ALT Dear Colleagues, As former members of the editorial board of Theory and Society, we wish to announce that we are launching a new journal, Theory and Social Inquiry, to continue the mission of Alvin Gouldner’s Theory and Society. The immediate catalyst for the constitution of this new journal is an attack on the principle of intellectual autonomy. In 2023 Springer Nature, the publisher of Theory and Society, unilaterally decided to change the intellectual direction of the journal. Beyond simply changing editorial personnel for operational reasons, Springer decided that the journal needed to be “less political” and “more scientific,” and found two executive editors willing to fulfill that mandate.1 Springer asked us, the members of the existing editorial board, to resign. This demand for our resignation came after we had asked to provide input into the process of selecting a new executive editor, only to have Springer refuse our request.

ALT In the broader context of growing attacks on sociology and encroaching censorship, we feel it is critically important to take a strong stand by moving our journal to a not-for-profit publisher. In addition to re-constituting as a non-profit, our new journal will also be open-access. OLH’s model of open access (“Diamond Open Access”) relies on collective funding from an international network of university and public libraries and does not charge article processing fees to authors. This is particularly important for researchers situated in universities with fewer resources, including in low-income countries. Open access also allows readers without university affiliations to access scholarly work, expanding the reach of the scholarship published in our pages to the broader public. Most importantly for us: we will own the journal. An association of sociologists will be the owners of Theory and Social Inquiry

ALT public sociology, problem-solving sociology, engaged research, and the like. These conversations offer an opportunity for renewal of our practices as of the world we study. We welcome theoretical meditations on these issues as well as practical empirical applications that result from such thinking. “Critique” and “renewal” also apply to ourselves. We are very aware that aspects of the operational procedures of the former Theory and Society were the source of justified criticisms, particularly concerning long turn-around times for initial reviews. Renewal on this issue means a new model that places the review process directly in the hands of the editors, who will now handle all operational aspects of shepherding manuscripts through. Our pledge to the discipline is a new journal that is not simply a continuation of the old journal, but a better one.

ALT Decorative image with the title of the paper linked in the tweet and a list of its authors. The foreground image shows a thread unravelling and the background image shows an open book with random letters coming out of it and rising upward like smoke