How Are Social Work Journals Advancing Social Justice and Scholarship in Changing Times?

This roundtable reflects the 2024 conference theme of 'Re-centering and Democratizing Knowledge: The Next 30 Years of Social Work Science'. It specifically concerns the question, 'How should and can social work journals advance social justice with their contributors and other key stakeholders, in order to democratize the craft of scholarship and research in changing times?'. Fundamentally, the roundtable seeks to be attentive to the changing context, content, and consequences of social work knowledge development and sharing. Contextually, it acknowledges that the need for social work journals to support the scholarly, research, and practice-based needs of diverse authors and peer reviewers has only grown in response to COVID-19, further evidence of racism and economic inequities, and rising calls for anti-oppressive practice in academia and in community settings. The roundtable also recognizes the content-based need for a more responsive and inclusive scholarship and research that seeks to address longstanding and new practical dilemmas in social work. Finally, it seeks to identify consequential opportunities to support future contributors who bring different positionalities and workplace settings, and more diverse types of contributions.

In response to these broad-based needs, social work journals have started to engage with a more practical scholarship and research that reflect the essential forms of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Such journal efforts have sought to frame the scholarly and research enterprise around 'just research', and have invited scholar-researchers to transition from 'scientific technicians to change-makers'. The goal of making social work and applied social science scholarship and research more just and equitable cannot be in dispute. Nor is the aspiration that journals should cultivate the critical efforts of emerging and more experienced scholar-researchers, in order to democratize knowledge development and sharing. What remains unclear, however, is how journals can nurture the critical efforts of scholar-researchers.

In response to the core question, the roundtable provides an opportunity for five social work journal editors to dialogue about the need for diverse forms of social work scholarship and current efforts to support them. The dialogue begins with the journal editors sharing brief reflections on how the craft of scholarship and research has been changing during the pandemic, and the many strategies used to cultivate diverse forms of scholarship and support diverse stakeholders over this time. Presenters will distinguish between their efforts at different levels, including supporting the efforts of contributors, cultivating special issues, developing new sections of issues, and carrying out needs assessments of contributors. Presenters will also reflect on different ways of collaborating with journal editorial board members and representatives of publishing houses, and creating opportunities for knowledge exchange involving academic and practice bodies. Overall, the roundtable aims to (1) identify different pathways for democratizing knowledge development and sharing by (2) offering inclusive and practical perspectives for current and future journal editors and scholarly contributors.