Editors' Report for 2016

doi:10.1017/S0022050717000134

Editors' Report for 2016

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 February 2017

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Type: Editors' Report
Information: The Journal of Economic History , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 344 - 350

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050717000134 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Economic History Association 2017

Even-numbered years represent a time for transition at the editorial offices of the Journal of Economic History. After four years of outstanding service as co-editor (including the last two years as senior editor), Paul Rhode has stepped down. The JOURNAL owes him a large debt of gratitude for his guidance and direction as the JOURNAL moves into its 77^th year. William Collins has begun a four-year term as non-Eurasian editor, and Ann Carlos has assumed the job as senior editor. With that change, the editorial offices have moved from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Boulder, Colorado. We also thank John Murray for his work as book review editor for the Americas. Eric Hilt will assume that mantel, while Carol Shiue continues as book review editor for the rest-of-the-world. The JOURNAL is fortunate in having Lily Welch continue as the JOURNAL Editorial Assistant and Sally Sztrecska as Production Editor. Gillian Greenough, who has for many years been our liaison with Cambridge University Press, has moved to work at Wiley-Blackwell. We wish her well in her new endeavor and for her help in the editing and distribution process. We hope to keep the JOURNAL going strong, now and in the future.

We have benefited from the expert guidance and advice of our Board of Editors and the nearly 200 referees. “Graduating seniors” at the Board are Ran Abramitsky, Leah Boustan, Benjamin Chabot, Tom Nicholas, Francesca Trivellato, and Nikolaus Wolf. We sincerely thank them for their service. The incoming frosh include Caroline Fohlin, Ewout Frankema, Carola Frydman, Sumner La Croix, Marianne Wanamaker, and Warren Weber. Each will serve a four-year term. Numerous scholars contributed book reviews, including longer surveys, and a number of synthetic pieces. The editorial office is very grateful to all who have worked on behalf of the JOURNAL over this past year.

The number of submissions to the JOURNAL (Table 1) felt slightly to 149 from 153 last year. Overall the submission rate remains in line with the recent past. The publication ratio displayed is the number of refereed papers and notes published in the current year divided by the number of new papers submitted in the previous year. In 2014–2015, we published 32 refereed pieces. The ratio of this year's publications to last year's new submissions is also in line with the recent past.

Table 1

Publication Rates

Table 2 reports the response-time statistics for the corresponding sample. To place the numbers into context, our goal is to have a decision back to the author within 90 days. This year's performance has been roughly on par with other years for new submissions, with a median response time of 74. The median response time for all submissions has fallen to 50 days. A small number of papers have taken much longer. We apologize to authors of pieces experiencing long delays and promise to try to do better in the future. We are, of course, concerned about the quality of the response, not just its speed.

Table 2

Response Time Statistics

Table 3

Distribution of Submissions by Era

Notes:

Multiple selections per submission possible.

The distributions of submissions are documented in Table 3 for eras and Table 4 for topics. The automated part of the paper submission system stopped reporting on regions for a period of time, but that feature has recommenced. So, we do not have consistent comparisons over the last six years. What is currently available is shown in Table 5.

Table 4

Distribution of Submissions by Topics

Notes:

Multiple Selections per submission possible.

Table 5

Distribution of Submissions by Region

Notes:

2014–2015 Region data is from 1 July 2014–14 October 2015

2015–2016 Region data is from 18 March 2016–30 June 2016

Coverage remains broad with a continued growth in the twenty-first century as might be expected. The number of submissions on the twentieth century continues its surge passed the nineteenth century. Shown in Table 4, Growth, Political Economy, Demography and Labor are topic areas that dominated submissions.

Book reviews are an important component of the JOURNAL, and we sincerely thank the many reviewers. From 1 July 2015 to 30 June 2016, 53 reviews were published in the JOURNAL, with 19 reviews in the Ancient to Modern category and 21 reviews in United States and Canada. The remainder was equally distributed. The JOURNAL has also sought “review and reflection” synthetic articles, extended book reviews, and roundtable book reviews when appropriate, and published four such in volume 75.

Readers will recall that at the 2013 meetings, the EHA board of trustees approved a policy to make publication conditional on archiving the data sufficient to replicate the results in the accepted articles. The new rules read:

“It is the policy of the Journal of Economic History to publish papers only if the data used in the analysis are clearly and precisely documented and are readily available to any researcher for purposes of replication. Authors of accepted papers must archive, prior to publication, the data, programs, and other details of the computations sufficient to permit replication. These will be archived at ICPSR and a stable URL link to these data will be published with each article. The Editors should be notified at the time of submission if the data used in a paper are proprietary or if, for some other reason, the requirements above cannot be met.

As soon as possible after acceptance, authors are expected to deposit their data, programs, and sufficient details to permit replication with ICPSR. Questions regarding any aspect of this policy should be forwarded to the Journal Editor.”

For new submissions from January 2016, require authors to post data and replication files to maintain and advance the JOURNAL's efforts to ensure transparency and scholarly integrity. A branded page has been created with open ICPSR and depositors can submit files into open ICPSR.

Referees for 2015 were: