Designing Social Research

This post’s title has nothing to do with research design. Instead, I want to talk about graphic design. Specifically, I want to propose a fun game/topic of debate.*

Which field’s top journal has the best design, layout, and formatting?

Because I’m asking, I’ll let each field pick two journals as the “top” (Sociology has 2, so this makes my job easy). Neither AJS nor ASR are amazing, though I kind like ASR’s title pages. The motivation for this game is the new issue of APSR (including several very interesting articles for sociologists, especially this one on a political theory of the corporation). I have to say, for a two column format, I think APSR has ASR beat.

So, academic design snobs, which journal will reign supreme?

*And by fun I mean incredibly nerdy.

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by Dan Hirschman on February 21, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Silly

Posted by Dan Hirschman on February 21, 2013

https://asociologist.com/2013/02/21/designing-social-research/

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2 Comments

  1. bork

     /  February 22, 2013

    I liked ASQ’s layout with the wide left margins (perfect for footnotes) and the wonderfully readable format for citations (in columns). However, they have changed some of these design elements more recently.

  2. oph

     /  February 23, 2013

    I too like ASQ’s ample margins.

    I tend to dislike the two-column format for any journals. I read the vast majority of papers on a screen (mac, ipad, and occasionally iphone) and it’s really nice to be able to continuously scroll downward. The two-column format can also really mess up electronic highlighting efforts.

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