Very cool to see the first issue of Sociological Science, a new open-access journal for primary research articles. While I should disclose that I’m a consulting editor for the publication, I should also disclose that I can’t claim any credit for the good stuff therein:

Nicholas Kristof called out professors today, saying we’ve “fostered a culture that glorifies arcane unintelligibility while disdaining impact and audience.” While the snarkmeister in me is tempted to return serve — couldn’t one say the same thing about the Times? — I actually concur with Mr. Kristof on several key points.

To paraphrase, he cites dreadful writing, a lack of political and ideological diversity, a dearth of public intellectuals, obstructionist professional associations, little social media presence, “hidden-away” journals, and a reward structure that privileges technique and abstraction over relevance, clear thinking, and broad dissemination.  In truth, we at TSP make largely the same claims in pitching our li’l project to authors, readers, and potential partners. We use different words, of course, but the whole point of TSP is to help bring social science to broader visibility and influence. This mission drives all the choices we’ve made: to stay open-access, to put our resources into a best-in-the-business professional editor and site designer, and to partner with other groups who “get” our mission and vision — like WW Norton, the Scholars Strategy Network, and Contexts magazine.

While many academics feel marginalized by mainstream media and society, Mr. Kristof points out that we’re also self-marginalizing. As a scholar, an editor, and an academic administrator, I’d agree that at least some of our injuries are self-inflicted.  For example, I was gratified when Attorney General Holder used some of my felon voting research last Monday. We’d undertaken the project with both science and policy in mind, in hopes of doing good sociology that would also encourage the sort of  national conversation now taking place. When the Times wrote a characteristically smart op-ed on Tuesday, friends asked why they linked to an old working paper rather than the polished journal article. This is likely because the article remains “hidden away” behind a paywall. I suppose they could have secured permissions from the authors, the journals, and the professional association that owns the journals, but we all tend to work on timelines that are a wee bit more protracted than the speech-on-Monday/op-ed-on-Tuesday news cycle.

While we can’t solve all of the problems of academic self-marginalization, we can at least offer Nicholas Kristof a free subscription to TheSocietyPages.org. And we’ll continue to extend the same offer to every one of the million-plus readers stopping by every month.

We’ve lost a true friend and remarkable colleague. Tim Ortyl was an extraordinary young sociologist and TSP grad board member. His countless friends are shocked and saddened by news that he’d passed away yesterday of natural causes due to epilepsy.  It is too early and too damn painful to post personal recollections or pictures — especially when Tim’s joy, sly wit, and vitality seem to leap from every image. But his talents and range as a sociologist are amply displayed in the publications he leaves behind, his public writing and podcasts for TSP and Contexts, and in the care and commitment with which he taught hundreds of students about statistics, gender, family, and sexuality. We mourn Tim Ortyl as a young friend with limitless potential, but we also recognize him as an accomplished and respected sociologist.

I’ve long believed a graduate degree in the social sciences provides excellent preparation for elective office. We learn to critically analyze data, to abstract from individual cases to broader social processes, and to understand how both powerful institutions and grass-roots movements shape the social world. Though few U.S. sociologists have entered the fray since Pat Moynihan left the Senate, our training and experience should prepare us well for many  aspects of the political arena.

Consider today’s Star-Tribune  profile of Betsy Hodges, who is making a strong run to become mayor of Minneapolis. Ms. Hodges, who did her graduate work in sociology at Wisconsin, is characterized in the following terms:

• “numbers-oriented and careful with her words”
• “adept at untangling complicated financial matters”
• “a theme of activism around social justice”
• a concern with “people being separated from one another by things that don’t matter”
• showing “leadership above and beyond her own stated personal views and keeping people together”

Ms. Hodges certainly possessed many of these skills and orientations before entering graduate school (though I believe that Wisconsin implanted a “numbers-oriented and careful with words” chip in all graduate students throughout the 1990s). So why don’t more of us pursue politics as a vocation? I got a glimpse of the answer when I chided a legislator for not “demonstrating courage”  on a crime policy. He said, “its a helluva lot easier to be courageous when you’re not running for reelection. Give me your university tenure and I’d demonstrate courage up the [wazoo].”  Good point, that — and all the more reason to appreciate courageous sociologist-politicians like Betsy Hodges.

I was surprised to receive an invitation to speak at the White House this August, as part of a parental incarceration workshop sponsored by the American Bar Foundation and National Science Foundation. Though I’d written a bit on the subject and had followed the research closely for a decade, I could not claim any great expertise. Fortunately, they didn’t need me for that. They’d already assembled an impressive roster of experts to speak on topics such as demography and family dynamics, behavioral and health problems, education and exclusion, justice policy, and caring for children. My job, according to the draft agenda, was to offer “concluding comments” in the final half-hour session. Or, as John Hagan put it, “Just do what you do.”

Riiiiight. Do what I do.

Well, I couldn’t just come out and ask what I do, so I decided to do TSP. Here’s a short version of my email response:

My plan is to come in with a few minutes of my own material, but to really spend the time synthesizing and connecting across the presentations and discussants. I’ll have to do some of this on-the-fly, but I’d be delighted if you could provide the available slides in advance. If that’s not workable, that’s ok too. I’m not planning to talk for the full half-hour, but to offer some take-home points of consensus and dissensus, inviting reactions from the experts assembled. This sort of thing might be useful in a policy group (especially reprising points made in the morning sessions that get lost by afternoon). I’ll then speak briefly about points of contact with my own research. 

So, after a strong kick-off by Bruce Western and a full day of panels by real experts, I took this approach at the podium. Seeing the slides in advance, it started to become clear how the research evidence fit together. The organizers had done a terrific job recruiting the experts. The experts, for their part, had made powerful new contributions to knowledge. And, throughout the day, an audience of policy leaders, practitioners, and political actors had been offering incisive commentary and questions.

As you might imagine, my notes were a hopeless mess, since I was constantly either crossing things out (when thunder was stolen) or reframing them in light of what the speakers actually said (when the best stuff wasn’t on the slides). But thinking about the talk as a TSP article, I tried to draw out five jargon-free social facts from the evidence presented — and then to connect them with the social choices and policy levers each implied.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything brilliant, but I hope that I communicated something useful. Editing Contexts and TSP, I’ve learned that social scientists can sometimes be especially useful when we examine and call attention to work that is closely related but not identical to our own. And that when we take the role of reporters rather than experts, we’re pretty well positioned to identify and explain the impressive accomplishments of our colleagues.

Anyone tracking both popular and academic writing knows that media reports often miss out on the best, most directly relevant research on the story. At TSP, we’ve batted our heads against this wall for years. Yes, Citings and Sitings reports on social scientists in the press and the Reading List brings new research discoveries to light, but we’ve lacked a forum to make the connection more explicitly — to point to good work that should be cited in the news stories of the day.

So, like many of our readers, we find ourselves spitting coffee each morning and shouting, “There’s Research on That!” when the news somehow misses a perfectly on-point expert and study. [This ain’t necessarily the journo’s fault, of course. One of my favorite writers at the Times recently emailed to ask, “Can you send me your article from JournalX? Costs like 80 bucks to get.”] While we can’t take down everyone else’s paywalls (can we, Jon?), we can point readers to first-rate research on the day’s issues. And we’ll do so in a brand new TSP feature titled (what else?), There’s Research on That! From Evan Stewart of our grad board:

In our continuing quest to bring great social science to everyone, TSP is rolling out our latest blog project—There’s Research on That!, where we offer up great research from across our fields that speaks to the big events of the day. For journalists, TROT is a great place to find an interviewee or a new perspective on reporting. For general readers, TROT is a place to discuss current events and find some great book recommendations that are sure to impress at the next cocktail party. For sociologists, TROT posts can spark conversations about where our research connects with the real world. Of course, we welcome continued suggestions for pieces in the comments and on Twitter (hashtag #TROT, of course)!

We’re hoping to make this a quick-hitting and timely feature, so we’ll keep the posts short and spread the word on social media. We hope There’s Research on That informs, inspires, and provokes you — and that you’ll cite your own favorite research in the comments section.

A shedload of sociologists descends on New York next week for a big annual meeting. As we scuffle for jobs and book deals or steel ourselves for presentations, the vibe can be a bit tense in the hotel lobbies. It isn’t easy to present new ideas to an audience that prides itself on the critical analysis of new ideas.

But there’s a small move you can make to improve said vibe, whether you’re a professional academic or a civilian reader who just enjoys sociological writing. Has anyone’s work inspired or influenced you? Did a writer turn a particularly memorable phrase in an article or post on TSP or elsewhere? If so, let them know about it! Send a quick note or strike up a conversation with someone whose work you’ve enjoyed and tell them so.

A good compliment is an amazing restorative – enough to sustain many of us through professional or personal rough patches. But there’s a strong professional bias against giving and receiving compliments, as sociologists take a jaundiced view of the practice. A 2012 study is titled “apple-polishers, butt-kissers, and suck-ups” and most research on compliments points to class, race, and (especially) gender disparities in ingratiation. But there’s also a grain of truth in Oscar Wilde’s admonition in Lady Windermere’s Fan: it is a great mistake to give up paying compliments, “for when we give up saying what is charming, we give up thinking what is charming.”

Compliments can be an unexpected delight — people noticing your name tag or sending an email out of the blue (especially when you’re not chairing a hiring committee). And the more obscure and left-field the compliment, the better. Kind words about a newsletter piece, a talk for a community organization, or a small contribution to a book that sold 5 copies are especially appreciated. Looking over the past year, did you find something charming or true in one piece you read? Or, perhaps, in a piece of a piece you read? If so, the author would like to hear about it.

If you’re so inclined, here are a few general characteristics and specific examples of good compliments, as distinct from simple schmoozing. The first is the most important; if you’re not feeling it, the recipient won’t either. And do try to avoid backhanded compliments (saying something positive, and then bringing the nasty).

1. Genuine

• Good: “I was struggling with the method until I read your description in that AJR article – it was so clear! I can’t tell you how much that helped me.”
•  Less good: “I saw your new article in AJR. It must be nice to be friends with the editors!” [tip: resist all temptation to follow-up a compliment with an “it must be nice to…” or “I wish I had…”].

2. Personal

• Good: “As an ethnographer, I rarely find quantitative research that taps into what I’m doing. But you really seem to ‘get’ the processes I’m seeing in the schools.”
• Less Good: “Your work has decent face validity.”

3. Acknowledge Effort

• Good: “Please tell me it took you all day to write that last paragraph – you completely nailed that civic reintegration idea.”
• Less Good: “I’ve seen your blog. I wish I had so much extra time on my hands!”

4. Specific

• Good: “I really liked your health disparities review piece, especially how you pulled in public health stuff – it was great for my prelim.”
• Less Good: “I’ve read a lot of your articles” [As an old friend once said, “that’s how I know they’re lying – there aren’t that many of my articles to read!”]

5. Memorable

• Good: “Smashing network diagrams!”
• Less Good: “Nice slides.”

Don’t be surprised if the recipient of your compliment doesn’t know how to respond (usually, a simple “thanks” will do). We’ve been socialized to expect ulterior motives or to think our work isn’t worthy of kind words. But don’t worry about embarrassing those you compliment. As Erving Goffman pointed out, when a person blushes upon receiving a compliment, she may lose her reputation for poise but confirm a more important reputation for modesty.

An elegant design, compelling evidence, and a timely story rendered exceptionally well. Sociologist Kieran Healy’s wonderful post on using metadata to find Paul Revere (and/or Jack Black) is now attracting megareaders at Slate. The opening lines:

I wanted to give non-specialists a sense of how the structural analysis of what’s being called “metadata” works, and to show in a fun but hopefully telling way how much you can get out of that approach. So I tried to emphasize that I was using one of the earliest, and (in retrospect) most basic methods we have, but one that still has the capacity to surprise people unfamiliar with SNA. 

The bad news is that our great friend is heading out of town. The spine-crushingly good news is that Professor Walt Jacobs will now be contributing regularly to the TSP community pages, in his Dispatches from a New Dean. A sociologist and recent chair of African and African American Studies in Minnesota, Walt’s just starting a new job as the social sciences dean at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

As you might have heard in his podcast on race and comedy, Walt has a keen eye and ear for the telling detail. He’s also a terrific academic leader, who uses sociology to good advantage in organizing people and resources. In Dispatches, Walt will be sharing these experiences, showing how a good social scientist wrestles with the demands and opportunities of higher administration. I’ve never met anyone in academic administration who worked harder or with greater sensitivity to the needs and interests of a larger community. Did you hear the line about commitment and breakfast? [That is, in a bacon and egg breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.] Well, Walt is committed. He’s heading off to Wisconsin and, by all reports, living amongst the first-year sociology students. We’re sorry to see him go, but so happy he’s staying on TSP.

Well, our TSP offices are buzzing about the announcement of Sociological Science, an exciting new open-access research publication. There’s a very accomplished editorial team in place, with a clear commitment to “speed, access, debate – and a light touch” — fine attributes for journal editors, as well as guitar players. To keep everything free and open-access, the project will be supported by submission and publication fees charged to authors, rather than subscription fees or association dues.

Sociological Science is distinctive in positioning itself as a rigorous peer-reviewed outlet for primary research. Our friends Jenn Lena, Brayden King, Mike3550, and many others have already offered thoughtful posts and comments. I too have loads of advice for the editors, but I suspect they’re getting enough advice already (and the really useful stuff is best conveyed off-line). Instead, I’ll just offer a few words for the new journal’s prospective authors and readers.

Try to remember that editing any sort of publication is a labor of love, since the ratio of effort to reward (however defined) is usually pretty high. I can see that the team has already invested a lot of thought and hard work  in the venture already. This is especially the case with a DIY effort, so let’s cut the new editors a little slack as they get off the ground. It is always easy to find fault with something in a publication (you call that kerning? how could the first issue completely *ignore* the Freedonian situation?), but initiatives like this are almost always undertaken with a civic-minded/public-goods orientation. I guess I do have one suggestion to pass along to the editors: celebrate each milestone, well and often!