American Journal of Cultural Sociology

American Journal of Cultural Sociology is published by Springer Nature and is in Zone 3 of Sociology in the CAS Journal Ranking (2025 upgraded edition). By OpenAlex counts of its recent articles, its largest topics are Social and Cultural Dynamics, Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice and Migration, Refugees, and Integration, together about 37.8% of its articles. Its main subfields are Sociology and Political Science. (generated from OpenAlex topic counts and CAS ranking data)

From modernity's onset, social theorists have been announcing the death of meaning, at the hands of market forces, impersonal power, scientific expertise, and the pervasive forces of rationalization and industrialization. Yet, cultural structures and processes have proved surprisingly resilient. Relatively autonomous patterns of meaning - sweeping narratives and dividing codes, redolent if elusive symbols, fervent demands for purity and cringing fears of pollution - continue to exert extraordinary effects on action and institutions. They affect structures of inequality, racism and marginality, gender and sexuality, crime and punishment, social movements, market success and citizen incorporation. New and old new media project continuous symbolic reconstructions of private and public life. As contemporary sociology registered the continuing robustness of cultural power, the new discipline of cultural sociology was born. How should these complex cultural processes be conceptualized? What are the best empirical ways to study social meaning? Even as debates rage around these field-specific theoretical and methodological questions, a broadly cultural sensibility has spread into every arena of sociological study, illuminating how struggles over meaning affect the most disparate processes of contemporary social life. Bringing together the best of these studies and debates, the American Journal of Cultural Sociology (AJCS) publicly crystallizes the cultural turn in contemporary sociology. By providing a common forum for the many voices engaged in meaning-centered social inquiry, the AJCS will facilitate communication, sharpen contrasts, sustain clarity, and allow for periodic condensation and synthesis of different perspectives. The journal aims to provide a single space where cultural sociologists can follow the latest developments and debates within the field. The American Journal of Cultural Sociology is indexed by SCOPUS, a database listing journals and country scientific indicators and rankings, and is also indexed in Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science Core Collection, in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). SSCI provides searchable author abstracts for the leading journals in 55 social science disciplines, with a comprehensive backfile of cited reference data from 1900 to the present. AJCS’s inclusion in the SSCI provides greater discoverability for the journal and allows for real-time insight into the citation performance. We welcome high-quality submissi

From the journal's Aims & Scope

Research area (LetPub): SOCIOLOGY

Editorial board by country: none in mainland China; most named United States 59, United Kingdom 10, Canada 3, Israel 3, Hong Kong, China 2 (94 members with a country) Editorial board ↗Publisher website · 2026-09-29

CAS Journal Ranking

Database indexing

SSCIScopusLetPub

International journal early-warning lists: not listed in any editionLetPub

Indexing the journal's website claims

SCIEWeb of ScienceCurrent ContentsPublisher website

Other: Google Scholar, EBSCO, ProQuest, Dimensions, CNKI, Baidu, Naver, OCLC, Portico, CLOCKSS

As the journal's website lists them, not checked against each database; for Web of Science editions the records above apply.

Editions, and major and minor categories, are shown separately and never merged into one zone; check which edition your institution uses before you submit or report.

Impact

Impact factor

1.21LetPub · 2026-09-13

Impact factor (publisher) 2025

1.3Publisher website · 2026-09-29

5-year impact factor (publisher) 2025

2.1Publisher website · 2026-09-29

CiteScore 2026-06

2.6LetPub · 2026-09-13

SJR 2026-06

0.48LetPub · 2026-09-13

SNIP 2026-06

1.58LetPub · 2026-09-13

h-index

36OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

i10-index

113OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

2-year mean citedness

1.46OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

Self-citation rate

15.4%LetPub · 2026-09-13

Share of gold OA articles

32.89%LetPub · 2026-09-13

Volume

Articles per year

33LetPub · 2026-09-13

Downloads per year (publisher) 2025

151,400Publisher website · 2026-09-29

Sources count differently and were observed at different times, so each source's own value is kept; "publisher" marks figures from the journal's website.

Other sources

Submission to first decision

6 daysPublisher website · 2026-09-29

Peer review

Double-anonymous peer reviewPublisher website · model-extracted

Community reports come from authors' own submissions (confidence 0.5) and are not a promise from the journal; for publisher figures, the journal's own definitions apply.

A hybrid journal charges the APC only when the author chooses open access; publishing under the subscription model is usually free.

The journal's website is authoritative for fees; sources were observed at different times and each keeps its own value, without averaging.

Excerpts are quoted from the journal's website; "model summary" lines are written by Workers AI and checked against the text. The journal's website is authoritative.

Publisher

Springer Nature

Frequency

4 issues per year

ISSN

2049-7113

Electronic ISSN

2049-7121

Latest issue on the website

Volume 14, Issue 3 (September 2026)

Official links

• Journal homepage ↗OpenAlex
• Submission system ↗Publisher website
• Author guidelines ↗LetPub
• Special issues ↗Publisher website