Episode
For Sociology: Philip N. Cohen
- Podcast
- For Sociology
- Published
- May 21, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2826
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://kohlifoundation.eu/
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/for-sociology-7171650/episodes/for-sociology-philip-n-cohen/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/for-sociology-7171650/for-sociology-philip-n-cohen.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
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 shou…