Guidelines

The guidelines of the Academy of Sociology provide professional guidance and offer recommendations for research, teaching, and scholarly practice. They serve to promote high scholarly standards and analytical-empirical sociology by compiling key principles and recommendations for action on relevant topics and providing helpful resources for research and teaching.

Guidelines of the Academy of Sociology

On January 13, 2022, the General Assembly of the Academy of Sociology adopted the “Code of Ethics of the Academy of Sociology.” The Code sets forth key principles that sociologists must observe in the pursuit of scientific knowledge and in the dissemination and evaluation of research findings. These include, in particular:

  • To work in scientific practice lege artis, consistently questioning all results—including one’s own—and ensuring intersubjective reproducibility;
  • To use research resources responsibly and work toward cumulative advances in knowledge;
  • To publish results without omissions, while maintaining strict honesty regarding one's own contributions and those of others;
  • To respect the personal rights of research participants and to waive their right to informed consent only in justified exceptional cases;
  • To maintain a professional and respectful relationship with colleagues and to ensure the best possible training and support for early-career researchers—including in the area of ethical principles.

You can find the detailed Code of Ethics here in German. An English version can be found here.

At its founding meeting in 2017, the Academy of Sociology adopted a paper outlining the self-conception of analytical-empirical sociology. These principles of the Academy of Sociology were revised with significant input from its members and adopted at the general meeting on September 25, 2019, in Konstanz.
You can find the principles in their current version here. The English version can be found here.

This document provides a checklist for quantitative social science articles. A good article will achieve most of the items in this checklist. Go through all items and check whether your article fulfills them. Be aware that not all items may apply to your article. A second purpose is to standardize the reporting in social science articles. Studies showed that many published articles in the Social Sciences do not fulfill even minimal reporting standards. With this document we intend to contribute towards such minimal reporting standards.
This document is a Academy of Sociology resource paper  – compiled by Josef Brüderl (LMU München), Christoph Bühler (University of Hannover) and Henriette Engelhardt-Wölfler (University of Bamberg).
Download paper here (external website osf.io)

On September 25, 2019, the General Assembly of the Academy of Sociology in Konstanz adopted “Guidelines for the Handling of Research Data.” The Academy takes the position that research data collected in sociology and the associated documentation should, as a general rule, be made available to the academic community for reproduction (and, where possible, also for secondary use and teaching). The position paper sets forth guidelines for the archiving and reuse of social science research data.
You can find the guidelines here at German (September 25, 2019) and a revised version (May 3, 2020) in English.