Journal of Methods and Measurement in the Social Sciences

About Journal of Methods and Measurement in the Social Sciences

Journal of Methods and Measurement in the Social Sciences: A Full Profile

The Journal of Methods and Measurement in the Social Sciences, shortened by its editors to JMM, is an online, peer-reviewed scholarly journal about how social research should be designed, measured and analysed. Its electronic ISSN is 2159-7855, and its publisher is the University of Arizona Libraries in the United States. It has been published since 2010 and appears twice a year. Unlike a subject journal that publishes findings about a particular population or policy, JMM publishes work whose main contribution is methodological: a better question, a better design, a better measure, a clearer analysis, or a hard-won lesson about what went wrong in a study and how others can avoid the same mistake. That single distinction explains almost everything about the journal, from its article sections to its flexible attitude to length and format.

Identity matters for this title because its name is descriptive and could be confused with other methods journals. The record on JournalsWorld carries ISSN 2159-7855 and the University of Arizona Libraries as publisher, and the research for this profile was pinned to that combination. The journal's home is the University of Arizona library publishing platform, and its Directory of Open Access Journals listing gives the same publisher, country, language and ISSN. Any methods journal with a different ISSN or publisher, however similar its name sounds, is a different publication, and its metrics or policies must not be applied to JMM.

Publisher, History and Publishing Model

JMM is supported by the University of Arizona Library, a fact the journal states in its contributor guidance and repeats across its published material. Library publishing is a distinctive model in scholarly communication. The library provides the publishing platform and continuity, while scholars provide editorial and peer-review labour. The journal states plainly that there are no charges for publication or access. Readers pay nothing, and authors pay nothing. The Directory of Open Access Journals confirms the model in its own terms: the journal began publishing in open access in 2010, charges no article processing fees, and has an average reported period of about twenty-six weeks from submission to publication. That slower, twice-yearly rhythm suits a methods journal whose papers are often long, technical and revision-intensive; it is not trying to be a rapid-publication outlet.

The journal started in 2010, with volume 1 in that year recorded in library catalogues, and it has continued as an online-only title. Online-only publication shapes its editorial philosophy. The editors note that, because the journal is online, there is no limit on appendices, and they allow themselves flexibility about article structure where extra explanation improves understanding. That is a meaningful advantage for methodological work, where the detail that makes a procedure reproducible, a simulation credible or a measurement decision defensible often lives in appendices, supplementary examples and extended worked illustrations that print journals would cut for space.

The Directory of Open Access Journals records the licence as CC BY-NC-ND, notes that the author retains unrestricted copyright and publishing rights, and lists digital archiving through PKP PN and Portico, with DOI as the permanent article identifier. The combination is worth pausing on. Author retention of unrestricted rights is unusually author-friendly and differs from journals that ask authors to transfer rights or accept narrower reuse terms. The no-derivatives element of the licence, however, limits how others may adapt the published work, so authors and readers should still read the current licence wording on the journal site rather than assuming that retained copyright and the article licence mean the same thing for every reuse.

Mission: Improving How Research Is Done

The editors' own explanation of the journal's purpose, paraphrased here, is that existing outlets did not exhaust the possibilities for discussing methodology, and JMM was created to provide a dedicated place for that discussion. Methodology is conceived broadly. It includes the philosophical foundations of social science, research design, measurement and data analysis. A paper does not need a new substantive finding about the world to belong in JMM; it needs a contribution to how researchers find things out. The editors also signal what is less likely to fit: a purely statistical paper, for example a derivation of a new error term or fit index with no wider discussion of research practice, is described as probably not appropriate. That boundary is helpful. JMM is a social-science methods journal, not a mathematical statistics journal, and its readers expect a connection to the conduct of empirical social research.

Within that mission, the journal says it wants to advance research practice by describing new procedures, widening the application of existing methods, clarifying problems, proposing new ways of thinking about a methodological issue, and reviewing the usefulness of established methods where the review reaches conclusions that could improve practice. Those aims explain the journal's openness to instructional writing. A clear, well-tested explanation of a technique that many researchers misuse can be as valuable to this readership as a novel estimator, and JMM is one of the relatively few journals that says so explicitly in its structure.

Scope and Article Sections

JMM's contributor guidance organises submissions into recognisable sections, and choosing the right section is part of submitting well. Full-length theoretical and empirical manuscripts are the core research articles. They address research methods, research design, measurement or data analysis, and the guidance gives a typical scale of about twenty pages, single-spaced, while advising authors to consult the editor before submitting an unusually long manuscript. Because the journal is online, appendices are not limited in the way print would require, which lets authors separate a readable main argument from technical supporting material.

The Nuggets section exists to explain and demonstrate methodological, statistical and research techniques. Its suggested topics in the guidance include cluster randomised designs, propensity scores, software demonstrations and adaptive sampling designs, and its papers are expected to be substantial teaching pieces, roughly ten to twenty pages, single-spaced. A good Nugget does not merely summarise a textbook chapter; it demonstrates a technique on a recognisable problem, shows the decisions a researcher must make, and leaves the reader able to apply or judge the technique more confidently. Notes are shorter pieces that address a research, methodological or statistical issue that can be covered in about nine pages, single-spaced. There is no minimum length for a short research note provided it makes a significant point clearly. That last condition is the editorial test: brevity is welcome, triviality is not.

Two later sections give JMM much of its personality. Cheap Lessons publishes brief articles that report problems and deficiencies encountered in research: cases available for study were misestimated, a data-collection approach did not work, or another misstep consumed time and resources. The rationale is that such failures are rarely described in public, so successive researchers repeat them. A Cheap Lessons paper turns an individual project's setback into shared methodological knowledge, and it needs honesty, specifics and a transferable lesson, not self-deprecation for entertainment. Study Protocols are detailed protocols submitted for rigorous peer review before or alongside the conduct of a study. Publishing a protocol exposes design, measurement and analysis choices to scrutiny while they can still be improved or, at minimum, publicly fixed, which supports transparency and reduces selective reporting later. The journal also welcomes how-to and instructional articles and brief reports or commentaries alongside these sections, as its mission statement confirms.

Topics That Belong in JMM

Research design topics include experimental and quasi-experimental design, sampling, including adaptive sampling, cluster randomised designs, causal inference strategies such as propensity scores, longitudinal and survey design, and the planning mistakes that Cheap Lessons exists to document. Measurement topics include construct definition, scale development and validation, reliability and validity in social-science settings, and the practical consequences of measuring a variable one way rather than another. Data-analysis topics include the applied use and interpretation of statistical methods in social research, software demonstrations that teach a method rather than advertise a product, and reviews that compare methods on evidence rather than habit. Philosophical and foundational topics include how researchers formulate questions, what counts as explanation in social science, and how methodological choices embed assumptions about the phenomena under study. In every case, the substantive setting can vary widely, because the editors state that the content domain of an article is generally not itself the deciding consideration; the methodological contribution is.

Editorial Approach and Peer Review

The Directory of Open Access Journals records double anonymous peer review for JMM. Authors and reviewers are not identified to each other, and authors should prepare manuscripts accordingly, following the journal's current submission instructions for anonymisation. Study protocols are explicitly described by the journal as sent for rigorous peer review, which underlines that protocol publication is not a repository deposit; it is editorially assessed scholarship. The editors also set an expectation about writing and reasoning: flexibility about form does not mean relaxed standards. The journal may not insist on the conventional structure and length of a typical article, but it expects argument, evidence and exposition to be rigorous, and it does not encourage long-windedness for its own sake. Extra length must earn its place by improving understanding.

That editorial stance has practical consequences. Authors should not submit a standard empirical paper and hope the methods section will carry it; the methods must be the contribution. Conversely, authors should not hide a strong methodological contribution inside a substantive paper aimed at another journal. Reframing is legitimate only when it is genuine: the question, literature, analysis and discussion must actually centre on method, measurement, design or analysis, and the substantive example should be presented as the vehicle for the methodological point.

Open Access, Fees, Rights and Preservation

JMM is free to read and free to publish in, supported by its university library. For authors without grant funding for article processing charges, and for readers outside well-funded institutions, that is a substantial benefit, and it is verified by both the journal's own statements and its DOAJ listing. There is no subscription barrier and no author fee barrier. The reported average of about twenty-six weeks from submission to publication in DOAJ should be treated as a planning guide, not a guarantee, and authors working to a thesis, grant or job-market deadline should allow for revision time beyond that average. The twice-yearly publication pattern also means acceptance and appearance in an issue are not the same event; authors should ask the editor, at acceptance, how scheduling will work for their paper.

Preservation is handled through recognised archiving arrangements recorded in DOAJ, PKP PN and Portico, and articles receive DOIs. Those details matter for a small library-published journal, because they answer the legitimate question of what happens to the scholarly record over the long term. The answer, on verified facts, is that articles are not left solely on a single website; they are held in preservation systems designed for exactly that purpose.

Indexing and Metrics: A Careful Account

JMM is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, which authors can verify by searching its ISSN there. In preparing this profile, no official Clarivate Journal Impact Factor for this title was verified, and no Scopus-based CiteScore or SCImago quartile matching this ISSN and publisher was verified, so none is stated here. That is not a criticism of the journal. Methods scholarship is often cited slowly and used in teaching and practice in ways citation databases capture poorly, and a specialist, no-fee, library-published journal competes on usefulness and fit rather than on headline metrics. But authors whose institutions impose a named-database requirement must check that requirement directly, by ISSN, in the database concerned, before submitting, rather than assuming that open-access listing in DOAJ satisfies every institutional rule. It satisfies some and not others, and only the author's own institution can say which applies.

How to Submit Well

Begin with the Guide for Contributors on the official journal site and the editors' statement of purpose. Decide the section first: full-length article, Nugget, Note, Cheap Lesson or Study Protocol. Write to that section's purpose and expected scale, and contact the editor before submitting anything unusually long, as the guidance requests. Make the methodological contribution explicit in the title, abstract and opening pages; a JMM reviewer should never have to guess why the paper is in a methods journal. Show working: include the examples, comparisons, simulations, appendices or protocol detail that let readers evaluate the claim, using the online format's generous appendix allowance where it helps. For a Cheap Lesson, describe what was planned, what happened, what it cost and what you would do differently, with enough candour that another team can recognise the trap in its own project. For a protocol, write as if reviewers will hold the eventual study to the document, because that accountability is the point of publishing it.

After submission, allow for the journal's measured pace, respond to reviews in full, and remember that instructional clarity is part of the review criteria in practice: a technically correct paper that its intended readers cannot follow has not achieved the journal's purpose. On publication, use the DOI in citations and take advantage of the rights position recorded for the journal by checking, and then following, the current licence and copyright wording when depositing or reusing your own work.

Who Should Consider JMM

JMM suits social-science researchers, methodologists, measurement specialists, statistically minded practitioners and doctoral educators whose contribution is about research practice itself. It is especially suitable for work that other journals find hard to place: a rigorous post-mortem on a failed design, a teaching demonstration of a technique, a protocol that deserves scrutiny before data collection ends, or a measurement discussion that crosses substantive fields. It is less suitable for authors who need a fast decision, a high headline metric, or a primarily substantive audience for findings about a particular topic. Judged on its verified record, JMM is a durable, university-supported, no-fee open-access journal with a distinctive and useful editorial idea: that how social science is done deserves a journal of its own.

Teaching Value and Long-Term Influence

A methods journal earns part of its influence in classrooms and supervision meetings rather than in citation counts alone. JMM's structure is unusually well suited to teaching. A Nuggets demonstration can be set as reading for a doctoral seminar, worked through in a methods laboratory and compared with the way a textbook treats the same technique, because the paper is expected to show decisions and examples rather than compress everything into a result. A Note that makes one significant point cleanly can start a focused discussion about a common error in survey design or analysis. A Cheap Lessons article gives supervisors a way to talk about failure honestly with new researchers, using a published case rather than an anecdote, and showing that a misestimated sample, a fieldwork approach that collapsed or a measurement choice that proved unworkable is a source of knowledge when it is documented carefully. Study Protocols, in turn, can be used to teach design before results exist, training students to evaluate questions, measures and analysis plans on their merits rather than being swayed by whether findings turned out striking.

That teaching role also explains why the journal's lack of a headline citation metric should be weighed carefully. A paper that changes how hundreds of researchers run a cluster randomised study, report a propensity-score analysis or design a measurement instrument may shape practice for years, including in work that never cites it because the lesson has become part of a course or a lab routine. Authors who care about that kind of influence, and whose institutions allow them to value it, will understand JMM's proposition immediately. Authors who need a metric for a specific promotion rule should still verify their institution's database requirement separately, as this profile advises, but they should not mistake the absence of a verified headline metric for an absence of readership or purpose. The journal's preservation in Portico and PKP PN, its DOI registration and its university library backing are the infrastructure that lets that slower, practice-based influence accumulate over time.

There is also a cumulative argument for the journal's section mix. Full-length articles build the methodological literature, Nuggets make it usable, Notes correct and sharpen it, Cheap Lessons record where it failed in the field, and Protocols fix intentions before outcomes are known. Together those forms cover the full life of a method, from idea to application to post-mortem, in a way a journal publishing only conventional research articles cannot. A prospective author choosing a section is therefore also choosing where in that life their contribution sits, and naming that position clearly in the opening pages is one of the simplest ways to help an editor place the paper.

Sources used for this profile: the journal's official site and Guide for Contributors on the University of Arizona library publishing platform, the editors' published statement of purpose, and the Directory of Open Access Journals listing for ISSN 2159-7855. Metrics that could not be verified from official sources are not stated as facts in this profile.