For Sociology: Philip N. Cohen

What if academic research — much of it funded by taxpayers — were freely available to anyone who wanted to read it? That's the simple but radical idea behind SocArXiv, the open-access preprint repository that this episode's guest, Philip Cohen, founded in 2016. Philip is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and the 2025 Kohli Infrastructure Prize for Sociology Laureate. In this conversation, he takes us behind the scenes of the fight to make social science research open, faster, and more equitable. We later zoom out to tackle a bigger question: What happens to sociology when the government starts treating it as the enemy? Guest Philip Cohen Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland Founder & Director, SocArXiv 2025 Kohli Infrastructure Prize for Sociology Laureate Chapter Markers 00:00 — Podcast Welcome 00:45 — Meet Philip Cohen 02:17 — What Is SocArXiv? 03:23 — How It Started 05:03 — Why Open Access Matters 07:09 — Journals and Preprints 09:02 — Openness and Trust 10:29 — A Personal Origin Story 12:36 — Rethinking Peer Review 14:52 — Building and Funding SocArXiv 16:52 — Adoption and Resistance 17:53 — Who Uses It 20:03 — Pitching It to Researchers 22:36 — Versioning and Retractions 24:30 — Surprises and AI Spam 25:46 — The Flood of AI Papers 26:16 — Plagiarism and Access 27:51 — "Publish Less, Better" 29:15 — Beyond Journals 31:45 — Data and Review 32:50 — Post-Publication Review 33:40 — Rapid-Fire Questions 37:52 — Sociology Under Attack 42:10 — Lessons From Europe 44:26 — Questions for the Next Decade 46:04 — Closing Credits Rapid-Fire with Philip Book he wishes he'd written: The Marriage-Go-Round by Andrew Cherlin If not a sociologist: Rockstar Does his best thinking: Early morning, before the phone wins Sociological concept everyone should know: The sociological imagination Biggest misconception about sociology: That researchers already know the answer before they begin Links & Resources SocArXiv: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv Center for Open Science: https://www.cos.io/ Kohli Foundation for Sociology: https://kohlifoundation.eu/ The Marriage-Go-Round by Andrew Cherlin