Focus and Scope

Surveillance & Society exists to:

• publish innovative and transdisciplinary work on surveillance;
• encourage understanding of approaches to surveillance in different academic disciplines;
• promote understanding of surveillance in wider society;
• encourage policy and political debate about surveillance.

Surveillance & Society is the premier journal of surveillance studies.

Surveillance & Society publishes rigorously peer-reviewed academic work of the highest quality.

Surveillance & Society is a free-to-access electronic journal.

Surveillance & Society charges no fees for publication.

Surveillance & Society encourages submissions that could not be published in conventional paper journals such as html, photographic, video and new media work.

Section Policies

Editorial

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Articles

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Review Articles

Re

Editors

• Laura Huey

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Opinion

Editors

• Laura Huey

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Interviews

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Book Reviews

Editors

• Chiara Fonio
• Ben Goold

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Artistic Presentations

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Presentation

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Open Section

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Views

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Poetry

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Conceptualising CCTV

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Governance and Regulation

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Case Studies

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Revisiting Foucault

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

The Urban Panopticon

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Resistance / Subversion

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

After Panopticism

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Debate

Shorter moderated articles responding to a specific theme, question or challenge

Editors

• Laura Huey

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Research Notes

Brief reports on work in progress

Editors

• Laura Huey

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

>P>All submissions and referees' reports are fully anonymous, and known only to the Editors.

 

The final decision on any submission rests with the Editors.

All submissions to Surveillance & Society will be subject to the rigorous quality standards:

• Articles are reviewed by two reviewers who will be either full-time academic faculty with a specialism in surveillance studies and/or the particular field in question, or an otherwise recognised expert. In the case of disagreement, a third reviewer of similar standing will be appointed. The initial reviewing process will take no more than three months. We would generally prefer to publish articles within a year of submission and usually less.
• Review Articles will be reviewed by one external referee, who will be an expert in the particular field. The review process will take no more than three months. We would generally prefer to publish review articles within 8 months of submission.
• Opinion Pieces and Responses will be moderated by the Editors for legally and ethically acceptable content only. The moderation process will take no more than one month. We would generally prefer to publish Opinion Pieces and Responses within 4 months of submission.
• Book Reviews will be moderated by the Book Review Editor. The moderation process will take no more than one month. We would generally prefer to publish Book Reviews within 4 months of submission.
• For Artistic Presentations, please contact the Editor-in-Chief

Publication Frequency

Quarterly (March, June, September, December)

Open Access Policy

Surveillance & Society provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. However please also see our copyright statement. Surveillance & Society actively encourages authors to deposit a copy of their paper in their institution's Open Access Repository.

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Surveillance & Society Annual Paper Prizes

The Surveillance Studies Network will award up to 4 prizes of £100 each for papers that demonstrate exceptional promise in Surveillance Studies.

Rules

1. To be eligible for the SSN Annual Paper Prize, all authors must:
   • be paid-up members of the SSN;
   • be within 5 years after completion of a PhD on submission of the paper;
   • specify entry for the prize on submission of the paper;
2. To be eligible for the SSN Annual Paper Prize, your paper must:
   • be published in Surveillance & Society (S&S);
   • be an 'Article' (i.e. a fully peer-reviewed piece conforming to the guidelines on the S&S website).
     • Adjudication
       • will be carried out by the Editorial Board of S&S, or a sub-committee of no less than 3 members appointed for this purpose by Editorial Board;
       • the judges will meet annually in person or online, and the minutes of their meeting will be available to all members of the SSN,and subject to approval at the following Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the SSN;
       • the judges will award up to four prizes of £100 annually (the numbers and amount of the prizes will be subject to review at the SSN AGM);
       • the judges' decision will be final;
       • the judges will not enter into any personal correspondance with authors.

Metrics

We don't support the march of metrics and crude counts of the impact of scholarship, however we recognise that many of you are required to provide such information. So here are some facts and figures:

Impact Factor (2011)

1.33

(up from 1.11 in 2010, 1.10 in 2009 and 0.75 in 2008)

If we were to be included by Thomson Reuters, 1.33 would put us above Identity in the Information Society (IDIS), New Media and Society, Media, Culture and Society and Social Problems, about equal to Sociology, Social Forces and Sociological Quarterly, and just below the British Journal of Sociology, Urban Studies and Theory, Culture and Society.

What this means:

This impact factor was calculated using the same method used by Thompson Reuters, but based on Google Scholar figures: number of citations (in any peer-reviewed journal articles, in 2011) of peer-reviewed articles published by Surveillance & Society in the two previous years, 2009 and 2010, divided by the total number of peer-reviewed articles published by Surveillance & Society in those two years.

Preliminary figures indicate that our impact factor will be similar in 2012.

 

h5-index

We have a Google Scholar h5-index, which relates to the number of citations for articles published in the last 5 years, of 11. See here.

 

Acceptance / Rejection rates (2011)

Crude acceptance / rejection rate (from initial submission): 59% / 41%

Acceptance / rejection rate of articles sent out for review: 72% / 18%

Articles accepted without revisions or resubmission required: 0%

What these figures mean:

We operate a two-stage reviewing process. First editorial sorting to remove any clearly unpublishable or inappropriate articles. Secondly, high quality double-blind peer reviewing, which always results in suggested revisions or full resubmission. We almost never publish a piece as it is, or with only minor corrections. However we also receive a relatively high quality of submissions in the first place.

Indexing and Directories

Surveillance & Society is indexed by EBCSO SocINDEX™ (and Academic Search™), and both CSA Sociological Abstracts and CSA Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, Scopus, .Google Scholar, the International Bibliography of Social Sciences (IBSS), and the  Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

We are also listed by the SocioSite, and OJS journals.

Top 25 Most Highly-Cited Articles

Top 25 most highly cited pieces in Surveillance & Society to the end of 2012 (previous position in 2010) are:

1. (-) Christian Fuchs (2011) Web 2.0, Prosumption, and Surveillance (18 citations/year)
2. (2) Steve Mann, Jason Nolan and Barry Wellman (2003) Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments. (16)
3. (3) Gary T. Marx (2002) What's New About the "New Surveillance"? Classifying for Change and Continuity.(13.5)
4. (1) Peter Adey (2003) Secured and Sorted Mobilities: Examples from the Airport. (11)
5. (4) Michalis Lianos (2003) Social Control After Foucault / Le Contrôle Social après Foucault. (10.5)
6. (5) Trine N. Fotel and Thyra U. Thomsen (2004) The Surveillance of Children's Mobility (10.5)
7. (9) Mark B. Andrejevic (2004) The Work of Watching One Another: Lateral Surveillance, Risk, and Governance (10)
8. (8) Bart Simon (2005) The Return of Panopticism: Supervision, Subjection and the New Surveillance (10)
9. (16) Hille Koskela (2004) Webcams, TV Shows and Mobile phones: Empowering Exhibitionism (9.75)
10. (17) Hille Koskela (2003) ‘Cam Era’ — the contemporary urban Panopticon. (9.5)
11. (n/a) Clive Norris, Mike McCahill and David Wood (2004) Editorial: The Growth of CCTV (9.5)
12. (12) Gavin J.D. Smith (2004) Behind the Screens: Examining Constructions of Deviance and Informal Practices among CCTV Control Room Operators in the UK (9)
13. (18) Lucas Introna and David Wood (2004) Picturing Algorithmic Surveillance: The Politics of Facial Recognition Systems (8)
14. (13) Paulo Vaz and Fernanda Bruno (2003) Paulo Vaz and Fernanda Bruno — Types of Self-Surveillance: from abnormality to individuals ‘at risk’. (7.75)
15. (-) Colin Bennett (2011) In Defense of Privacy: The Concept and the Regime (7.5)
16. (10) Majid Yar (2003) Panoptic Power and the Pathologisation of Vision: Critical Reflections on the Foucauldian Thesis. (7)
17. (n/a) Felix Stalder (2002) Privacy is not the Antidote to Surveillance (6.5)
18. (20) Sean P. Hier (2003) Probing the Surveillant Assemblage: on the dialectics of surveillance practices as processes of social control. (6)
19. (7) Torin Monahan and Tyler Wall (2007) Somatic Surveillance: Corporeal Control through Information Networks (6)
20. (15) C. William R. Webster (2009) CCTV Policy in the UK: Reconsidering the Evidence Base' (6)
21. (19) Stuart Elden (2003) Plague, Panopticon, Police (5.75)
22. (n/a) David Wood (2003) Editorial: Foucault and Panopticism Revisited (5.5)
23. (6) Aaron K. Martin, Rosamunde E. Van Brakel and Daniel J. Bernhard (2009) Understanding resistance to digital surveillance: Towards a multi-disciplinary, multi-actor framework (5.25)
24. (14) Anne Marie Kenner (2008) Securing the Elderly Body: Dementia, Surveillance, and the Politics of "Aging in Place (5)
25. (-) Gavin Smith (2007) Exploring Relations between Watchers and Watched in Control(led) Systems: Strategies and Tactics (4.5)

What these figures mean: for any kind of piece published in S&S, these are total citatations in any format for the time period since publication until the end of 2012, divided by the number of years since publication - to arrive at a simple average citations/year figure. This is not a formal 'Impact Factor', it's a bit of fun.

h5-index articles

Christian also tops Google Scholar's h5-index chart of the articles that garnered most citations for us in the last 5 years. See more here.