Editors’ Report for 2020

doi:10.1017/S0022050721000048

Editors’ Report for 2020

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2021

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Type: Editors’ Notes
Information: The Journal of Economic History , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , March 2021, pp. 309 - 315
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050721000048 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: © The Economic History Association 2021

Bill Collins finished a four-year term editing the non-Eurasian submissions to the Journal. Eric Hilt is now entering his first year editing the non-Eurasian submissions. Dan Bogart is in his third year editing the Eurasian submissions to the Journal. Eric Hilt has stepped down as book review editor for the Americas. John Parman is now the book review editor for the Americas. Aldo Musacchio continues his work as the book review editor for the other parts of the world. The Journal is fortunate in having Lily Welch continue as the Journal’s Editorial Assistant and Sally Sztrecska as its Production Editor.

The Journal has benefited greatly from the expert guidance and advice of our Editorial Board and more than 290 referees who contributed their time and expertise to maintaining and enhancing the Journal’s quality. Editorial Board members typically serve four-year terms. Those departing from the Board this year are Sumner La Croix, Caroline Fohlin, and Ewout Frankema. We have one new board member, Matt Jaremski. We also recognize and appreciate numerous scholars’ contributions to the Journal’s book reviews. The editorial office is grateful to all who have worked on behalf of the Journal over this past year.

The number of new submissions to the Journal in recent years is shown in Table 1. Over the last several years, from 2013–2018, the average number of submissions per year was approximately 160, but in the past two years, there was a noticeable jump in the number of submissions to 195 and 209. Time will tell whether these two years are an aberration or a new level for the inflow of submissions. The publication ratio displayed in Table 1 is the number of refereed papers and notes published in the current year divided by the number of new manuscripts submitted in the previous year. In 2019– 2020, the publication ratio was 0.15 (30/195), which is lower than in the recent past. This reflects a higher number of submissions. The Journal published 31 articles in total in 2019–2020, including Price Fishback’s presidential address.

Table 1

SUBMISSION AND PUBLICATION RATES

The “published” count includes refereed articles and notes. It does not include the presidential address, which is published in June, nor does it include “reviews and reflections” articles. In 2017–2018, the Journal published one “reviews and reflections” article.

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 past year’s performance has been somewhat slower than previous years for new submissions, with a median response time of just under 62 days. Note that this pertains to submissions received from July 2019 to June 2020, some of which may not have received decisions at the time of this report’s writing. The median response time for all submissions (included revised manuscripts) is slightly lower. Unfortunately, a small number of papers have taken longer to review. We apologize to authors of manuscripts that experienced substantial delays. We continuously work to reduce the time for this small number of manuscripts, taking into consideration that we are, of course, concerned about the quality of the response, not only its speed.

Table 2

RESPONSE TIME STATISTICS

The distributions of submissions are documented in subsequent tables. We show the data for eras in Table 3 and for topics in Table 4. The automated part of the paper submission system stopped collecting information on regions for a period of time during 2015 and 2016. This means that we do not have consistent comparisons over all years in the table. What is currently available is shown in Table 5.

Table 3

DISTRIBUTION OF SUBMISSIONS BY ERA, MULTIPLE SELECTIONS PER SUBMISSION POSSIBLE

Notes: This table corrects errors in previous year’s report for 2014–2015 pre-seventeenth century percent entry and for 2015–2016 twentieth century percent entry.

Table 4

DISTRIBUTION OF SUBMISSIONS BY TOPIC, MULTIPLE SELECTIONS PER SUBMISSION POSSIBLE

Notes: This table corrects errors in previous years’ reports for 2014–2015 and 2015–2016 percent entries.

Table 5

DISTRIBUTION OF GEOGRAPHICAL AREA

*2014–2015 Region data are from July 1, 2014–October 14, 2015.

**2015–2016 Region data are from March 18, 2016–June 30, 2016.

The Journal’s coverage remains broad. Table 3 shows that the distribution of submissions over eras has been fairly steady in recent years, with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries accounting for the bulk of submissions. Table 4 shows that submissions in political economy and growth continue to be particularly strong. Demography emerged as the third most common topic. Nonetheless, the top-three topic areas together account for around half of all submissions, reflecting broadly dispersed interests within the field. Table 5 shows that submissions of Western Europe and the United States are most common. In the past year, there was a dip in the share of submissions on the United States and Great Britain and a rise in the share of submissions on Asia.

Book reviews are an important component of the Journal, and we sincerely thank the many reviewers. We also remind our membership to have their press send a copy of any new books to the relevant book review editor. In recent years, the Journal has also sought occasional “reviews and reflections” synthetic articles, extended book reviews, and roundtable book reviews when appropriate. For instance, in June 2018, the Journal published “Economic History and Contemporary Challenges to Globalization,” a “reviews and reflections” article by Kevin O’Rourke. There were no “reviews and reflections” articles published in 2019–2020, but we are in discussions with various authors for writing more.

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 authors of all new submissions from January 1, 2016 onward that were accepted for publication have been required to post data and replication files to maintain and advance the Journal’s efforts to ensure transparency and scholarly integrity. A branded page can be found with openICPSR, and depositors can submit files into openICPSR per the instructions available at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/openICPSR/JEH-deposit-instructions.pdf. The editorial office and ICPSR continue to work to enhance the interface.

Referees for 2018 were: