PEER REVIEW POLICIES FOR SYMPOSIA

Symposia are an important part of the content of PS. Some of our most widely cited articles and articles with the highest Altmetric scores, are part of symposia. Symposia provide a critical role in allowing scholars to rapidly respond to current events, controversies in our discipline, and innovations in pedagogy.

This past year, the PS editorial team added some additional checks to the symposia and spotlight process. First, all symposium and spotlight proposals are now peer reviewed by a PS board member and/or area expert and the PS editors. This process is administered via Editorial Manager, which has helped improve the quality of the feedback and reinforces our message that all content—including symposia and spotlights—are required to be peer reviewed.

In addition to the new peer review of symposium and spotlight proposals, we have also implemented a two step process for reviewing all symposium and spotlight manuscripts. Symposium and spotlight manuscripts (1) undergo at least one blinded peer review and guest editor review and then (2) undergo a review by one of the coeditors. One thing we hoped to accomplish was to create a special “guest editor” role in Editorial Manager that would have constrained authority, but we leave this to the next team. Good luck!

DATA DEPOSIT POLICY

PS supports transparency, reproducibility, and replicability in political science research, and we have added a data deposit policy, following closely the model spearheaded by the new APSR team. Authors are required to submit materials to our dataverse (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/ps). We do not have the personnel or resources to confirm that the materials provide full reproducibility and replicability, so we would not describe this as a “replication” archive. We support this requirement and encourage the next team to investigate how replicability can be assured without placing additional undue burdens on editorial teams or which might exclude some scholars from considering service as editors because they do not have the resources, expertise, or support from graduate students.

DIVERSITY EFFORTS

PS supports the diversity efforts of APSA and our discipline, and we are proud that we continue to attract a diverse author pool. Along with the other APSA journal teams, we’ve worked with the Publications Policy Committee to explain how we identify potential editorial board members, and what criteria are part of that process. In addition, this year, we reached out to our current and past Board members to seek out nominations for new Board members.

We continue to make headway in attracting more submissions from international scholars and featuring articles that address the concerns of contingent scholars. We have published research this year by 72 international scholars representing more than 25% of our contributors. We are particularly excited about an upcoming symposium led by Dr. Tatyana Ruseva and Dr. Joanna Skrzypczyńska, The Present and Future Trajectory of Political Science and the Academy in Central Europe.

We also continue to publish research from a substantial number of young scholars who are working outside of academia and are currently not in a tenure track position. This past year 29% of our contributors are not serving in tenure track positions. Finally, we are proud to note the percent of authors in PS representing minority race/ethnicity communities. This past year 44% of our authors identify as a race or ethnicity other than European/Anglo White. More can and will be done.

EDITORIAL HIGHLIGHTS

As shown in table 1, submission rates to PS have grown by 75-100% since we took over as editors in fall of 2014. We appear to have levelled out to 175-200 submissions annually. We are concerned there may be a slight drop in submissions this year due to COVID-19, but at the time of this writing, we appear to be on pace for 200-250 this year.

Table 1:

Demographic Profile of Author Submission (N= 292)

With the transition to online courses and cancellation of several academic conferences in spring 2020 due to COVID-19, the submission and peer review acceptance rates for PS significantly declined. Submission and reviewer acceptance rates have generally returned to the pre-COVID-19 rates, but we will continue to monitor these closely as the fall semester opens.

PUBLICATION HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PAST YEAR

This past year we published a variety of interesting and engaging articles. Below are listed a few of the more notable articles published this year in the pages of PS which provide a snapshot of the timeliness and diversity of issues addressed in the pages of PS.

Politics Section

• • Hughes, Heather, and Israel Waismel-Manor. 2021. "The Macedonian Fake News Industry and the 2016 US Election." 54 (1).

• • Scarrow, Susan. 2021. "US Parties Abroad: Representing Versus Mobilizing Expatriates." 54 (1).

• • Barnes, Tiffany D., Victoria D. Beall, and Eric C. Cassese. 2021. "American Party Redux: Stability in Partisan Gender Gaps." 54 (3).

• • Brown, Adam R., and Jeremy C. Pope. 2021. "Mechanical Turk and the ’Don’t Know’ Option." 54 (3).

Table 2:

New Submissions to PS through Editorial Manager

STAFFING AND EDITORIAL BOARD

The PS: Political Science & Politics staff consists of a portion of two editors’ time and a full-time managing editor as well as a part-time editorial associate. Coeditor Phillip Ardoin is based at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina and coeditor Paul Gronke is based at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Celina Szymanski, senior managing editor, is based in Baltimore, MD and has been supported during parental leave by Marah Schlingensiepen, who has extensive experience working as an editorial assistant for Perspectives on Politics. Henry Chen, the APSA publishing associate, has left to pursue graduate school, and Madelyn Dewey has filled that position. She serves as Associate Editor for Political Science Today, APSA’s new member magazine, which is the replacement for the former Association section of PS. PS is further supported by part-time student assistants at Appalachian State and Reed College.

Our current editorial board includes 22 scholars who represent a diverse set of universities and colleges, research interests, methodologies, and perspectives of the APSA membership.

We would like to thank the members of our editorial board for their dedication and service to the journal and the profession.

New Board Members:

• • Charity Butcher, Kennesaw State University

• • Jonathan DiCicco, Middle Tennessee State University

• • Eric Loepp, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater

• • Matthew Moore, California Polytechnic State University

• • Lisa Sanchez, University of Arizona

Continuing Term:

• • James Druckman, Northwestern University

• • Justin Esarey, Wake Forest University

• • Kevin Esterling, University of California, Riverside

• • Robin Harding, Lady Margaret Hall

• • Natalie Jackson, PRRI

• • Ellen Key, Appalachian State University

• • Sarah Khan, Yale University

• • Brett Ashley Leeds, Rice University

• • Thomas Leeper, Facebook

• • Tehama Lopez Bunyasi, George Mason University

• • Yalidy Matos, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

• • Barbara Norrander, University of Arizona

• • Joseph Roberts, Roger Williams University

• • Brian Smentkowski, University of Idaho

• • Dawn Teele, University of Pennsylvania

• • Renee Van Vechten, University of Redlands

• • Yael Zeira, Syracuse University

We wish to thank the following editorial board members, whose term of service ends at the 2021 APSA Annual Meeting, for their service, time, and dedication to PS.

• • Maryam Zarnegar Deloffre, George Washington University

• • Johnny Goldfinger, Marian University

• • Robert Griffin, Democracy Fund

• • Robert Hogan, Louisiana State University

• • DuBose Kapeluck, The Citadel

• • Mary Meyer, Eckerd College

• • Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, University of Iowa

• • Mason Moseley, West Virginia University

• • Laura Sjoberg, University of Florida

• • Jonathan Strand, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

• • Joel Westheimer, University of Ottawa

• • Leonard Williams, Manchester University

PRODUCTION AND DELIVERY

PS has a good working relationship with our publisher, Cambridge University Press. Katrina Swartz, our production manager at Cambridge University Press continues to provide excellent service.

The production of The Association section of PS (People, Association News, Gazette, Business sections) is completed in-house by APSA staff, (previously Henry Chen), publishing associates. The Association section requires more layout and design features than the front, which consists only of peer-reviewed content. We particularly want to commend Henry Chen’s efforts in creating compelling cover art to promote featured articles.

A significant challenge we faced during the pandemic is lack of any response to many of our peer review requests. Each time a request is not responded to, it adds 30 days to the review period. We understand that many journal editors experienced a similar challenge during the pandemic—submissions have held steady or increased, but finding reviewers has become a lot harder.

We have attempted to personalize our invitation letters and utilize our board members when needed, but we continue to have to send out as many as a dozen requests for review. We hope this improves when the world returns to normality. If it continues, PS and other journals may need to think of alternative models for peer review, for example, much larger editorial boards who serve for limited terms and take on regular peer review duties.

Figure 1:

Turnaround Time from Submission to Review

Figure 2:

Turnaround Time from Acceptance to Publication

Figure 3:

Submissions by Content Type, 2017-2021

SUBMISSIONS BY ARTICLE TYPE

About half of our submissions in the first half of 2020 were stand-alone articles, and most of the rest were articles submitted as part of an organized symposium. Our attempts to create new content categories (“Reflections” and “From the Sections”) remain quite under utilized. Moving forward we plan to engage more proactively in soliciting content for these content categories.

The acceptance rate of 66.9% for 2020 was in line with our traditional rates. While the rate of acceptance is high in comparison to other APSA journals, this is partially the consequence of a significantly high acceptance rate of symposia. While all symposia submissions do undergo a double blind peer review, the review of symposium proposals filter out most manuscripts which might be ultimately rejected.

Table 3:

Final Disposition on Submissions, by date of final decision

Table 4:

Symposia and Spotlights Published in PS

* As of July 16 2020

PUBLICITY AND OUTREACH

PS joined the Twitterverse in January 2018. We now have over 4,600 followers and continue to build a follower base. Our handle is @ps_polisci. A typical Tweet involves a catchy phrase or sentence describing the work and a link to the article itself. Often, authors of the featured article will provide the tweet for us to use on their behalf. We try to tag (@) authors who are active on Twitter to increase exposure and allow the authors to retweet the link. The APSA editorial associate runs the PS-Twitter, in consultation with the managing editor.

We resist pressure to use the PS or our personal / professional twitter accounts or other social media to discuss editorial decisions. We do not believe it is appropriate or productive to debate editorial decision making in 240 character snippets. In general, when we are alerted to controversies regarding PS content, we describe our general policies, direct individuals to the PS web pages, and encourage people to contact us directly via email. Others may disagree with these views, and we would be happy to participate in broader discussions about appropriate use of social media to debate editorial decision making.

The APSA-run Political Science Now blog (www.politicalsciencenow.com) continues to feature PS content, especially symposia, spotlights, and research about the profession. PS articles have been featured in news media and other publications including Inside Higher Ed, The Washington Post’s “Monkey Cage,” and National Public Radio, among others.