Further development and consolidation of the open access journal "Sociology and Sustainability" (SuN)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Matthias Grundmann
• Subject Area: Sociological Theory
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 490954504

So far, sustainability is a research field that is dominated by the natural sciences and other technically or economically oriented disciplines. At the same time, perspectives on and mechanisms of the transformation towards a sustainable society are, by nature, social topics. They require the expertise of the social sciences regarding the reflexive and problem-oriented research of sustainability-practices and -discourses and the transfer of scientific knowledge about sustainability to the social practices. Until recently, the sustainability-discourse within the social sciences in the German-speaking part of Europe has been fragmented over different journals without a specific sustainability focus. The sociology lacked a platform for a discipline-specific sustainability discourse over the whole range of the sociological topics and theories. Challenged by this desideratum the Working Group Community- and Sustainability-Research [Arbeitskreis Gemeinschafts- und Nachhaltigkeitsforschung] at the Institute for Sociology at Muenster University established the open-access-journal “Sociology and Sustainability – Contributions to the Socio-Ecological Transformation-Research “ [Soziologie und Nachhaltigkeit – Beiträge zur sozial-ökologischen Transformationsforschung] (SuN) in the year 2015. The journal's objective is to support the sustainability-discourse in sociology and related disciplines, to include the pluralism of sociological theoretical traditions and to connect empirical social research with recent developments in the sustainability discourse and thus generate high-quality scientific open access contributions.The aim of the project is firstly to optimize the existing work processes of the SuN by building up new resources. Secondly, a modular concept of science communication will be implemented, which aims to fully depict a classic journal in digital space and to address different publics. Thirdly, a network for the editorial offices of mainly publisher-independent, social science OJS journals in German-speaking countries will be established to enable an exchange on the challenges and best practices in the field of scientific open access journals.

• DFG Programme: Science Communication, Research Data, eResearch (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Björn Wendt