UMD Libraries-Supported Open Research Platform Wins Prestigious Sociology Prize
The Kohli Foundation for Sociology has announced that SocArXiv is the winner of its 2025 Infrastructure Prize for Sociology. This honor especially recognizes the leadership of SocArXiv founder Professor Philip N. Cohen of the Department of Sociology.
SocArXiv (pronounced “sosh-archive”) is an innovative open archive of the social sciences, providing a free, nonprofit, open access platform for social scientists to upload working papers, preprints, and published papers, with the option to link research materials such as data and code.
SocArXiv now hosts 17,000 papers across all disciplines in social sciences, arts, humanities, education, and law, in many languages. It is institutionally housed by the UMD libraries and operates on the Open Science Platform of the Center for Open Science.
“With the support of the UMD Libraries, and our platform at the Center for Open Science, we do it all at no charge for authors or readers, on a surprisingly small annual budget and a dedicated team of volunteers working a couple of hours a week,” Cohen said.
“The UMD Libraries and SocArXiv are partners in supporting open and equitable access to research for the public good. We are proud to serve as SocArXiv’s institutional home and congratulate SocArXiv on this well-deserved recognition,” said Interim Dean of the University Libraries Daniel Mack.
This Kohli Infrastructure Prize honors scholars, projects, and organizations that have made exceptional contributions to the development of substantial infrastructures that advance sociological knowledge, and comes with an award of 10,000 euros, more than $11,000.
SocArXiv is one of the efforts in which Cohen is involved that focuses on reforming the system of scholarly communication. He often speaks on the topic of how scholars can productively engage with public audiences, to improve work and deepen its impact. He explores related topics in his new book, “Citizen Scholar: Public Engagement for Social Scientists” (Columbia University Press, 2025).
“SocArXiv has been a labor of love for me since 2016, helping thousands of researchers to get their work done, but the efforts of myself and our volunteers often go unnoticed. So it’s wonderful to have this recognition,” Cohen said. “SocArXiv is a nonprofit, academy-owned and directed, collaborative project of volunteers from sociology and other social sciences, and members of the library community. This recognition honors that collective effort to pave a new way forward in scholarly communication. There is a lot we can do ourselves—faster, better, and cheaper than we can under the big academic publishers—and we’re proving it every day.”
“These papers are often available before journal publication, allowing them to disseminate further, and faster,” Cohen said.
The platform’s many-hands-on-deck approach has facilitated knowledge sharing even during difficult times. For example, a draft paper on learning losses amid COVID-related school closures was uploaded to SocArXiv and downloaded tens of thousands of times, and was therefore serving as a resource and point of reference to countless scholars and researchers before it was ultimately published in PNAS. This kind of open exchange of information and ideas has helped researchers to be more nimble and more productive.
Looking ahead, Cohen said he and his collaborators are working to make the repository a place for hosting peer review projects as well, so that people who want to conduct peer review in a transparent setting—with evolving versions, reviews and replies—can integrate their work onto SocArXiv.
As collaboration and knowledge sharing are priorities of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Dean Susan Rivera said this recognition of Cohen and the networks that SocArXiv has forged is especially meaningful.
“Our college community congratulates Professor Cohen and his collaborators. It is fitting that their impactful work promoting open science is being honored in this significant way,” Rivera said. “This important platform is a point of pride for BSOS.”
Cohen has been invited to represent SocArXiv at the foundation’s awards ceremony in November at the European University Institute in Fiesole, Florence, Italy. Cohen has also been invited to be a guest on a Kohli Foundation podcast.
“A key priority of SocArXiv is to open up social science, to reach more people more effectively, to improve research, and build the future of scholarly communication,” Cohen said. “We hope that the visibility this award brings will draw more scholars and users to the platform.”