Editors’ Notes

Jean-Laurent Rosenthal

doi:10.1017/S0022050713000090

Editors’ Notes

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2013

Jean-Laurent Rosenthal

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Jean-Laurent Rosenthal*: Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology

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EDITORS’ REPORT SEPTEMBER 2012

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Type: Editorial
Information: The Journal of Economic History , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , March 2013, pp. 279 - 286
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050713000090 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Economic History Association 2013

EDITORS’ REPORT SEPTEMBER 2012

The JOURNAL's editorial team has gone through its biennial hemi-metamorphosis. Price Fishback, after four years of sterling service as editor, has retired to the hallowed position of executive director of the Economic History Association. Paul Rhode has taken over as editor for the Americas with nary a hiccup. Martha Bailey is taking his place as book review editor for the Americas. In the fall of 2012, Timothy Guinnane succeeded Philip Hoffman as book review editor for the Rest of the World.

Editing the JOURNAL with Price or Paul could not be done without the most excellent staff. Sabrina Boschetti at Caltech has been our Production Editor and the Rest of the World editor's assistant for six years now. Her patience and care are all over the pages of the JOURNAL. Taylor Jaworski, provided yeoman services to Price Fishback, and Fan Fei, a graduate student at the University of Michigan, will replace him and work for Paul Rhode. We also benefit from the advice and tireless refereeing of our editorial board (and the nearly 200 referees that contributed their expertise). This year, we lost Shawn Kantor and Christopher Meissner to the Iron Law of fixed terms. We are grateful that Leah Boustan, Benjamin Chabot, Tom Nicholas, Francesca Trivellato, and Nikolaus Wolf will join our distinguished board. They will each serve a four-year term. Gillian Greenough continues as our liaison with Cambridge University Press and her help in the editing and distribution process is keenly felt.

We are making changes and boldly stepping into the twenty-first century. Starting with the March 2013 issue, the JOURNAL will use the text author-date system (in text referencing) with full bibliography. Yes! We are eliminating the short footnote referencing style that has characterized the journal for so long. Our long-standing policy was that short-footnote was a signal of our interdisciplinary (History and Economics) commitment. But there are better ways of doing so. Moreover, nearly all articles submitted to the JEH include in text referencing and then are converted by groaning though grateful authors. This editorial changes would save on the production editor's time (the placement of footnote is a persistent headache) and allow the production editor to free some time for the growing number of online appendices that authors wish posted to the JOURNAL's website.

The number of submissions to the JOURNAL (Figure 1) rose slightly to 126 from 118 last year. Both numbers fall comfortably between 98 the nadir of 2008/2009 and 158 our 2007/2008 apex. The share of papers handled by the America's office continues to hover at 40 percent. Given that each office published 15 articles a year, acceptance probabilities are rather different.

The distribution of topic areas in Table 1 continues to broaden. A Herfindahl index for topics has fallen from 1,460 in 2006/2007 to below 1,000 for the past three years.

The distribution of articles by topic remains quite similar to that of the recent years. Two striking patterns are worthy of note, in the Rest of the World, agriculture and private finance together account for almost 25 percent of submissions while in the America's these topic together garner only 6 percent of submissions. In terms of regions of interest, North America continues what seems to be an inexorable decline in submission shares. The share of papers covering this continent has now fallen to 25 percent. One might take joy that the JOURNAL is becoming more global, but I suspect more U.S. focused papers are finding outlets in mainline economics journal in the last few years. This is good news for the discipline if not for the JOURNAL. For the Rest of the World, the Old Continent (Great Britain and Western Europe) is holding its own at 45 percent of all submissions, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Latin America, and the Middle East seem to be making substantial gains. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries now account three-fourths of the papers in Table 3. As coverage shifts further back in time, the share of papers falls off. There is one caveat about all of these statistics. The editors classified the papers up through 2007/2008, and the classifications have been chosen by the submitting authors since that time.

To put the response-time statistics in Table 4 in context, our goal is to have a decision back to the author within 90 days. Table 5 shows that our average and medians for the past several years have ranged between 70 and 90 days. We can report no progress in these matters, but it is satisfying that our referees are helping us hold the line at a median of three months to decision. The publication rate in Figure 2 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. The publication rate peaked at 45 percent in 2000 and fell to a low around 20 percent in 2009. In the last two years, acceptances seem to be settling down at about one in four (one in three for the America's bureau and one in five for the Rest of the World). The number of refereed articles and notes published does not change much from year to year, so the publication rate typically fluctuates in the opposite direction of the number of new submissions. As a result, the low publication rate in 2009 in Figure 2 is associated with the spike in the number of new submissions in 2008 in Figure 1. The rise in the 2010 publication rate, for instance, resulted from the sharp drop-off in submissions in 2009.

In light of these matters, it is time for a Treaty of Tordesillas. Starting in the fall of 2012, one editor (Rosenthal) will be in charge of Eurasia and the other (Rhode) will take responsibility for the Americas, Africa, Australasia, and Antarctica. Greenland remains unallocated, and authors who submit papers on the Big Island can opt for either editor.

Figure 1

NEW SUBMISSIONS IN YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1988–2012

Table 1

NEW SUBMISSIONS BY WORLD AREA, BROKEN DOWN BY TOPIC, JULY 2009–JUNE 2012

Note:

The numbers include new submissions only. The totals equal the number of new submissions received because a paper is classified in only one topic category. In the latest year, the Americas office had 63 total submissions, 49 new and 12 resubmitted. The office for the rest of the world had 93 total submissions, 77 new and 16 resubmitted.

Table 2

REGULAR ARTICLE NEW SUBMISSIONS BY REGION, 1 JULY 2008–30 JUNE 2012

Note:

The numbers include new submissions only. Totals exceed new submissions because a paper can be classified as pertaining to more than one region.

Table 3

REGULAR ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS BY PERIOD, 1 JULY–30 JUNE 2009–2010, 2010–2011, AND 2011–2012

Note:

The numbers include new submissions only. Totals exceed submissions because a paper can be classified as pertaining to more than one period.

Table 4

TIME BETWEEN SUBMISSION AND EDITOR'S DECISION (in days)

Notes:

Does not include submissions that were pending as of August 1, 2012.

Figure 2

PUBLICATION RATE, 1997–2012

Notes: Publication Rate for 2012 is the refereed number of articles and notes published between July 1 and June 30 of 2012 as a percentage of the number of new submissions between July 1 and June 30 of 2011, and similarly for prior years. Presidential addresses and book reviews are not included. In years prior to 1997, the June issue of the JOURNAL was devoted to publishing papers presented at the annual Economic History Association meetings, so the meaning of publication rates differed.

Referees for the year were: