Department of Sociology and Social Policy

Faculty of Arts

RC Mills Building, A26

NSW 2006, Australia

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Telephone: +61 2 9351 2653

Fax: +61 2 9036 9380

Dear President, the Executive, and the TASA membership,

I am pleased to provide this 2008-2009 annual editorial report on behalf of the editorial team of the Health Sociology Review.

For 2009, the journal was produced in four issues, as it was in 2008. Working with an Editor-in-Chief, four general editors and a book review editor, this is a sustainable editorial workload. The journal was also produced with the same proportion of special issues to general issues as found in 2008. These figures are shown in table one.

TABLE 1: Number of issues per year

2004 / 2005 / 2006 / 2007 / 2008 / 2009
General Issues / 2 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 1 / 1
Special Issues / - / 2 / 3 / 2 / 3 / 3
TOTAL / 2 / 3 / 5 / 5 / 4 / 4

The number of papers submitted to HSR during the financial year 2008-9 fell from the higher level of 87 to 52. Although 52 submissions is still a respectable number of papers, it is quite probable that this fall largely reflects federal government policy changes with regard to the ranking of journals. These peculiar rankings have led to a small fall in papers from Australian academics, though not overseas academics. These figures are shown in table two.

TABLE 2: Outcome of manuscripts by financial year

2004-5 / 2005-6 / 2006-7 / 2007-8 / 2008-9
Published / 15 / 43 / 31 / 32 / 38
Submitted / 54 / 69 / 53 / 87 / 52
Rejected or Withdrawn / 22 / 39 / 23 / 41 / 25
% Rejected to Submitted / [41%] / [57%] / [43%] / [47%] / [48%]
Accepted / 26
In process / 8

Table two also indicates that the journal maintains a rejection rate of just under 50%. This is a healthy level of rejected manuscripts, given that unlike many other journals, we only count manuscripts once. The American Sociological Association journals (and many other scholarly journals) have a process where acceptance rates are calculated as a ratio of all decisions (positive and negative), made during the year, which means that all accepted manuscripts are counted twice (because they are first counted as a revise and resubmit, and then later as an accept).[1] It is estimated that this practice inflates their rejection counts by about 25%.

The editorial team has continued to work hard to ensure authors do not have to wait too long for a decision to be made about their manuscript. Processing time, as indicated in table three, has been steadily reduced over recent years, so that in the year 2007-8, it took an average of 8.4 weeks between the submission of a paper and either its acceptance or rejection.

The processing period during 2008-9 increased a little to an average of 10.5 weeks. This was the result primarily of ill-health among members of the editorial team. Most of us had a significant period of illness or disability during the financial year, making it a little difficult to maintain our regular workload. I am happy to state that all are currently in a healthier state and that despite the set-backs, the average length of time for an author to wait remained well within the industry standard of 12 weeks.

TABLE 3: Processing Time

2004/05 / 2005/06 / 2006/07 / 2007/08 / 2008/09
Average processing time / 19.5 weeks / 10.4 weeks / 11.5 weeks / 8.4
weeks / 10.5
weeks

We have sought to maintain a balance between the internationalisation of HSR, and providing a forum for the publication of Australian papers. The current level of internationalisation of the Health Sociology Review represents a solid achievement by the editorial team and the publisher. In the 2008-9 financial year, HSR published 38 papers. 50% of these were from Australian-based authors.

If we compare HSR with comparable journals (see table four), such as the Sociology of Health and Illness (edited in the UK) and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior (edited in the USA), we find ourselves significantly more international than the USA and of a similar level to the major health sociology journal edited in the UK.

TABLE 4: Internationalisation - Three Journal Comparison

Journal and Country of Editorship / Percent Authors from Home Country
Health Sociology Review (Australia)
2005 - 2007
2007 - 2008
2008 - 2009 / 70%
58%
50%
Sociology of Health and Illness (UK) / 48%*
Journal of Health and Social Behavior (USA) / 96%*

Note: data for HSR reflects the national institutional affiliation of the first author of all published manuscripts. Figures for SHI and JHSB are from Seale (2008:684)[2] and cover the period 1992-2007. Seale's data records the country of origin of all authors.

Overseas submissions to HSR during this financial year have come from the UK, the USA, Canada, Greece, Nigeria, Iran, The Netherlands, Singapore, India, Sweden, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. The dominant single country of origin was Australia, followed by 7 from the UK and 5 from the USA.

Special issues continue to remain popular since their introduction in 2005, and during 2008-9, three appeared with cover dates the second half of the year, and one early in 2009. These were:

• 17(2) August 2008:Re-Imagining Preventative Health, guest-edited by Chris Beasley from the University of Adelaide and Megan Warin from Durham University;

• 17(3) October 2008: Community, Family, Citizenship and the Health of Lesbian women, Gay men, and Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) People, guest-edited by Jane Edwards from the University of South Australia and Damien Riggs from the University of Adelaide;

• 17(4) December 2008: Integrative, Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Challenges for Biomedicine? guest-edited by Hans Baer from the University of Melbourne and Ian Coulter from the University of California; and

• 18(1) June 2009: The Social Determinants of Child Health and Well-Being, guest-edited by Jianghong Li from Curtin University; Fiona Stanley and Eugen Mattes from the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research at The University of Western Australia; Anne McMurray from Murdoch University; and Clyde Hertzman from the University of British Columbia.

At the end of 2009, the current editorial team plans to retire, and will be replaced with a new team. Many of us have been working since 2004 on HSR, and it is time for us to spend time on other projects. We leave the journal in a sustainable and flourishing condition. As of the 18th September (when this report was compiled), we leave 26 papers already reviewed and accepted for publication, and another 22 papers in process (8 of which arrived before 1st July, and the rest since that date). In addition, we have a number of special issues lined up for the future:

• Expert Patient Policy, to be guest-edited by Sally Lindsay and Bert Vrijhoef;

• Ageing, Anti-Ageing and Globalisation, to be guest-edited by Beatriz Cardona and Brett Neilson;

• New Perspectives on Recreational Drugs and Alcohol, to be guest-edited by Grazyna Zajdow and Jo Lindsay;

• Mental Health and Illness, to be guest-edited by Pauline Savy, Anne-Maree Sawyer and Katy Richmond;

• Men’s Health, to be guest-edited by Gary Dowsett, Victor Minichiello and John Scott; and

• Private Health and Privatisation, to be guest-edited by Kevin White, Fran Collyer and Jane Jones;

As Editor-in-Chief, I ask all TASA members to join with me in thanking the members of the editorial team: Jane Edwards and Peter Gale from the University of South Australia, Pauline Savy from La Trobe University, Simon Kitto from Monash University, and Dorothy Broom from the Australian National University. All have worked hard this last financial year to provide a service to their fellow TASA members and the sociological community world-wide.

I would like also to mention the the guest editors for their invaluable contribution to the journal, the many reviewers for their unpaid hours of work to evaluate the manuscripts, and the Editorial Advisory Board, the authors, our publisher eContent, and the TASA executive, for their support and encouragement. Without these people Health Sociology Review would not be as successful.Thank you one and all.

Fran Collyer

Editor-in-Chief

Health Sociology Review

September 2009.

1

[1] England, P. (2009) ‘Are Journal Accept Rates as Low as They Look?’ ASA Footnotes American Sociological Association 37(3):1-16.

[2] Seale, C. (2008) 'Mapping the field of medical sociology: A comparative analysis of journals' Sociology of Health and Illness 30(5):677-695.