ISJR - Newsletter

7th Issue - December 2004 , edited by Sampson Lee Blair

1st Issue; June 2001, edited by Ron Cohen
2nd Issue; November 2001, edited by Ron Cohen
3rd Issue; February 2003, edited by Dahlia Moore
4th Issue; July 2003, edited by Dahlia Moore
5th Issue; November 2003, edited by Dahlia Moore
6th Issue; March 2004, edited by Dahlia Morre

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Contents

• Recap of the 2004 ISJR Conference in Regina, Saskatchewan (Canada)
• Presidential Address
• SJR editor’s report; Creation of the “Mort” Award
• Request for member activities and accomplishments
• Upcoming events
• Editorial comment
• Word-Version of Newsletter
  

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Recap of the Regina meetings

It seems as though we only left from the southern plains of Canada, but it has actually been six months since we last gathered for the 2004 ISJR meetings in Regina.  The tenth conference of ISJR was hosted by the Canadian Institute for Peace, Justice, and Security, along with the University of Regina (located in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada).  All of the conference presentations took place on the campus of the University of Regina.

 The meetings were constructed around several themes, including Justice and Indigenous Peoples, Justice and Policing, Social Capital and Civil Society, Distributive and Procedural Justice, Justice in Educational Settings, and Justice and Intergroup Relations.  The array of topics included in the conference was quite broad and the quality was very impressive.  Indeed, many participants had a difficult time in choosing which sessions to attend, as the offerings in each session were tempting.

 The meetings also included several keynote speakers, including the Rt. Honorable Beverley McLachlin (Chief Justice of Canada, Supreme Court of Canada), Faye Crosby (our outgoing ISJR president), Professor Kees van den Bos (Utrecht University),  Professor Shadia Drury (Canada Research Chair, Social Justice), and Judge Morin (Saskatchewan Provincial Court Judge).

 Of course, the conference was not limited to purely academic events.  On July 1^st (Thursday), attendees were treated to a fireworks display in honor of Canada Day.  On Friday, many participants enjoyed a tour of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Museum, which was followed by a wonderful dinner inside the RCMP Training Depot.  The food and music (and also the wine) made for a fantastic evening.  At the close of the conference on Saturday, tribe members from the First Nations presented a demonstration of many Native American dances.  One of the more memorable sights from the conference came when the tribe members convinced everyone present to participate in the final dance (sadly, most academics cannot dance, but we did at least try!).

 Many thanks go out to the conference organizers, particularly to Jeff Pfeifer and Katherine Owens.  From the larger tasks involved in developing the conference, to the smaller tasks of making sure that everyone made it from the hotel to the campus each day, Jeff and Katherine did a great job and deserve yet another round of applause.  At the very least, many fine German beers will be bought for them at the 2006 conference in Berlin.

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      President’s Address

Claudia Dalbert, President

 Dear friends and members of ISJR,

 It was through the vote in summer 2003 that, to my deep honour and delight, I became the current President of ISJR. It was during our stimulating conference in Regina, Canada, that I took over the presidency from Faye Crosby. Faye Crosby’s work strongly supported the transition process of our organization to a more open and democratic organization. It is my wish to continue this work by strengthening this transition.

 Fortunately, I will work toward this with a strong and experienced Executive Board. Kees van den Bos and Karen Hegtvedt have both agreed to work two more years for ISJR and were supported by your votes in Regina. Kees was elected as Secretary and Karen was elected as Treasurer. Directly after our General Business Meeting, the new Executive Board held a meeting to decide several matters. We asked Sampson Lee Blair to serve as the Newsletter Editor, and he accepted. We also decided to hold our 11^th Conference on Social Justice Research in Berlin, Germany, at the Humboldt University. It will take place August 2-5, 2006. Bernd Wegener and Stefan Liebig will be our hosts in Berlin: http://www.isjr.org/Meetings.html

 At the General Business Meeting, the members approved Gerold Mikula and Susan Clayton as auditors of the account report made by the treasurer. Meanwhile, Karen Hegtvedt has sent the original bank receipts to Gerold Mikula and Susan Clayton. Both worked on the final approval and informed me that they finally certified the account.

 In the past, there was one problem which bothered all of us. We did not get SJR issues in time. This was due to organizational problems and to the fact, that the ISJR membership fees were not paid in time. Our treasurer, Karen Hegvedt, and the journal editor, John Jost, have worked hard on this problem and all of you may have noticed the success of their efforts. You received the third SJR issue of 2004 in time and you will receive your fourth SJR issue also in time. For the maintenance of this positive development, the payment of the membership dues is critical. At the end of October, you received a letter from our treasurer asking for the payment of your membership dues for 2005. If you do not have paid already, please, do it as soon as possible. ISJR relies on the support of the members, and your membership dues are a critical part of our continued progress.

 If you have any suggestions for ISJR, please send them to me at dalbert@paedagogik.uni-halle.de. Any ideas and measures to enhance the exchange within our network are highly welcomed. It is your enthusiasm for justice research, which will make ISJR a vivid and successful community of scholars.

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     SJR report and the “Mort” Award

John T. Jost, SJR Editor

New York University

             As I write this, the fourth and final SJR issue of 2004, which leads with an article by Barrington Moore Jr., is in the production stage and will arrive in your mailboxes in December.  This means, incredibly (to me), that I took over the editorship from Leo Montada more than a year ago!  The journal was in good health then, and I am pleased to report that at age 18 (as I recall, a good age to be) it remains in very good shape. 

 In addition to having a new editor in 2004, SJR has also taken on a new (red and black) look and a new team of associate editors.  In alphabetical order, they are: Sampson Lee Blair, Ramona Bobocel, Russell Cropanzano, Claudia Dalbert, James Konow, Joe Oppenheimer, Manfred Schmitt, and Linda Skitka.  Ron Cohen remains as book review editor and is always looking for people who are interested in writing good book review essays (so please email him with a proposal).  In addition, we have added 5 new names to the already eminent list of editorial board members: Brenda Major, Dale Miller, Steve Penrod, Jim Sidanius, and Tom Tyler.

To be notified when a new issue of SJR appears, you can sign up for a free service called “Kluwer alert”—just go to www.kluweralert.com.  If you have not been receiving your issues of SJR on time, it is probably because you have not paid your dues on time.  Before our society (ISJR) can send your name and address on to the publisher, your dues must be up-to-date.  Please contact either Karen Hegtvedt (khegtv@emory.edu) or Sibylle Clasen (clasen@uni-muenster.de) to arrange for dues payment. 

As a result of a merger in the academic publishing industry, beginning in 2005 SJR will be published under the name of Springer.  The journal’s website, too, will be migrated to a Springer URL at http://www.springeronline.com.  Electronic usage of the journal is way up.  There were over 7,000 downloads in 2003 (that’s up 225% from 2002). In addition, there were over 1,200 downloads in the first two months of 2004, which represents an additional 50% increase over the first two months of 2003.  Clearly, electronic usage is the wave of the future.  Many people have access to SJR electronically through their library system, although they may not even know it yet. 

SJR is still a primary publication outlet for the members of this society, but I am trying to involve a wider range of contributors, doing a lot of outreach.  We remain strongly committed to the international and multidisciplinary emphases—we have subscribers in 38 countries and 1,200 libraries worldwide.  SJR is already listed in several abstracting and indexing services (including PSYCingo, Ingenta, EBSCO, Swets, and CAS), and we are currently being evaluated for inclusion in ISI/Web of Science.

 
             As editor I have been happy with the overall quality of submissions, but not the quantity. There are still not enough submissions to build up a comfortable backlog.  Accordingly, I have been supplementing articles accepted through the normal submission process with special issues and invited articles.  The June 2004 issue was a special issue guest-edited by Max Bazerman and Mahzarin Banaji on “The Social Psychology of Ordinary Ethical Failures,” and it was extraordinarily popular.  Tom Tyler is currently working on a special issue on the topic of “Legitimating Ideologies,” based on a conference held at New York University last year.

 

As I hope you can see from the 2004 issue, we are working very hard to raise the profile and impact of SJR.  My own view is that there is no reason that it cannot be the premier niche journal for justice researchers in a variety of fields.  It can fulfill for us the same function that popular journals such as Law and Human Behavior, Political Psychology, and Social Cognition fulfill for other groups of researchers.

 

What can you do to help?  First, continue to submit high quality work.  Electronic submissions may be sent to me (john.jost@nyu.edu) or to my editorial assistant, Cara Jolly (cj16@nyu.edu).  With Cara’s help and many of you as reviewers, we have processed over 50 manuscripts in the past year and are doing well in terms of speed, with most authors receiving a decision letter in 3 months or less.  Second, pay your dues on time, so that you will be up-to-date on what is happening in the pages of SJR.  Third, read the journal, talk about the journal, and cite articles published in the journal so that our citation impact factor can be increased; this is something that Leo Montada rightly stressed.  Fourth, encourage others to submit their high quality work to SJR (even if they are not ISJR members).  Fifth, please let me (or the AE’s) know if you have creative ideas for articles or debates or special issues.  I am truly eager to broaden the journal and to make it exciting to a larger audience.

 

Finally, I am thrilled to announce that beginning with the 2004 issue, ISJR will be offering an award for the best article published in SJR every year, with preference given to contributions from investigators who are early in their research careers.  The award will be named after one of the society’s most prolific and influential contributors, Morton Deutsch.  Thus, every year a committee that includes the editor and two associate editors will identify the winner of the “Morton Deutsch Award for the best article of the year in Social Justice Research.”  Plaques will be given to winning authors at the biennial ISJR conference, beginning with Berlin in 2006.

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Request for information

All members are asked to please forward any information concerning their activities to me (slblair@buffalo.edu), so that it can be included in future issues of the ISJR Newsletter.  Publications, presentations, promotions, grants, or any relevant activities (even marriage or childbirth news is welcome) are requested.  Remember, ISJR is an international organization, and it is essential that we maintain our network of scholars; one way to achieve this is by sharing your news with others.  Thanks!

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Upcoming Events

“Social Justice in a Changing World,” Conference at the Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany, March 10-12th, 2005

(for information - www.gsss.uni-bremen.de/socialjustice)

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   Editorial Comment

As this is my first newsletter, I would like to begin by expressing thanks to our previous newsletter editor, Dahlia Moore.  Dahlia took on this task two years ago, and was able to maintain the quality of the newsletter quite well.  She deserves much credit for her work.

 When Claudia asked me to take on this responsibility, I was a bit hesitant.  My initial concern was that, as a family sociologist, I did not feel that I was adequately ‘embedded’ within the circles of social justice scholars.  The conference in Regina was my fourth ISJR conference, though, and I ultimately decided that I had been an ‘observer’ within ISJR for long enough, and that it was time for me to give something back to the association.

 I do ask, however, that the members of ISJR assist me in making the newsletter work to their benefit.  As stated above, I respectfully ask that you send me any and all information which you believe might be appropriate for inclusion in the newsletter.  I am more than pleased to assemble the newsletter, but I am largely dependent upon the members to keep me apprised of important news.  Simply put, I am asking you to help me to help you!

 The newsletter will be appearing every three months from now on, so let’s get started! 

Sampson Lee Blair (slblair@buffalo.edu)

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 You would like to print this newsletter? Click here! (Word Document)

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