The Review Process and Its Consequences in the Major Sociology Journals.

Sociology, like all the social sciences, is concerned with understanding human behavior, particularly behavior directly linked to social processes. There is considerable overlap between sociology and its sister disciplines, all of which appear to experience a problem with the publication process. In its most concrete form, sociology may be identified by what is published by sociologists as sociology. The thesis of this paper is that there are serious problems with regard to the review process, particularly among the three major general journals, for they lack either a particular substantive or theoretical focus. Furthermore, it is argued that these problems have serious implications for the content of sociology journals and the behavior of many sociologists. It the investigator decides to work within an existing paradigm then, indicates, this wilt frequently lead to serious distortions of reality in the data collection, analysis, and presentation. In contrast, investigators who decide to disregard existing paradigms have virtually no guidelines on how to proceed, for one of the basic functions of paradigms is to provide guidelines.