A SMALL TRANSITION
Readers may have noticed a change in format, beginning with the last issue of S&S.
It is time to "go public" with this diminutive item. Little changes, after all, can, as
we know, cumulate and erupt into qualitative transformations.
The change involves two annoying features of our old method of naming and
dating issues. For many decades, presumably as a way to help with direct sales of
individual copies, the fourth issue of every volume year was double-dated: e.g.,
Winter 2004–2005. (That was Vol. 68, No. 4.) This assured that the issue appearing in December would remain "current" on newsstands and in bookstores in the
ensuing year. Since the advent of the author–date method of documentation and
alphabetical reference listing, however, this has created an awkward situation with
regard to references to works published in that issue: viz., Bidney, 2004–2005, or
Camfield, 2004–2005. It almost makes it look as though the author were not certain of the year in which the article was published!
Even worse is the custom of using the natural seasons — spring, summer,
fall, winter — to identify each issue of a given volume year. (This is a custom that,
I must note, we have shared with the great majority of quarterly journals.) The
problem, of course, is that when it is summer in the northern hemisphere it is winter in the southern hemisphere, with similar oppositions at all other points of the
calendar. Readers in South America, Australia, Africa and elsewhere south of the
equator have always been made to feel like outsiders, as though Science & Society
were being published "mainly" for the benefit of their counterparts in the north.
This is truly a globalization issue! Not globaloney, but genuine internationalism
demands that this injustice be corrected.
And so, with Volume 69, S&S is changing its system of naming and dating
issues. The four issues now appear in January, April, July, and October, and will be
named for those months. And all four issues, including October, will be dated by
the single year in which they appear. The most recent issue — Vol. 69, No. 1, January 2005 — was a bit late, as we gradually work the schedule forward by two
months. The current issue — Vol. 69, No. 2, April 2005 — is intended, at this
writing, to appear on time.
We also have several special issues maturing at the same time; this
occasionally happens in our editorial process. The Spanish Civil War issue (Fall,
2004) has been well received, and we have high hopes for the reception and impact
of the issue on "Marxist-Feminist Thought Today" (January 2005). The next special issue will be the forthcoming July 2o05 issue, "The Deep Structure of the Present Moment." Others — it is too soon to identify them — are planned for Vol. 70.
"Special issues" in Science & Society are not "specialized" issues; our readers will
recognize the unity of multiple "contradictions and determinations" in each of
them, as each is a concentrated application, and test, of the unity and richness of
the Marxist perspective on society, history, and human potential. But they do take
space away from our regular features — first-order research papers, communications, book reviews. The resulting backlog is helping us to move the schedule forward by two months, but it also results in some delays, especially in book reviewing, for which we apologize. We will add some extra pages to the regular issues to
compensate. I should also mention that the unusual workload for the S&S Editor
caused by the schedule change means that this brief announcement must replace
the substantive "Editorial Perspectives" essay in this issue, but that the full editorials will be back, I expect by October 2005.
In the meantime, we send fraternal/sororal greetings to all readers in the
southern hemisphere, and may your ranks grow mightily!
D. L.
