CQ Researcher. The feature reveals connections between content and concepts across disciplines.