Lectio Socialis was launched in September 2017 as a peer-reviewed journal in the social sciences and humanities. Its early development owed much to the late Hasan Fehmi Ata, then Secretary General of the İstanbul Umut Hareketi Derneği (Istanbul Hope Movement Association) — the journal’s first publisher — who passed away during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the association ceased its activities, the publishing rights were transferred in 2022 to the founding editor-in-chief, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Emrah Konuralp, securing the journal’s editorial independence and long-term sustainability.
The journal began internationalizing in 2019, inviting scholars from around the world to its editorial board. Following the 2022 transition, it adopted an exclusively online model; the print edition (ISSN 2602-2524) was discontinued on 28 March 2022.
From 2026, Lectio Socialis refocused specifically on political science and adopted a continuous-publication model organized around annual volumes (Volume 10 in 2026, incrementing each year): accepted articles receive a DOI and appear online immediately on finalization, and the year’s articles are compiled into a single issue each December.
The journal is committed to open science and responsible research assessment. On 13 March 2021 it signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), and it is a signatory of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI). Since 2024 it has been indexed in TR-Dizin, the national index maintained by TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM.
Prof. Dr. Sue L. T. McGregor, a founding editor, retired in 2025, and the editorial board has since been comprehensively restructured toward full internationalization. The current board is listed on the Journal Boards page.
We thank the former members of the editorial board, whose dedication helped shape the journal’s identity: Assoc. Prof. Gülşah Aydın (Yeditepe University), Dr. Erhan Aydın (IPAG Business School), Asst. Prof. Sonat Bayram (Trakya University), Prof. Christoph Giesel (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena), Prof. Ersin Erkan (Bingöl University), Prof. Pınar Köksal (Middle East Technical University), Assoc. Prof. Hüdayi Sayın (Istanbul Yeni Yüzyıl University), Assoc. Prof. Tülay Yıldırım (Istanbul Medeniyet University), Asst. Prof. Zeynep Özkurt Dördüncü (Nişantaşı University), and Prof. Reza Yavarian (Roudehen Islamic Azad University).