Under the arrangement, Sage has acquired four of the titles outright and entered into a publishing agreement for a fifth, which will continue under a lease arrangement. The journals will begin publishing with Sage from 2027, and submissions are being accepted now. The five titles are New Formations, Soundings, Anarchist Studies, Twentieth Century Communism and FORUM: For comprehensive education. Together they represent an unusually coherent slice of critical scholarship, spanning cultural theory, political philosophy, anarchist history and practice, communist studies and education policy, and their transfer to a much larger publisher raises questions and opportunities alike about how niche interdisciplinary journals survive in the twenty-first century.

New Formations has been a pioneer of interdisciplinary research since the 1980s, with a core focus on work that explores the uses of cultural theory for the analysis of political and social issues. Emerging at a moment when cultural studies was transforming the humanities in Britain and beyond, the journal built a reputation for publishing writing that refused the boundaries between disciplines, bringing theoretical frameworks to bear on questions of politics, identity and social life. Its continuation under Sage means that this tradition of theoretically informed, politically engaged analysis will retain a platform, now with the reach and infrastructure of one of the world’s largest independent academic publishers behind it.

Soundings publishes informed writing on contemporary political and cultural debates, and its intellectual identity is broadly rooted in the traditions of the New Left and the Gramscian tradition. That orientation has made it a distinctive voice in British political thought, drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s ideas about hegemony, common sense and cultural struggle to interrogate the present. For readers and contributors, the journal has functioned as a space where academic analysis and political argument meet, and its move to Sage is presented by both parties as a way of securing that space for the future rather than changing its character.

Anarchist Studies, an international inter- and multi-disciplinary journal, has for more than twenty years published research into the history, culture, theory and practice of anarchism. The field it serves has grown considerably in recent decades, as scholars across history, politics, sociology, geography and literary studies have turned renewed attention to anarchist movements and ideas. The journal’s continuation matters for a scholarly community that has few dedicated outlets, and its new publisher’s global distribution networks are likely to connect its work with readers far beyond the circles it has traditionally reached.

Twentieth Century Communism provides an international forum for the latest research and debate on communism and its political, social and cultural influence. As historical distance from the twentieth century grows, the study of communist movements, states and cultures has become an increasingly active area of historiography, and the journal has served as a venue where new archival research and theoretical debate can be brought together. Its acquisition by Sage ensures that this forum will continue to publish at a time when small specialist journals face mounting pressures from rising production costs, shifting library budgets and the demands of digital access.

The fifth title, FORUM: For comprehensive education, occupies a special place in British educational debate. It publishes critical analysis of UK education policy and has provided a platform for debate about comprehensive and state-provided education for more than sixty years. Unlike the other four titles, it will publish with Sage under a lease arrangement rather than an outright acquisition, a structure that reflects the particular circumstances of the title while still securing its future. For educators, policymakers and researchers concerned with the fate of comprehensive schooling, the journal’s survival is a guarantee that a long-running critical conversation about state education will not fall silent.

The decision to move the portfolio came from Lawrence & Wishart itself, which has been publishing critical left texts on politics and culture since 1936. Sally Davidson, Director of Lawrence & Wishart, said the press was very proud of the small collection of journals it had put together over the years, but recognised that the time had come for them to move on to a bigger publisher, better able to look after them in the challenging landscape of twenty-first century journals publishing. She added that the press was very pleased that its journals were now passing into the safe hands of Sage, a publisher which shares its values and concern for ethical scholarship. The remarks capture the dilemma facing many small presses: editorial mission and community loyalty on one side, and the technical, financial and legal complexities of modern journal production on the other.

For its part, Sage framed the acquisition in terms of scholarly continuity and reach. Caroline Porter, Vice President of Journals Editorial at Sage, said the journals have made important contributions to scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, publishing research and writing that informs understanding of society and social change. She said Sage looks forward to supporting each journal’s continued success and connecting their work with readers around the world. Sage, founded by 24-year-old Sara Miller McCune in 1965 and today controlled by a group of trustees charged with maintaining its independence and mission indefinitely, publishes books, journals and library resources alongside a growing range of technologies for discovery, access and engagement, and it has positioned the new titles within that broader ecosystem.

Crucially for the journals’ existing communities, the editorial leadership and the aims and scope of all five titles will remain in place. That commitment to continuity is designed to reassure editors, editorial boards, reviewers and authors that the intellectual identity of each journal will not be diluted in the transition, while the move to a larger publisher is expected to create opportunities for future growth and wider dissemination. More information about the journals and submission guidelines is available on the journals’ webpages, and researchers interested in submitting work can already direct their manuscripts to the new Sage-hosted homes. For a publishing landscape in which independent radical periodicals have often struggled to keep pace with digital infrastructure requirements, the transfer of these five titles represents a pragmatic answer to a structural problem: preserving decades of critical scholarship by giving it the scale, stability and global visibility that only a major publisher can now provide.

Subject of Research: Transfer of the Lawrence & Wishart journals portfolio to Sage publishing

Article Title: Sage becomes new home of Lawrence & Wishart journals

Article References: Sage becomes new home of Lawrence & Wishart journals. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Sage, Lawrence & Wishart, academic publishing, New Formations, Soundings, Anarchist Studies, Twentieth Century Communism, FORUM, interdisciplinary journals, social sciences, humanities, left publishing

The scope of the new journal is deliberately broad. According to the announcement, Disinformation will welcome contributions exploring disinformation in contexts including politics and elections, war and conflict, science, health, climate change, and the environment. This wide remit acknowledges that deceptive content does not respect disciplinary boundaries. The strategies used to distort public understanding of vaccines, for example, often overlap with those used to undermine confidence in climate science or to manipulate electoral discourse. By providing a single venue for theoretical, empirical, and methodological research across these domains, the journal aims to make it easier for scholars working on very different manifestations of the problem to learn from one another and to build a more coherent body of knowledge.

One of the more distinctive features of the publication is its Interventions and Commentary section, which is designed to create a forum for timely dialogue between researchers and practitioners working to understand and address disinformation. This is a notable departure from the traditional model of academic journals, which often publish research months or years after the events it analyzes. In a field where platform policies, geopolitical crises, and technological shifts can transform the information landscape within weeks, the ability to publish rapid commentary and intervention-oriented pieces may prove essential. The section signals an ambition to connect scholarly analysis with the practical work of journalists, fact-checkers, educators, and policymakers who confront disinformation in real time.

Leadership of the journal takes an unusual form: rather than a single editor-in-chief, Disinformation will be guided by an editorial collective, with a different member serving as managing editor each year. The collective comprises Niki Cheong of King’s College London in the United Kingdom, Gabi Mocatta of the University of Tasmania in Australia, Raquel Recuero of the Universidade Federal de Pelotas in Brazil, Felipe Bonow Soares of the University of the Arts London in the United Kingdom, and Robert Topinka of Birkbeck, University of London. Together, the group brings expertise spanning digital media, communication, climate communication, political communication, rhetoric, and disinformation studies, giving the journal a foundation that is international in composition and methodologically diverse.

The editors have been candid about the moment in which the journal is launching. In a statement accompanying the announcement, they said they were excited to launch the journal at a time when disinformation is more rife than ever and when the term itself is hotly contested. They emphasized that the journal will serve as a forum both for studying how disinformation spreads and for critically interrogating what gets labelled as disinformation, and why. That second commitment is significant. In recent years, the word disinformation has become politically charged, deployed by governments, platforms, and commentators in ways that scholars argue require careful scrutiny. A journal willing to examine the category itself, and not only the content it describes, positions itself at the center of an ongoing debate about how societies define and respond to deceptive communication.

The question of definition is far from academic. Researchers have long distinguished between misinformation, which is false but shared without intent to deceive, and disinformation, which is deliberately fabricated or manipulated to mislead. Yet in practice, intent is difficult to establish, and the boundaries between propaganda, strategic communication, satire, and honest error are contested. Different cultures and political systems draw these lines differently, which is one reason the journal’s emphasis on international perspectives matters. Understanding how disinformation operates in electoral politics in Brazil, in conflict reporting in Eastern Europe, or in public health debates in Southeast Asia requires attention to local media ecosystems, languages, political histories, and trust in institutions, rather than assumptions derived solely from research on English-language platforms.

That commitment to global perspectives is explicit in the journal’s call for contributions. The announcement states that Disinformation encourages international perspectives and contributions by researchers from the Global South, a community that has often been underrepresented in mainstream communication journals, where datasets and authorship remain heavily concentrated in North America and Europe. Much of what is known about the spread of false information online comes from studies of platforms such as Facebook, X, and YouTube in wealthy democracies, leaving substantial gaps in knowledge about how deceptive content circulates through messaging apps, local social networks, and state-linked media in other regions. Scholars such as Recuero, whose work examines misinformation on Brazilian social media, bring direct expertise in these under-studied contexts, and the journal’s editorial composition suggests that broadening the geographic base of the field is a central priority.

The publishing model is equally noteworthy. Disinformation will be published through Sage Community Open Access, an initiative that enables selected journals to publish with no fees for authors and no barriers for readers. Open access publishing has expanded rapidly across the sciences and social sciences, but the dominant article processing charge model can exclude researchers at institutions without significant funding, particularly those in lower-income countries. A community-funded model that removes both author fees and paywalls addresses both sides of that inequity, allowing researchers anywhere to submit work and readers anywhere to access it. For a journal explicitly concerned with global understanding of a global problem, the alignment between mission and business model appears deliberate, and it removes a practical obstacle for the very contributors the editors say they most want to attract.

The launch also reflects broader institutional recognition that disinformation has matured into a distinct field of study. Over the past decade, research on false news, computational propaganda, and information operations has grown from scattered case studies into a substantial scholarly literature, with dedicated research centers, funding programs, and policy engagement across multiple continents. Yet the field has often been fragmented, with relevant work dispersed across communication studies, computer science, psychology, political science, law, and area studies. A journal that positions itself explicitly as interdisciplinary, and that treats both the mechanics of dissemination and the politics of labeling as legitimate objects of study, could play a consolidating role, giving the field a shared venue in which methodological debates, comparative findings, and theoretical frameworks can be developed and contested.

Rachel Hunter, Vice President for Journals Editorial at Sage, framed the launch as a response to an urgent global need. Disinformation, she said, is a pressing challenge for societies around the world, and understanding it requires perspectives from across disciplines and cultures. She described the timing of the journal as driven by the growing importance of rigorous research and debate in the area, and argued that international and interdisciplinary collaboration will help deepen understanding of disinformation, its impact, and how societies respond to it. With elections, armed conflicts, public health emergencies, and climate-related crises all increasingly entangled with contested information environments, the demand for such collaboration is unlikely to diminish. Whether the new journal can help build the shared, globally representative knowledge base its editors envision will become clearer as submissions arrive and its first issues appear in 2027, but its founding commitments to openness, interdisciplinarity, and critical scrutiny of the field’s own categories mark an ambitious starting point.

Subject of Research: Launch of a new peer-reviewed open access journal dedicated to interdisciplinary disinformation research

Article Title: Sage launches Disinformation: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Article References: Sage launches Disinformation: An Interdisciplinary Journal. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: disinformation, Sage, open access, academic journal, misinformation, interdisciplinary research, Global South, media studies, political communication, climate communication, editorial collective, peer review