Determinants of Publication in Sociology Journals

The study investigates who are the authors that publish in the high impact journals of sociology and what are the determinants that allow this major profile to publish. For the empirical research, information was collected from 10 sociology journals between 2004 and 2016. The journals were selected according to the impact positioning indicators and acceptance of articles of any sociological theme and from any country. Five of them have major impact and the others were drawn. The determinants considered for analysis were: country and region of the institution of the author, language of the country of attachment, ranking of institution, ranking of periodical; and thematic of the article. Logistic regression was used to analyze the result. The hypothesis is that, despite the significant increase in the number of articles by journals, the current publication profile remains similar to that of 10 years ago: the United States and Europe continue to be references, mainly by the language and the hegemony of these localities within the publishing scene. Preliminary results confirm the hypotheses found. The countries of the Global South publish more than in 2004, however, this amount has increased in the face of the growth of the number of publications in these periodicals. In the general percentage, these nations continue being minority and the authors of these localities publish less in the magazines of high impact. Regarding the determinants, the chance of Southern authors' publication is much inferior than that of the United States and Europe. Well-ranked universities are also more likely to publish than others. Thus, authors located in the Global South and of the 'modest' institution rank were those with the lowest chances for publication in the journals with the greatest impact. The publication in Sociology field is still very concentrated in certain regions, generating intra-regional and inter-regional inequality.