Research in Rural Sociology and Development

About Research in Rural Sociology and Development

Overview

Research in Rural Sociology and Development is a long-running edited-volume book series published by Emerald Publishing Limited (United Kingdom) under the ISSN 1057-1922. Although it appears in some directories under journal-style listings, the series is best understood as a scholarly book series rather than a periodical journal: each release is a self-contained edited volume — typically assembled around a single theme — carrying its own ISBN and DOI, with chapters written by researchers in rural sociology and rural studies.

The series occupies a distinctive place in the sociology of rural life. Emerald describes it as a long-established series in the field of rural sociology and rural studies in general, covering a wide range of topics while keeping a distinctly sociological lens on rural transformation. Its remit is not narrowly agricultural economics or rural development policy alone; it is rural sociology, which means the books examine how social relations, communities, institutions and identities in rural areas are shaped by — and in turn shape — processes such as globalisation, migration, welfare reform, food-system restructuring and environmental change.

Understanding this format matters for readers and authors alike. A book series of this type works differently from a journal: there are no issues and no rolling article submissions. Instead, volume editors propose a themed collection, recruit chapter authors, shepherd the chapters through review, and deliver the manuscript to the publisher. Contributors are usually invited or recruited through academic networks, calls for chapters, and professional association meetings such as those of the European Society for Rural Sociology and the International Rural Sociology Association.

The series is distributed through Emerald Insight, the publisher's online platform, and through print-on-demand and library distribution channels. Its volumes are catalogued in major academic library systems and discovery services, and individual chapters carry Crossref DOIs that make them citable in the same way as journal articles. For researchers working on rural change — land use, food systems, rural governance, migration and settlement, rural welfare, gender in rural places — the series offers a concentrated shelf of edited collections that track how the field's central questions have evolved over roughly two decades of publication.

This profile brings together everything that can be verified about the series from official publisher records: its publication details, series editors, aims and scope, selected volumes, indexing, metrics that are publicly available, and guidance for anyone considering proposing or contributing to a volume. Where the publisher has not made a detail public, this profile says so explicitly rather than filling the gap with guesswork.

Aims and Scope

The series' central aim is to advance sociological understanding of rural life in today's globalised societies and economies. Rural sociology as a discipline asks how rural places differ — and do not differ — from urban places in their social organisation, how rurality itself is constructed and contested, and how wider structural forces land in particular localities. The volumes in this series take that agenda forward through case studies, comparative analyses and theoretical interventions.

Emerald's own description of the series emphasises two things: breadth of topic and depth of sociological perspective. Breadth, because the volumes roam across food systems, welfare, gender, migration, governance and regional development; depth, because each contribution is grounded in sustained sociological analysis rather than descriptive reportage.

Thematic areas covered by the series

• Globalisation and rural restructuring: how transnational markets, supply chains and policy regimes reshape rural economies and communities, and how rural actors respond. The volume on globalisation and the time–space reorganisation of agriculture (2011) is representative of this strand.
• Food systems and agriculture: the sociology of farming, food chains and agri-food paradigms, including the volume on agriculture in Mediterranean Europe between old and new paradigms (2013).
• Welfare and rural social policy: how welfare reforms play out in rural places, including comparative perspectives on welfare retrenchment and service access, addressed in the 2010 volume on welfare reform in rural places.
• Gender and rural life: gender regimes, citizen participation and rural restructuring, the subject of the 2007 volume edited by Ildikó Asztalos Morell and Bettina B. Bock.
• Rural–urban and local–global relations: the volume Between the Local and the Global (2006), edited by Terry Marsden and Jonathan Murdoch, captures the series' concern with how rural places are positioned between local identity and global connection.
• Migration, demography and rural communities: population movement and its effects on rural social structure, settlement patterns and labour markets.
• Rural governance and development policy: how states, supranational bodies and local actors govern rural development, and what sociological evaluation can add to policy debate.

The series' strength lies in connecting these themes. A chapter on food supply chains in one volume, for example, shares analytical ground with chapters on migration or welfare in others, because rural sociology treats rural places as nodes where global and local processes meet. Researchers who approach the series with a narrowly disciplinary brief — say, only agricultural economics — may find the sociological framing distinctive; those approaching it from sociology will find familiar theories (structuration, governance, embeddedness, political economy) applied to rural questions.

Publication Details

The irregular frequency deserves emphasis: readers should not expect one volume per calendar year. The series publishes when a volume is ready, which means publication years cluster around the editorial efforts of particular teams. Emerald's records show volumes numbered in sequence (for example, volumes 12, 13, 15, 17 and 19 appearing between 2006 and 2013), with each volume's electronic and print ISBNs listed on the volume page.

Editorial Information

The series is overseen by its series editors, who set the overall direction and work with volume editors on proposals and manuscripts. Emerald lists the current series editors as Apostolos G. Papadopoulos and María Jesús Rivera Escribano.

Each individual volume has its own editor or editorial team, whose names appear on the volume page and its title page. Volume editors are typically established rural sociologists with networks in the field; they define the volume's theme, issue calls for contributions or invite chapters, manage peer review of the chapters, and write the introduction that frames the collection.

Notable volume editors (from official Emerald volume records)

• Alessandro Bonanno and Josefa Salete Barbosa Cavalcanti — editors of Globalization and the Time–Space Reorganization (Volume 17, 2011)
• Dionisio Ortiz-Miranda, Ana Moragues-Faus and Eladio Arnalte-Alegre — editors of Agriculture in Mediterranean Europe: Between Old and New Paradigms (Volume 19, 2013)
• Paul Milbourne — editor of Welfare Reform in Rural Places: Comparative Perspectives (Volume 15, 2010)
• Ildikó Asztalos Morell and Bettina B. Bock — editors of Gender Regimes, Citizen Participation and Rural Restructuring (Volume 13, 2007)
• Terry Marsden and Jonathan Murdoch — editors of Between the Local and the Global (Volume 12, 2006)

Prospective volume editors normally approach the publisher with a proposal describing the theme, the rationale, the prospective contributors and the timetable. Because this is a proposal-driven series rather than a journal with open submissions, the most reliable route into the series is to contact the series editors or Emerald's commissioning team with a well-developed volume concept.

Indexing and Abstracting

Book series are indexed differently from journals, so coverage statements need care. What can be verified for this series:

• Scopus / SCImago: the series is listed in the SCImago database under the subject area Geography, Planning and Development (listed at Q4), with an SJR of 0.108 and an h-index figure in the high teens (third-party metric aggregators report 19). Coverage in Scopus is intermittent rather than continuous — aggregators list coverage years such as 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005–2007, 2009–2017 and 2020 — which reflects Scopus's book-series coverage policy rather than any gap in the series itself.
• Crossref DOIs: every volume and chapter carries a registered DOI under the series prefix 10.1108/rrsd, which means chapters are picked up by Google Scholar, Crossref-linked citation tools and library discovery layers.
• Emerald Insight: all volumes are hosted on the publisher's platform with full chapter-level metadata, abstracts and citation export in common formats (RIS, EndNote, BibTeX, RefWorks and others).
• Library catalogues: volumes are catalogued in WorldCat and national library systems via their ISBNs, so institutional holdings are discoverable through university library search tools.

The series is not listed in the Web of Science Core Collection as a book series, and it has no Journal Impact Factor (Clarivate does not assign JIFs to book series). Citation counts for the series' volumes accrue to individual volumes and chapters in Scopus and Google Scholar rather than to a single title-level metric.

Metrics

Only publicly verifiable figures are reported here; the publisher itself does not advertise citation metrics for the series.

• ISSN: 1057-1922 (print)
• SCImago / Scopus-based h-index: third-party aggregators report an h-index of 19 for the series; this directory's earlier site record listed 21 — small discrepancies of this kind are normal because aggregators compute over different coverage snapshots.
• SJR: 0.108 (SCImago; subject area Geography, Planning and Development, Q4).
• Journal Impact Factor: none — not applicable to book series.

Notable Volumes

The following volumes are verified from official Emerald volume records (each listed with volume number, year and ISBN details as the publisher reports them):

Together these volumes illustrate the series' signature moves: comparative design (Mediterranean Europe; welfare reform across countries), theoretical ambition (time–space reorganisation under globalisation), and attention to agency (gender regimes and citizen participation). Scholars citing the series often draw on the introductory chapters, where volume editors synthesise the contributions and stake out the field's agenda.

Access, Pricing and Open Access

Volumes in this series are published in both print (hardback, typically around 300+ pages) and electronic form, with separate ISBNs for each. Emerald sells volumes individually and to institutions as part of its eBook collections; chapter-level purchase (pay-per-view / "buy this chapter") is also offered on Emerald Insight. Pricing varies by volume and format, so readers should check the current publisher page rather than rely on catalogue figures from third-party booksellers.

There is no author-facing article processing charge for chapters in this series: edited-volume chapters are not open-access journal articles, and contributors do not pay to publish. Whether a given volume or chapter is openly available depends on the publisher's arrangement for that volume — the series' default is subscription and purchase access.

Researchers without institutional access to Emerald Insight have several legitimate routes to the content: interlibrary loan via the volume ISBNs, Google Books previews where available, author self-archived copies where the publisher's policy permits, and citation-only discovery via Crossref and Google Scholar for locating accessible versions.

Submission and Proposal Guidance

Because this is an edited-volume series, "submission" means proposing a volume or being recruited to write a chapter — there is no rolling manuscript submission as with a journal.

Proposing a volume

• Develop the concept: a volume proposal needs a coherent theme, a rationale explaining why the theme matters now, and a sense of the field's gaps it would fill. Series editors will be looking for sociological depth and international or comparative reach.
• Assemble the team: volume proposals are stronger with named prospective contributors or at least a credible recruitment plan. The volume editors carry responsibility for delivering all chapters.
• Contact the series editors or Emerald's commissioning editors: Emerald provides proposal guidance for edited volumes and monographs on its publisher site; the series editors are the substantive first point of contact.
• Expect a review stage: proposals are evaluated by the publisher and usually by external review before a contract is offered.

Contributing a chapter

• Respond to calls for chapters: volume editors circulate calls through academic mailing lists and conferences in rural sociology.
• Match the volume theme: chapters are commissioned to fit a collection's argument; a strong empirical study that does not fit the theme will not be taken on regardless of quality.
• Follow Emerald's author guidelines: formatting, referencing and copyright requirements are set out in the publisher's author resources and in the volume editors' instructions.
• Plan for the timeline: edited volumes commonly take one to three years from proposal to publication, including chapter review and production.

Who Should Read and Use This Series

• Rural sociologists and sociologists of agriculture and food — the core audience, who will find the series' volumes anchoring teaching and literature reviews.
• Researchers in rural development, geography and planning — for the series' treatment of governance, regional development and land-use change.
• Policy researchers — the welfare, governance and food-system volumes are directly relevant to rural policy design and evaluation.
• Graduate students — the volumes work well as seminar texts because each collection maps a debate through multiple empirical cases.
• Librarians — the series is a standing-order candidate for collections supporting sociology, agriculture, geography and development studies.

How to Cite the Series

Individual chapters should be cited as book chapters with the chapter DOI; the volume as an edited book with its ISBN and volume DOI. A chapter citation follows the pattern: Author, A. (Year), "Chapter title", in Editor, E. (Ed.), Volume Title, Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Vol. 19, Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. xx–xx, https://doi.org/10.1108/… The series-level DOI prefix 10.1108/rrsd identifies the series as a whole. Emerald's platform provides one-click citation export in RIS, BibTeX, EndNote and other formats for every chapter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Research in Rural Sociology and Development a journal?

No. It is an edited-volume book series. It carries an ISSN (1057-1922) as serial publications do, but its units of publication are books with their own ISBNs, not journal issues with articles. Authors do not submit manuscripts to an editorial office on a rolling basis; contributions are made as chapters in themed volumes.

How often is it published?

Irregularly. Volumes appear as editorial teams complete them, so there is no fixed annual rhythm. Emerald's records show, for example, volumes numbered 12 through 19 appearing between 2006 and 2013.

Who are the series editors?

Emerald lists Apostolos G. Papadopoulos and María Jesús Rivera Escribano as the series editors.

Does it have an impact factor?

No. Clarivate does not assign Journal Impact Factors to book series. Citation-based indicators that exist for the series (such as an SJR of 0.108 and h-index figures reported by aggregators) come from Scopus/SCImago coverage of the series, which is intermittent.

How can I publish in this series?

Either propose a themed volume to the series editors and Emerald's commissioning team, or respond to a volume editor's call for chapters. There is no direct manuscript submission channel.

Is the content open access?

Generally no — volumes are sold in print and electronic form and accessed via Emerald Insight under subscription or purchase. Check the publisher page for any open selections for a specific volume.

Where can I buy or access the volumes?

Through Emerald Insight (institutional and individual purchase, chapter-level pay-per-view), major academic booksellers, and university libraries via interlibrary loan using the volume ISBNs. Individual chapters are discoverable through their Crossref DOIs.

What fields does it cover?

Rural sociology and rural studies broadly: globalisation and rural restructuring, agri-food systems, welfare and social policy in rural places, gender, migration, rural governance and development — always with a sociological perspective, per the publisher's series description.