Celebrating Seven Decades of Excellence in ASA’s Flagship Scholarly Journal

by Jerry A. Jacobs, Editor American Sociological Review

The American Sociological Review (ASR) has been the official journal of the American Sociological Association since 1936. The centennial year of the ASA is an opportune time to look back over the history of ASR to note some of its accomplishments. There is much to celebrate.

Table 1 lists the five most highly cited articles published in ASR in each decade from the 1930s through 2000. Citations were identified in the ISI Social Sciences Citation Index (Thompson Scientific, 1956-2004). The citation scores represent the cumulative number of references to an article appearing in ISI indexed journals from the date of publication through November 2004. The 1930s and 1940s were combined into a single decade. I included six articles for the 1960s so that all of the articles with 500 or more citations could be represented.

This list of influential articles indicates that ASR has consistently published high-impact articles throughout its 70-year history. In each decade, a small group of articles has attained a high level of visibility. Of the 26 articles listed that were published before 1990, all but two were cited at least 400 times. In all, 379 ASR articles published since 1936 have been cited 100 or more times, and 18 have been cited 500 or more times. It should be noted that the lower citation counts for articles published during the 1990s most likely reflects the fact that these article s are still too recent for their full impact to be captured.

The articles include a mix of theoretical, methodological and substantive articles. Sociologists will likely recognize many of the authors’ names and will be familiar with more than a few of these articles.

DiMaggio’s Grand Slam

The earliest article on the list is Robert Merton’s 1938 essay, “Social Structure and Anomie,” which has been cited more than 500 times. The most-cited article in ASR history is the essay on “institutional isomorphism,” by Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell, published in 1984, which has been cited more than 1,700 times thus far.

These highly visible articles often have enduring influence. There is an association between visibility and longevity: the most highly cited pieces typically continue to garner citations for several decades, far longer than less-visible papers. These high-impact articles typically do not reach their peak of visibility for 10 to 15 years. Some articles remain remarkably influential 20 or even 30 years after publication.