What is McGill Sociological Review and what are its objectives?
How and why did MSR come about?
What is the organizational structure of the MSR?
Who can be an active member of MSR?
What is the editorial process?
How do I submit an article?
What kind of academic pieces does MSR publish?
Why don't you have a print version of MSR?
Where else can I read MSR?
How is MSR funded?
Why is MSR important?
How else can I participate?
I like your logo! What is the significance behind it? Who designed it?
How did you generate those sweet PDFs?
What font are you using in your PDFs?
How would I cite an article published in MSR?
What is McGill Sociological Review and what are its objectives?
McGill Sociological Review (MSR) is a graduate student-run peer-reviewed academic journal that is housed in the Department of Sociology at McGill University in Montréal, Québec, Canada.
The mission of MSR is to facilitate a relevant scholarly exchange of ideas by publishing an academic journal on sociological topics written and produced by graduate and post-doctoral students.
To achieve our mission, MSR has outlined four main objectives:
• Build a stronger public profile for participating and contributing graduate students, and more generally, the McGill Department of Sociology.
• Establish a wide variety of contributors and readers through effective publicity and a formal selection process.
• Create opportunities for graduate students to gain knowledge and skills related to the publishing process.
• Foster dialogue between graduate students and the wider sociological community in Canada and abroad.
How and why did MSR come about?
In the fall of 2008, the graduate student body of the Department of Sociology at McGill University had the idea of creating a peer-reviewed sociological journal for graduate students in the hopes of raising the profile of the department, publishing interesting articles about sociological topics from up and coming sociologists, and gaining experience on both sides of the publishing world. They formed MSR as a medium in which to foster dialogue between graduate students and the wider sociological community.
The Steering Committee of MSR and the Editorial Board of MSR each meet every two months, with their members working in the meantime to ensure that MSR will become a strong journal, publishing interesting and high quality content both now and in the long term. Since our inception, MSR has created a charter defining our mission and objectives, our organisational structure, the decision-making process, and our relationship with the faculty of the Department of Sociology at McGill University.
What is the organisational structure of MSR?
MSR includes all active members of the Steering Committee. The Steering Committee is responsible for the administrative, non-editorial, aspects of the journal. This includes but is not limited to directing, fundraising, marketing, and Information and Technology (IT) aspects of the organisation. When appropriate, members of the Steering Committee may form ad hoc sub-committees to more efficiently complete required tasks.
Members of the Steering Committee also make up members of the 3 or 5 member student editorial board. The Editorial Board is responsible for ensuring the academic quality and integrity of the journal by selecting appropriate submissions for publication. Individual members of the Editorial Board work closely with authors during the revision period to ensure clarity and quality. In addition, the editorial board is responsible for communicating and liaising with the graduate student community regarding submissions and the publishing process.
Decisions in both the Steering Committee and the editorial board are based on collective agreement. If consensus cannot be reached, decisions will be made on the basis of a majority vote.
To assist in the smooth functioning of the Steering Committee, MSR also has 1 or 2 co-ordinator positions drawn from the larger active membership of the steering committee. The co-ordinators are responsible for overseeing the general operations of the journal and publishing process. The co-ordinators organise and chair the steering committee meetings, and appropriate Editorial Board meetings, and will delegate duties to other members of MSR, as well as take on appropriate administrative duties when necessary.
MSR also has a close relationship with the faculty of the Department of Sociology at McGill University. Faculty members of the Graduate Colloquium Committee will serve as advisors to the Steering Committee concerning administrative and strategic issues on an ad hoc basis. The Co-ordinator(s) or a delegate will liaise with these stakeholders upon request from the Steering Committee. In addition, the Editorial Board may consult with individual faculty members with relevant expertise on the topic of a written submission on an ad hoc basis. Individual members of the Editorial Board will liaise with these stakeholders upon direction from the Editorial Board. Despite this partnership with faculty, MSR remains a graduate student reviewed initiative.
Who can be an active member of MSR?
Potential active members of the steering committee are volunteers drawn from the pool of current McGill sociology graduate students. We currently have approximately 19 active members who are at various stages of their graduate career. The diverse professional skills and wide-ranging sociological knowledge and expertise of the MSR membership successfully contributes to the efficient administration of MSR and the ability of the Editorial Board to critically analyse papers submitted to the journal.
In the near future, MSR is committed to engaging graduate students at other universities in becoming active members. Given our limited resources in the early stages of development, MSR limited their membership to McGill sociology graduate students.
MSR is committed to engaging persons who are members of equity seeking groups who may not have equitable access to learning and networking opportunities. This includes, but is not exclusive to women, people of colour, migrants, immigrants and refugees, Aboriginal people, people with disabilities, and people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.
What is the editorial process?
The Editorial Board releases a call for papers to social science departments across Canada on sociological topics in either French or English. Upon submission, each article is read by at least two members of the Editorial Board and select articles are chosen for the blind peer-review process.
Peer reviewers are current or recent graduate or post-doctoral students, who are selected based on their areas of expertise, and experience with the publishing process.
For detailed description of the review process, please refer to the Instructions for Peer-Reviewers
Please refer to the Information for Authors page for upcoming call for papers and submission guidelines.
What kind of academic pieces does MSR publish?
MSR is looking to foster a dialogue around core and peripheral sociological topics. Therefore, any paper, book review, or interview covering topics of sociological interest will be considered by the Editorial Board. Original empirical research articles are encouraged, but not a requirement. If you have any questions regarding the call for papers, please editorial.msr [at] gmail.com (contact the Editorial Board.)
Articles may be submitted in either French or English and will appear in MSR only in the language in which it was submitted. Articles will not be translated by MSR.
Why don’t you have a print version of MSR?
Under the current budget of MSR, an online journal was the most practical. In addition, an online journal allows for more interaction and diffusion given an increasingly online society. MSR wanted to be able to reach audiences not only at McGill, but in the wider Montreal, Canadian, and International community.
The online version of MSR includes a PDF version of the journal that may be printed as the journal would appear in print form. The articles are also available in html version.
MSR is currently available on the MSR website, and the Steering Committee will be working with people at Proquest and Ebsco to get the journal available on online library databases. This would ensure that the journal reaches the academic community and can be found in most libraries around the world.
MSR is generously supported by the Department of Sociology, the Post-Graduate Students Society (PGSS), and the Dean of Arts Development Fund.
We also have received in-kind contributions of books for review from the McGill-Queens University Press and Les Presses de L’Université de Montréal (PUM).
MSR is always looking for more funding opportunities and partnerships with publishing houses. If you would like to contact MSR regarding either of these, please mcgillsociologicalreview [at] gmail.com (email us.)
MSR is currently the only graduate student journal focusing on sociological issues in Canada, and as such provides opportunities for upcoming sociologists to discuss their early work, network with other students and academics with similar interests and directions, as well as to prepare future academics for a life in academia and the publishing world.
The first year and a half of the operation of MSR was an infrastructure building period, and as such, the organisational structure, editorial process, and administration was based at McGill University. As MSR moves forward with future volumes, we hope to be able to include other graduate students in other universities in Montréal, Canada and abroad in all parts of the MSR process. Currently, we have engaged peer-reviewers from universities across Canada to participate in our review process. If you are interested in becoming a peer reviewer, please visit our Information for Peer Reviewers page.
You can also help out MSR by spreading the word in your department and university, reading MSR, providing feedback on our content and website, or by helping us find new sources of funding.
If you are interested in getting involved with MSR in any capacity, please mcgillsociologicalreview [at] gmail.com (contact us.)
I like your logo! What is the significance behind it? Who designed it?
The logo was designed by ezduzit Graphic Design in Montreal. The designer, Eric Zenter created the unique logo especially for MSR. If you did not notice it already, you can see the MSR acronym in the logo.
You can find more of ezduzit Graphic Designs work at http://www.ezduzit.ca/
The McGill Sociological Review’s logo is covered under the Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada License. The logo may be used in a non-commercial manner with expressed permission from MSR, but may not be altered.
How did you generate those sweet PDFs?
The PDFs for this issue of McGill Sociological Review were typeset in TeXnicCenter, a free open source IDE for LaTeX. Though the environment takes awhile to get the hang of, the end result certainly justifies the effort. Unlike in word processors, in LaTeX one works in a standard ASCII text document. The structure and eventual layout is integrated into the document using various commands and tags, a lot like html and other programing languages. Finally, the document is rendered. TeXnicCenter can be calibrated in order to output into a variety of formats; pdf is a among them.
In order to get our desired look several `packages' were also used, including but not limited to the ams family, graphicx, float, hyperref, asa (author modified), titlesec, and fancyhdr. Packages facilitate the manipulation of the over all look and layout of the document.
If one is interested in learning more about LaTeX and its many packages, one should start with google and wikipedia. http://www.ctan.org/ is generally also an essential source. I personally began here: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf
What font are you using in your PDFs?
The font is called "Computer Modern". It was created by Donald Knuth. It is an open source font that is the default font in TeX, the program that is used to create our MSR PDFs.
How would I cite an article published in MSR?
Full attribution should be given to the author when citing an article from McGill Sociological Review. Below is an example of how to cite an McGill Sociological Review article using the ASA style guide:
Girard, Magali. 2010. "Effects of Non-Standard Work on The Work-Family Balance: A Literature Review." McGill Sociological Review 1:46-58.
