Administration & Society: Complete Journal Profile

Overview

Administration & Society is a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the field of public administration. Published by SAGE Publications, it has appeared continuously since 1969, giving it one of the longer publication histories among journals dedicated to the study of government administration and public-sector organization. The journal publishes ten issues per year, a relatively high frequency for a public-administration title, which allows it to carry a substantial annual volume of research articles, essays, and special-issue content.

The journal's core concern is the administration of public affairs: how government agencies, public managers, and administrative institutions operate; how administrative behavior can be studied empirically; and how the theory and practice of public administration relate to broader social, political, and economic contexts. Its readership spans public administration scholars, political scientists, policy analysts, and practitioners interested in evidence-based discussion of administrative questions.

History and publishing background

Administration & Society was established in 1969, a period when the academic study of public administration was expanding rapidly in the United States and internationally. The late 1960s and 1970s saw growing scholarly attention to bureaucratic behavior, organizational theory applied to government, and the political dimensions of administration — themes the journal has carried since its inception.

SAGE Publications, the journal's publisher, is one of the world's largest independent academic publishers with major offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore. Publishing with SAGE gives the journal global distribution through the SAGE Journals online platform, professional copyediting and typesetting, and discoverability across the publisher's discipline hubs in public administration and related social sciences.

The journal's publication frequency of ten issues per year positions it as a high-output title within its field. By comparison, many public administration journals publish quarterly or six times per year. The ten-issue schedule means the journal can accommodate both regular research articles and occasional thematic or special-issue collections without long publication backlogs.

Aims and scope

The journal covers the field of public administration in its broad sense. Typical subject matter includes public management and public-sector organizations; administrative behavior and decision-making; public policy implementation; the relationship between administration and democratic governance; administrative reform and innovation; comparative public administration; and the intersection of administration with politics, law, and society.

Administration & Society welcomes scholarship that connects administrative theory to practice. Its scope embraces both conceptual and theoretical work and empirical research — quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies — that advances understanding of how public administration works and how it might work better. Authors considering the journal should review recent issues on the SAGE platform to assess fit, since editorial emphasis can evolve across volumes.

The journal has periodically organized special-issue calls around timely administrative questions. For example, a special "Perspectives" issue on the implications of a post-Chevron administrative state invited paper proposals, reflecting the journal's interest in the legal and institutional environment of public administration. Such calls demonstrate how the journal tracks developments in administrative law, regulatory practice, and governance debates.

Editorial leadership

According to the official SAGE journal page, the current editor of Administration & Society is Karen Hult of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), USA. Readers should consult the live SAGE page for the most current editorial-team listing, since editorial appointments can change between volumes.

An honesty note on sources: a widely consulted encyclopedia entry names Brian J. Cook (also of Virginia Tech) as editor-in-chief. That entry appears to reflect an earlier editorial period. The publisher's own page — the authoritative source — lists Karen Hult. We report the publisher's listing as current and note the discrepancy so readers can verify directly on the live journal page.

Peer review and publication ethics

SAGE describes the journal's author experience as including rigorous peer review of submitted research, prompt publishing, access to a multidisciplinary audience, and high visibility for global exposure. Authors submitting manuscripts should expect their work to be evaluated by qualified referees before any publication decision.

As a SAGE journal, Administration & Society operates within the publisher's standard publication-ethics framework, and SAGE is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors should consult the journal's submission guidelines on the SAGE platform for specifics on manuscript preparation, reference style, article types, and any requirements regarding research ethics, data availability, or conflict-of-interest disclosure.

Indexing and abstracting

Administration & Society is abstracted and indexed in Scopus and in the Social Sciences Citation Index (part of the Web of Science Core Collection), the two most widely used curated citation databases for the social sciences. Indexing in these services means the journal's articles are discoverable through major library discovery systems and that its citation metrics are tracked by Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports and Elsevier's Scopus-based analytics.

Beyond these core services, researchers can expect the journal to appear in the library catalogs and discovery layers that aggregate SAGE content, and its articles carry CrossRef DOIs, with most-cited and most-read statistics on the SAGE platform computed from CrossRef data.

Citation metrics and rankings (attributed)

The following figures come from secondary directory sources and are attributed rather than stated as publisher-verified facts. According to a widely consulted encyclopedia entry citing the Journal Citation Reports, the journal's 2022 impact factor was 2.3, which placed it 32nd out of 49 journals in the "Public Administration" category. Directory aggregators report additional snapshots: an h-index around 80, a SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) near 1.08, an "impact score" in the mid-3s, and Q1 placement in the Scopus categories of Public Administration and of Sociology and Political Science, with Q2 in Marketing. Coverage history in Scopus is reported as 1969 onward, matching the journal's founding year.

Metrics of this kind are snapshots that change with each database update. They can help authors gauge a journal's citation visibility, but they should be interpreted in context — alongside scope fit, readership, review timelines, and the specific audience an author wants to reach.

Access model and audience

Administration & Society is published as a subscription journal on the SAGE Journals platform, with institutional access typically arranged through library subscriptions and consortia. Authors with funder open-access mandates should check the journal's current open-access options (such as SAGE's open-access publishing routes) on the official journal page, since compliant open-access pathways and any associated charges are set by the publisher and may change.

The journal's audience includes scholars of public administration and public policy, doctoral students in the field, government analysts, and practitioners who follow research on administrative performance, reform, and governance. Its multidisciplinary reach — spanning political science, sociology, management, and law-adjacent administrative topics — is one of the features SAGE highlights for prospective authors.

What the journal publishes

Across its ten annual issues, the journal publishes original research articles that advance knowledge of public administration. Recent content visible on the SAGE platform includes empirical studies of administrative and organizational behavior, work on public-sector leadership and management, and articles engaging contemporary governance debates. The journal also accommodates essays and perspective pieces, including through special-issue calls that invite focused contributions on emerging topics such as the changing legal foundations of the administrative state.

Authors should note that the journal values work with clear relevance to administration and society — research that speaks to how administrative institutions function within, and shape, the societies they serve. Purely technical or discipline-remote manuscripts without an administrative angle are less likely to fit.

Submission guidance

Manuscripts are submitted through the journal's online submission system linked from the official SAGE journal page. Before submitting, authors should read the author guidelines carefully: follow the required formatting, reference style, and article-type specifications exactly, since non-compliant manuscripts can be returned without review. A pre-submission check of scope fit — reading several recent articles and confirming the manuscript's central questions match the journal's public-administration remit — substantially improves the odds of passing initial editorial screening.

Because the journal is indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index and Scopus, publication here satisfies the indexed-publication requirements many universities and funding bodies apply. Authors should nevertheless confirm the journal's current indexing status and any institutional lists (such as national journal rankings) relevant to their own evaluation context before submitting.

Frequently asked questions

What is the ISSN of Administration & Society?

The print ISSN is 0095-3997 and the online ISSN is 1552-3039.

Who publishes Administration & Society?

SAGE Publications.

Who is the current editor?

The official SAGE journal page lists Karen Hult (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA) as editor. Verify on the live page, as appointments change.

How often is it published?

Ten issues per year.

Is it peer-reviewed?

Yes. SAGE describes the journal's evaluation as rigorous peer review.

Is it indexed in Web of Science and Scopus?

Yes — in the Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science) and in Scopus.

What is its impact factor?

A widely consulted encyclopedia entry, citing the Journal Citation Reports, reports a 2022 impact factor of 2.3 (rank 32 of 49 in Public Administration). This is an attributed directory figure, not a publisher statement; consult the current Journal Citation Reports for the latest value.

Where do I submit a manuscript?

Through the online submission system linked from the official SAGE journal page (journals.sagepub.com/home/aas).

The journal's place in public administration scholarship

To understand what Administration & Society contributes, it helps to place it within the landscape of public administration journals. The field's flagship outlets include generalist titles such as Public Administration Review, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and Governance, alongside more specialized or regional journals. Administration & Society occupies a distinctive position: it is a generalist public administration journal with a long continuous run, a broad international readership, and an editorial tradition that welcomes both theoretical development and empirical investigation.

The journal's title itself signals its intellectual program. "Administration" points to the organized activity of governing — bureaucracies, agencies, public managers, street-level officials, and the routines through which policy becomes action. "Society" points outward: administration does not happen in a vacuum but within political systems, economies, legal orders, and cultures that shape what administrators can do and what citizens expect of them. Scholarship in the journal therefore tends to connect the internal workings of public organizations with their external environments, asking how administrative institutions both reflect and reshape the societies they serve.

Over more than five decades, the questions animating the field have shifted — from classic concerns with bureaucratic efficiency and the politics–administration dichotomy, through the new public management reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, to contemporary debates about network governance, digital government, public-sector innovation, collaborative administration, and the democratic accountability of unelected officials. A journal publishing ten issues a year across this whole span accumulates a deep archive that mirrors the field's evolution, making its back catalog a useful resource for anyone tracing how administrative thought has changed.

Scope areas in detail

Within the broad public-administration remit, the journal's pages have historically covered several recurring clusters of questions. Organizational behavior in the public sector — how public employees are motivated, how leadership functions in government agencies, how organizational culture shapes performance — is a staple. Public management research on topics such as performance measurement, strategic planning in government, and the management of public–private collaborations also fits naturally.

A second cluster concerns the political and institutional environment of administration: relations between elected officials and career administrators, the role of administrative discretion, accountability mechanisms, transparency and anti-corruption efforts, and the legal frameworks — including administrative law — within which agencies operate. The journal's recent special-issue interest in the post-Chevron administrative state illustrates how it engages the legal foundations of administrative power.

A third cluster is comparative and international: how administrative systems differ across countries, what travels and what does not when reforms are borrowed across borders, and how global pressures — from fiscal austerity to climate adaptation to digital transformation — reshape public administration worldwide. The journal's multidisciplinary audience, which SAGE highlights as a publishing benefit, reflects the fact that these questions draw on political science, sociology, organization theory, economics, and law.

A fourth cluster addresses the citizen side of administration: public trust in government, citizen participation in administrative processes, co-production of public services, equity and representation in bureaucracy, and the distributive consequences of administrative decisions. Research on representative bureaucracy — whether and how the demographic composition of public workforces affects policy outcomes — exemplifies the journal's interest in connecting administrative structures to societal outcomes.

Reading the journal: what recent content looks like

The SAGE platform's browse features — most recently published articles, most-read articles of the last six months, and most-cited articles of the last three years (computed from CrossRef data) — give readers a live picture of the journal's current preoccupations. Contributors whose work appears in these listings include scholars working on public management, organizational behavior, and governance topics, reflecting the journal's empirical core. Prospective authors are well advised to study these listings alongside full recent issues: the fastest way to judge fit is to see what the journal has actually published in the last two to three years and to position a new manuscript in explicit conversation with that work.

The journal also tracks article-level attention through Altmetric scores, highlighting work that generates discussion beyond the academy. For authors, this is a reminder that the journal values research with visible relevance — work that speaks not only to specialists but to broader debates about how government works.

Editorial process and what authors should know

While the journal does not publish its acceptance rate or average review times on the public-facing SAGE page, SAGE's author-facing materials emphasize rigorous peer review and prompt publishing. In practice, authors submitting to a ten-issue-per-year journal can generally expect a steadier editorial pipeline than at quarterly titles, though review quality and timelines still depend on referee availability and manuscript complexity.

Manuscripts typically move through an initial editorial screening — where scope fit and basic quality are assessed — followed by double-anonymous or single-anonymous peer review by subject experts, depending on the journal's current policy. Authors should check the live submission guidelines for the applicable review model, word limits, abstract requirements, and reference formatting. As with any SAGE journal, authors retain certain rights under the publication agreement, and those selecting an open-access route should confirm the applicable license (commonly a Creative Commons license) and any article-processing charge with the publisher before submission.

Special-issue proposals are a notable feature of the journal's editorial life. The call for a "Perspectives" issue on the post-Chevron administration, with proposals due in 2024, shows the journal actively soliciting focused collections on emerging questions. Scholars with a coherent set of contributions around a timely administrative theme may find proposing a special issue a productive route, though such proposals are themselves competitively evaluated.

For librarians and institutional subscribers

Institutional access to Administration & Society is typically arranged through SAGE's library subscription programs, including subject collections in political science, public administration, and the social sciences. The journal's long backfile — extending to 1969 — is available through the SAGE Journals online archive, making it a candidate for perpetual-access or archival licensing where libraries seek deep historical coverage of the field. Librarians evaluating the title can point to its indexing in the Social Sciences Citation Index and Scopus, its Q1 placements in public administration categories in Scopus-based rankings, and its steady ten-issue annual output as indicators of a core holding for public-affairs collections.

Fields not publicly disclosed

The following were not verifiable from public sources and are left blank rather than invented: the current full editorial-board roster beyond the named editor; acceptance rates and typical review turnaround times; any article-processing-charge schedule for open-access options; and the journal's current-year Clarivate impact factor beyond the attributed 2022 snapshot above. Authors should confirm these directly with the journal or publisher before submitting.

Sources consulted

Official publisher journal page (SAGE Journals, journals.sagepub.com/home/aas) for editor, publisher, platform, and author-facing information; encyclopedia entry for founding year, frequency, ISSNs, indexing, and the attributed 2022 impact-factor figure; directory aggregators (Resurchify, ResearchBite, SciRev) for attributed bibliometric snapshots. All prose is original paraphrase; no source text was copied.