This edition of Health Sociology Review is the first produced under the stewardship of our new editorial team. We are delighted to work with a talented and enthusiastic team of Associate Editors - Katherine Carroll, Fernando De Maio, Megan Williams, Luke Gahan and Kim McLeod, and pleased that previous Editors in Chief Joanne Bryant and Christy Newman, are continuing to contribute to the journal as Senior Editorial Advisors. Sally Daly, also The Australian Sociological Association (TASA), Executive Officer, is working with us as Managing Editor, checking all papers prior to forwarding them for review, as well as completing a range of tasks to ensure that processes run smoothly.
We commence our tenure with the journal in very good shape. The previous editorial team achieved a tripling of Health Sociology Review’s impact factor during their term, from 0.446 in 2016, 0.913 in 2017 and 1.2 in 2018. While these quantitative measures are important to researchers and universities, they do not capture the vibrancy and diversity of articles published in the journal. Much of what we propose to achieve for Health Sociology Review is in line with the directions pursued by the previous editors. We intend to strengthen the journals’ current contribution to the field through ensuring consistently high-quality publications and thus maintaining and increasing its impact factor.
What distinguishes our journal from many others that publish on papers on issues in health and illness is Health Sociology Review’s insistence on the critical importance of sociological theory in understanding contemporary experiences of health and wellbeing and in making sense of health care systems. Papers that offer empirical findings alone, without an analysis informed by sociology, are rarely accepted. Submissions must make a clear contribution to sociological inquiry relevant to health, but may be informed also by conceptual and empirical debates from a broader range of health and social sciences. We define health very broadly, with an interest how concepts of health, illness and wellbeing are understood and operationalised, prevention of ill health, health promotion, treatment services, professions and systems, and theoretical and methodological advances that are relevant to health sociology. We seek contributions that to offer new ways of conceptualising health, illness and wellbeing, and which take account of the complexity and contested nature of health and healthcare. Publication of sociological research on contemporary issues such as Indigenous health, the health of diverse groups and communities, and emerging health technologies is vital if we are to ensure relevance to policy makers, practitioners and the sociological community. The journal welcomes innovative sociologically informed empirical research papers and also high-quality theoretical contributions. All submissions must demonstrate methodological rigour, adherence to ethical research principles and potential for contribution to knowledge in health, healthcare and wellbeing.
Key to Health Sociology Review’s success are the special issues published to address topical concerns in the field. The previous editorial team commissioned highly successful special issues ranging from topics diverse as Latin American sociology, self tracking, ageing, and healthcare knowledge. We were overwhelmed by the quality and diversity of the proposals sent in response to our call to edit a special issue for 2020, with eight submissions received, all of very high quality. The proposal by Jennifer Power and Andrea Waling, titled: ‘Sex, Health and Technology: The role of bio-medical, bio-mechanical, and bio- digital technologies in sex, sexual health, and intimacy’ will be the guest-edited issue for 2020.
Journals such as ours face new challenges as we heard at a symposium recently provided by Taylor & Francis. Pressure is mounting to move to open access publishing. An international consortium of research funders, cOAlition S, argues that money paid by universities in journal subscriptions should be directed to open access journals or platforms, particularly where publications result from research funded by public grants. The transition to this model is, however, complex. Data is becoming increasingly important as a research output and as a source of citations, with funding bodies in Australia and elsewhere strongly encouraging data sharing. There are ethical issues involved in data sharing for researchers who gather information from participants that are not easily anonymised. Editors need to promote use of trusted repositories and make good data practice easy. New ethical issues arise as researchers increasingly use big datasets and activity on social media as data sources and authors (we hope not from our journal) occasionally report online harassment in response to their publication. Social media engagement has also become a measure of journal paper reach. Altmetrics are used to track research engagement and hence journals need to be active in the twittersphere; and we intend to strengthen engagement with our international community with a clear social media strategy.
As sociologists are ever mindful, we live in a globalising world and health sociology scholarship must engage with issues that transcend national borders, examine and expose growing inequity in health across diverse settings, and explain similarities and differences in global healthcare provision. While firmly established as an international journal, Health Sociology Review retains its roots in Australian sociology, particularly through its association with TASA. At the same time as expanding opportunities for international scholars, we are mindful of the need for this journal to provide a publication outlet for high quality work of Australian scholars, particularly those who are early career. In this regard, we will continue the previous editorial team’s policy of publishing book reviews that highlight Australian texts, particularly from emerging scholars.
Health and healthcare are central to peoples’ capacities to live well. We look forward to working with our international community of sociology colleagues in contributing research evidence, refining theory and methods and enriching the debates over the coming four years.