Journal profile
Secrecy and Society
ISSN 2377-6188 · SJSU Scholarworks · United States
Secrecy and Society: diamond open access (no APC); no APC; review about 12 weeks (community reports); 8 articles in 2025.
Scope
Aims, scope and focus
Secrecy and Society is published by SJSU Scholarworks. By OpenAlex counts of its recent articles, its largest topics are Intelligence, Security, War Strategy, Law, Rights, and Freedoms and Misinformation and Its Impacts, together about 43.3% of its articles. Its main subfields are Political Science and International Relations and Sociology and Political Science. (generated from OpenAlex topic counts and CAS ranking data)
Secrecy and Society is an interdisciplinary journal that encourages scholarship on the problem of secrecy as either the intentional or nonintentional concealment of information. We acknowledge that ‘‘secrecy is a property of information’’ (Scheppele 1988, 12) as well as recognize the critical importance of the ‘‘professional secret, confessional secret, military secret/political secret, the secret police, the secret in novels, etc., all the semantics of the secret’’ (Derrida & Ferraris 2001, 75). Secrecy and Society also peers into the ‘‘secrecy process,’’ described by Tefft (1980, 37) as the ‘‘tensions and/or conflicts between the secret holder (holders) and outsiders that necessitate concealment.’’ As secrecy conceals “potentially embarrassing disclosures, forbidden acts, illegality, inefficiency, evasion of responsibility, and corruption” (Simmel 1950), the secrecy process is of “potential value in examining practices and rituals of secret societies (Tefft 1992, 181), and those groups and organizations that rely on the secrecy worker. The objectives of Secrecy and Society include: Establishing a distinct field of knowledge characterized as Secrecy Studies. Secrecy Studies serves unifying point for investigating theory, narratives, categories, policies, practices, procedures as they relate to secrecy; Offering a forum for researchers, including graduate students, to investigate secrecy as the intentional/nonintentional concealment of information and to develop theories, concepts, models, and methods as they relate to secrecy; Building a scholarly community around theory and research across disciplines on the subject of secrecy.
From the journal's Aims & Scope
Main research topics OpenAlex counts of recent articles; shares are approximate
- Intelligence, Security, War StrategySocial Sciences21.3%
- Law, Rights, and FreedomsSocial Sciences15%
- Misinformation and Its ImpactsSocial Sciences7.1%
- History and International RelationsSocial Sciences4.7%
- Security, Politics, and Digital TransformationSocial Sciences4.7%
- Global Security and Public HealthSocial Sciences3.9%
- Administrative Law and GovernanceSocial Sciences3.2%
- Anthropology: Ethics, History, CultureSocial Sciences3.2%
Rankings & indexing
CAS ranking and database indexing
CAS Journal Ranking
CAS Journal Ranking, upgraded edition (March 2025)Not covered
Not covered by this edition.
CAS Xinrui Journal Ranking (March 2026)Not covered
Not covered by this edition.
CAS Journal Ranking, previous upgraded edition (December 2023)Not covered
Not covered by this edition.
Database indexing
DOAJLetPub
International journal early-warning lists: not listed in any editionLetPub
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.
Metrics
Impact metrics and publication volume
Impact
- h-index
- 9OpenAlex ·
- i10-index
- 9OpenAlex ·
- 2-year mean citedness
- 1OpenAlex ·
- Share of gold OA articles
- 0%LetPub ·
Articles by year OpenAlex count · 62 in total · the current year is incomplete
| Year | Articles | Open access | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 0 | 0 | 18 |
| 2025 | 8 | 8 | 18 |
| 2024 | 0 | 0 | 13 |
| 2023 | 9 | 9 | 44 |
| 2022 | 0 | 0 | 14 |
| 2021 | 13 | 13 | 46 |
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.
Review & acceptance
Review time and acceptance
- Average review time (community reports)
- about 12 weeksLetPub ·
- Submission to publication (journal-reported)
- about 15 weeksDOAJ ·
- Peer review
- Double anonymous peer review, Open peer reviewDOAJ
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.
Fees & open access
APC and open-access policy
Diamond open access (no APC)DOAJ
Every article is open access and authors pay no article processing charge.
| Source | APC | Fee waiver | License | Observed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DOAJ | No APC | No | CC BY | |
| LetPub | No APC | No | — |
The journal's website is authoritative for fees; sources were observed at different times and each keeps its own value, without averaging.
Submission
Article types and submission policies (journal website)
What to prepare1 items from the author guidelines
- Reference style
- Chicago
Article types accepted1
- reviewReviews (e.g., book, film) must conform to Chicago style and Verdana font type. Include the following information in the review header: Citation information Num…Length not stated
Policy excerpts from the journal's websiteLicense & copyright, Open access, Peer review
- License & copyright Copyright
We use the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY license. This license allows others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. Authors retain copyright without restrictions.
Source ↗Publisher website ·- Open access Open Access
Secrecy and Society is an open access journal committed to the principles of open access (OA). Articles that appear in Secrecy and Society are available long-term to the global research community through SJSU Scholarworks Digital Repository and DOAJ.
Source ↗Publisher website ·- Peer review Review Process
Articles submitted to Secrecy and Society may undergo two types of review: one is double blind where the reviewer does not know who the author is, and vice versa. Only editors will know who the author is before publication. Each manuscript, if initially accepted, will be reviewed by up to four reviewers. Each reviewer will complete a written review. The second type of review is more direct and tra…
Source ↗Publisher website ·
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.
Profile
Publication details and official links
- Publisher
- SJSU Scholarworks
- Country or region
- United States
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 2377-6188
- Latest issue on the website
- Volume 3, Issue 2 (2025)
- Official links
- Journal homepage ↗DOAJ
- Author guidelines ↗LetPub
- Aims & Scope ↗LetPub
- Special issues ↗Publisher website
- APC information ↗DOAJ
- Open access statement ↗DOAJ
- License & copyright ↗DOAJ
- Peer review process ↗LetPub
- Editorial board ↗LetPub
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about Secrecy and Society
How long does peer review take at Secrecy and Society?
Authors report an average review time of about 12 weeks. Article statistics cover accepted papers only, publisher figures follow the journal's own definitions, and community reports come from authors' own submissions; none is a promise from the journal.
Which databases index Secrecy and Society?
According to LetPub and DOAJ records, Secrecy and Society is indexed in DOAJ.
Is Secrecy and Society open access, and what is the APC?
Secrecy and Society is a diamond open-access journal (no APC). It charges no article processing charge.
Sources and updates
The facts on this page come from LetPub, OpenAlex, DOAJ, Publisher website; every figure is tagged with its source and the date it was observed, and conflicting values are kept per source. LetPub source page: view ↗ (archived 2026-08-26). Last updated: .