As a community, we believe that skateboarding is a useful context for understanding social relationships, ourselves, and the shared environment and institutions we create. In this mission, we are committed to an interdisciplinary approach that spans the social sciences, humanities and visual arts, and natural sciences.
Rationale
Skate scholarship is booming. There were 142 scholarly skateboarding-related books and papers published last year (2025), 139 in 2024. There is a wealth of brilliant skate writing and skate criticism.
There are over a dozen academic and academic-adjacent skate conferences happening around the world. From Tempe to Bordeaux, San Diego to Southern Bohemia, and throughout the Global South. Sites of skateboarding knowledge sharing are propagating like spider plants. However, there is no specific academic journal to support skate scholarship, nor is there a society of academics to support the journal. The project seeks to fill this lacuna.
Skateboarding doesn’t fit into a single category or academic discipline, and so scholars have published across a wide range of journals. There have been some special issues that have brought together new work on skateboarding, but these are single publications that lack continuity across time. The process of academic publishing can often be slow, with a long turnaround time between submission and publication. But skate scholarship is buzzing, with each new article pushing what is possible. It is vital that we create the space to let this field of study grow and embrace the speed and criticality of what is happening now and in the near and distant future.
Taking the ethos of DIY in skateboarding and inspired by the centuries-old tradition of radical independent publishing, Skateboarding and Urban Cultural Ecologies is skater-led, peer-reviewed, and free to access.
SAUCE Journal is interested in publishing new work that assists in the practical understanding of skateboarding, how it relates to our created environment, how it impacts us as physical beings, and how it informs our individual and shared human experience. As unconventional as skateboarding itself, we aim to bridge the gap between traditional academic journals and popular media by seeking out and inviting work that seriously examines and critiques our shared environment while remaining both open and inviting to the casual reader. SAUCE Journal should be as comfortable in the library stacks as it is in the cracks of the couch at the local skate shop.
Publication schedule
We will publish a print journal on a bi-annual basis (Mid-February and Mid-October) along with monthly online articles beginning September 2026.
Our digital publication will operate on a rolling basis as articles are reviewed and approved by our editorial board. This follows the publication schedule model of the Leisure Studies Association (and its journal Leisure Studies), our model journal.
Not all items published digitally will be in print. Those that are will be selected by the main editors at our bi-annual meeting through anonymous voting and discussion.
Our inaugural issue will be invite-only, with future issues open for submission and with a call for papers around specific themes for special issues. SAUCE Journal is a space for new ideas to get out into the world quickly and to move research in skate studies forward.
Membership
Join the Society of Skateboard Scholars and support SAUCE Journal at multiple levels. Updates on SAUCE t-shirt and tote designs to come.
Ingredients: Email updates
SAUCE Packet: $10 per year
Ingredients Email updates + t-shirt or tote bag
SAUCE Pouch: $25 per year
Ingredients: Email updates + t-shirt or tote bag + biannual print journals
SAUCE Pan: $50 per year (or more if you feel it)
Ingredients: Email updates + t-shirt or tote bag + biannual journals + special placement on the SAUCE Journal Wall of Thanks.
Ingredients: Donations of $50 or more will get you special placement on the SAUCE Journal Wall of Thanks.
Help keep SAUCE cooking! Each donation helps fund our digital and print publications and their annual subscription fees and supports our authors and reviewers, providing services like translation support. Larger donations may fund annual publication prizes, student research initiatives, and other ways of supporting skate studies globally.
Society of Skateboard Scholars is a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Your contribution is tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. No goods or services are provided in exchange for this contribution.
Wall of Thanks
Contact
Submissions and general queries: saucejournal.editor@gmail.com
Editor-In-Chief: bglenney@norwich.edu
Masthead
Editor-in-Chief
Brian Glenney
Lead Editors
Thom Callan-Riley
Bethany Geckle
Sander Hölsgens
Thomas Kemp
Art Editor
Betsy Gordon
Web and Copy Editor
Cole Nowicki
Editorial Board
Dani Abulhawa
Kyle Beachy
Iain Borden
Maurice Crandall
Kristin Ebeling
Gustav Eden
Sander Hölsgens
Ocean Howell
Patrick Kigongo
Giancarlo Marques Carraro Machado
L. Dugan Nichols
Cole Nowicki
Paul O’Connor
Natalie Porter
Adelina Ong
Cengiz Salman
Indigo Willing
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN):
(Print) ISSN 2979-2703
(Online) ISSN 2979-2711
Charity Status:
Society of Skateboard Scholars is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Copyright Notice:
SAUCE is an open access journal. All authors retain the copyright of their papers and full publishing rights without restrictions. All work is published under a CC-BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) unless otherwise stated.
This means you can share, copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose; adapt, remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, so long as you give appropriate credit and indicate where any changes were made. If you wish to submit something to be published under other Creative Commons licenses, let us know in the submission.
