INTERNATIONAL AUTHORSHIP IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

How international in scope is the authorship of articles in journals published by professional associations based in the United States? Previous studies have shown that the authorship of prestigious journals in political science and international studies has become more international but remains focused on the United States and other global-north countries (Aydinly and Mathews Reference Aydinli and Mathews2000; Breuning, Bredehoft, and Walton Reference Breuning, Bredehoft and Walton2005; Kristensen Reference Kristensen2015; Wæver Reference Wæver1998). It is possible that this is a function of the incentive structure regarding publication, but it also is possible that the review process affects this outcome.

Aydinly and Mathews (Reference Aydinli and Mathews2000) recommended that journals and professional associations in the United States engage in outreach efforts to improve the odds of success for international—especially global-south—scholars. The APSA has engaged in these efforts through its Africa and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) workshops (American Political Science Association 2015). However, the internationalization of the discipline is an incomplete project and not always characterized by dialogue (Canagarajah Reference Canagarajah2002).

Furthermore, Kristensen (2015, 252) observed that “success breeds success: a highly published author or institution is more likely to publish again.” He did not suggest that highly published authors do not deserve to be published again; rather, he suggested that high-quality scholarship by less-well-published scholars and those affiliated with non-elite institutions faces a higher threshold to gain recognition. In other words, Kristensen (Reference Kristensen2015) cautioned that implicit biases may affect what gets published. His work, similar to most studies of journal authorship, uses data derived from the published content of academic journals.

These studies provide important insights but cannot determine whether scholars affiliated with institutions outside of the United States are less likely to submit their work or whether their work fares less well in the review process. We recognized that scholars at elite institutions have advantages that may give their work somewhat better odds in the review process, but we assumed that high-quality scholarship can come from anywhere—in terms of both type of institution and global location. To complement and extend previous work, we investigated whether the location of authors’ PhD institutions and their current institutional affiliations as well as their current institution’s global rank had a discernible impact on the likelihood that their manuscript was accepted.

First, the academic job market has become increasingly international (Foote et al. Reference Foote, Li, Monk and Theobald2008). We therefore considered that scholars who obtained their PhD in the United States might be employed elsewhere but familiar with the academic style and expectations of journals such as the APSR (Canagarajah Reference Canagarajah2002). This may increase their willingness to submit their work as well as the likelihood that it is accepted.

Second, despite internationalization of the academic job market, we suspected that geography still matters (Aydinli and Mathews Reference Aydinli and Mathews2000). Submissions to the APSR represent a narrower range of countries than APSA membership. It is plausible that geographic location structures not only outcomes (i.e., who gets published) but also influences what is considered for publication (i.e., who submits their work). That said, it is now more likely that universities in emerging, transition, and global-south countries provide incentives to their faculty to submit to prestigious journals in the global north.^{Footnote 1}

Third, resources and support for research vary across different types of institutions. This is a possible reason for Kristensen’s (Reference Kristensen2015) finding that authors affiliated with prestigious and research-intensive institutions publish more. We therefore evaluated whether authors affiliated with globally highly ranked universities are more likely to have their work accepted for publication. Together, these three measures provided insight into the factors that foster or impede the submission and publication of a broader, more international cross-section of scholarship.

DATA ON INTERNATIONAL SUBMISSIONS

To evaluate the extent to which political science fosters international scholarly dialogue, we examined all manuscripts (and several characteristics of their authors) submitted to the APSR in 2010 and 2014—the third year, respectively, of the University of California, Los Angeles-and University of North Texas-based editorial teams. We chose the third year of each team’s four-year editorial term because the editors would be experienced and confident in their decision-making processes. At the same time, once the successor has been announced (usually early in the fourth year of the team’s term), it may influence authors’ decisions to submit. Hence, we estimated that the third year is a good time to “take the pulse” of editorial decision making. In addition, the data are limited to two years because the coding was extremely labor intensive (i.e., well over 400 person-hours). It therefore was not feasible to extend our data to a larger range of years.

For all manuscripts, we identified the institution at which each author had obtained his or her PhD, which we subsequently recoded to reflect whether the institution was in the United States (“1”) or elsewhere ( “0”). We also coded the geographic location of the institution with which each author was affiliated when the manuscript was submitted. We subsequently recoded the location of each author into an ordinal variable borrowed from Aydinli and Mathews (Reference Aydinli and Mathews2000), who classified the United States as “core,” other global-north countries as the “periphery of the core,” emerging countries and Eastern European countries as “core of the periphery,” and the global south as the “periphery.” We combined the last two categories, in part because the distinctions between them do not always fit current realities. Online appendix A lists the classification of countries into these three categories.

Furthermore, we used the ranking of the “best” global universities provided by US News & World Report (2016). We coded universities that do not appear in this ranking as “0.” It is important to note that this is an overall ranking of institutions; therefore, it is a blunter instrument than the ranking of US graduate programs in political science by the same publication. However, neither the latter nor the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (2015) include institutions outside of the United States. Hence, we used the global rank, recoded into quartiles, to achieve a rough estimate of higher- and lower-ranked institutions.

In addition to these three variables, we coded whether the manuscript was accepted (“1”) or rejected (“0”); whether the author was female (“1”) or male (“0”); the number of authors for each manuscript; each author’s academic rank (we reclassified international authors after researching international equivalencies of positions); whether this was the author’s first submission (yes=1, no=0); and whether the author had reviewed prior to submitting the manuscript (yes=1, no=0). When the relevant information about authors was not available in Editorial Manager, we searched online. When that proved fruitless, we categorized the information as missing. The overall effort encompassed 1,621 manuscripts and 2,660 authors. Categorized by year, we collected data for 670 manuscripts from 1,020 authors for 2010 and 951 manuscripts from 1,640 authors for 2014. The totals reported in the analyses are smaller due to missing data.

HOW INTERNATIONAL IS THE APSR?

International scholars comprise approximately 25% of APSA membership (Miller Reference Miller2016), which is slightly lower than the proportion of international submissions. In 2010, 28.5% of submitting authors and 29.7% of all authors (on multi-authored papers) were international. In 2014, these percentages had risen to 32.5% and 34.8%, respectively. International submitting authors represented 42 different countries in 2010 and 48 countries in 2014. When all authors were considered, manuscripts came from 43 countries in 2010 and 52 countries in 2014 (see this article’s appendix for further details). Hence, international authors who submit their work to the APSR comprise a slightly higher percentage than their proportion of APSA membership, but they come from a narrower range of countries than the 100-plus countries represented in APSA membership.

How do these international authors fare in the review process? This article presents several different ways to answer this question. Earlier work classified authors by the geographic location of their institution (e.g., Aydinli and Mathews Reference Aydinli and Mathews2000). However, the academic job market has shifted in recent decades and scholars more often live and work abroad. Although we do not know the nationality of the authors who submitted their work, we do know where they obtained their PhD, the global ranking of that institution, and where they work. By using all three measures, we achieved a more complete picture of the success of international scholars in having their work published in the APSR. We first provide bivariate assessments of the success of international and US authors and subsequently turn to a multivariate explanation.

First, we evaluated the success rate of submitting authors with PhDs from universities in the United States and elsewhere, irrespective of current affiliation. As shown in table 1, submitting authors with PhDs from US institutions are somewhat more likely than those with degrees from non-US institutions to have their work accepted by the APSR. This is true for both 2010 and 2014; however, the difference is small and not statistically significant. When we included coauthors (in addition to submitting authors), the proportions were slightly different but remained statistically non-significant (see table 1A in online appendix B). On the surface, this appears to be good news: scholars with PhDs from institutions in the United States and elsewhere who submit their work to the APSR have approximately similar success rates.

Table 1

Success Rate of Submitting Authors Who Hold US and Non-US PhDs

Notes: *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001; 2010: χ2 0.360, df 1, sig 0.548; 2014: χ2 1.305, df 1, 0.253.

However, despite the increasing internationalization of the academic job market (Foote et al. Reference Foote, Li, Monk and Theobald2008), we suspected that scholars who obtained their PhD in the United States have a high likelihood of working in the United States as well. Furthermore, the distinction between those who received their PhD in the United States or elsewhere provides little information about the geographic distribution of submission and publication patterns. We noted previously that submissions to the APSR represent a narrower range of countries than represented by APSA membership, which suggests that the geographic location of employment may affect the success rate of authors.

Therefore, our second measure of the international scope of authorship was geographic. As mentioned previously, we used an ordinal categorization borrowed from Aydinli and Mathews (Reference Aydinli and Mathews2000) to evaluate the acceptance rate of scholars from core and periphery locations. As shown in table 2, submitting authors are affiliated primarily with universities in the core (i.e., the United States) and, to a lesser extent, countries in the periphery of the core (i.e., other global-north countries). Relatively few submitting authors reside in the emerging, transition, or global-south countries (i.e., the periphery). Scholars affiliated with institutions in the core are somewhat more likely to have their work accepted than those in the periphery of the core; those affiliated with institutions in emerging, transition, and global-south countries have substantially lower odds. However, the differences were not statistically significant for either 2010 or 2014.

Table 2

Success Rate of Submitting Authors by Geographic Location of Institution

Notes: †See appendix A for a listing of countries classified as “periphery of core” and “periphery.” *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001; 2010: χ2 3.194, df 2, sig 0.202; 2014: χ2 5.261, df 2, sig 0.072.

When we included all authors, the pattern of submission and publication remained largely the same (see table 2A in online appendix B). A few coauthors reside in emerging and transition countries; however, the results remained statistically non-significant for 2010 but reached statistical significance for 2014 (i.e., p<0.05). The geographic data show that (1) authors from the United States and other global-north countries submit more manuscripts; and (2) these manuscripts are much more likely to be accepted for publication than the small number of manuscripts submitted by authors from emerging, transition, and global-south countries.

Third, we evaluated whether authors from prestigious, research-intensive universities were more likely to have their work accepted than those affiliated with other types of institutions, irrespective of where they obtained their PhD or the geographic location. We found a statistically significant relationship between the global ranking of the submitting author’s institution and the likelihood that his or her work was accepted for publication (i.e., p<0.01 or better, as shown in table 3). It is interesting that scholars affiliated with institutions in the top quartile did not submit the most manuscripts. In both 2010 and 2014, authors affiliated with institutions in the second quartile submitted more manuscripts but were less likely to have them accepted. Perhaps publishing in a top journal provides a stronger career boost for those in the second quartile, making those authors more eager to submit their work. Authors affiliated with the third and bottom quartiles submit fewer manuscripts, and their likelihood of acceptance tends to be lower than for scholars at institutions in the second quartile. That said, the odds of authors in the bottom quartile (which includes many liberal arts universities in the United States) were better in 2014 than in 2010. The same pattern held when we included coauthors (see table 3A in online appendix B).

Table 3

Success Rate of Submitting Authors by Global Rank of Institutional Affiliation

Notes: *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001; 2010: χ2 17.868, df 3, sig 0.000***; 2014: χ2 11.663, df 3, sig 0.009**.

In summary, when explaining the likelihood that scholars’ work will be accepted for publication, where they obtain their PhD and their current country location appear to be less important than the prestige of their institution. However, these analyses are bivariate. To explore the relative impact of the three measures, we present a logit model that includes modified versions of these variables as well as several controls.

The dependent variable for our logistic regression was whether the paper was accepted for publication. Our explanatory variables of interest included whether authors received their PhD at a US institution, the geographic location of their current affiliation (recoded into US=1 and 0 otherwise), and the global rank of the institutional affiliation (recoded into top quartile=1 and 0 otherwise).

We added several control variables. The author’s gender helped to identify potential gender bias. The number of authors of a manuscript identified whether single- or multi-authored work fares better. The author’s academic rank identified potential bias favoring either more senior or more junior scholars. Last, we controlled for whether the manuscript was the author’s first submission to the APSR and whether he or she had reviewed prior to submission. There is evidence that prior service as a reviewer improves the odds of acceptance (Breuning et al. Reference Breuning, Gross, Feinberg, Martinez, Sharma and Ishiyama2018). Table 4 summarizes statistics for the independent variables included in our logistic regression.

Table 4

Summary Statistics for the Independent Variables

Models 1 and 2 in table 5 present results for submitting authors for 2010 and 2014, respectively. For both years, scholars affiliated with institutions ranked in the top quartile of the global ranking have statistically significant better odds of getting their work accepted for publication. However, the odds ratios suggest that the advantage of such an affiliation was less pronounced in 2014 than in 2010. Although geographic location is not statistically significant, the results suggest that US-based scholars fared somewhat better in 2014 and international authors better in 2010. Furthermore, there was a statistically significant advantage to having reviewed prior to submitting a manuscript.

Table 5

Do Geographic Location and Institutional Prestige Affect Acceptance of Manuscripts? (Logistic Regression)

Note: *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001.

There did not seem to be any specific advantage to a PhD from the United States or being affiliated with a US institution; neither did the submitting author’s gender or rank, number of coauthors, or whether the paper was a first submission to the APSR matter. None of these variables was statistically significant.

Models 3 and 4 include all coauthors for each manuscript. The results reported in these models yielded largely similar results to those that considered only the submitting authors. Again, an affiliation with an institution ranked in the global top quartile made acceptance of a paper significantly more likely, although less so in 2014 than in 2010. Geographic location again was not statistically significant, but the results also showed a trend toward a higher likelihood of acceptance for US-based authors in 2014 than in 2010. Finally, in 2010, reviewing prior to submission was helpful for all authors; however, in 2014, this control variable lost statistical significance. None of the other control variables was significant in models 3 and 4. The collinearity diagnostics showed that the variables in our models were within acceptable limits—that is, the variance inflation factor (VIF) scores were all well below 4 (as shown in table 5).

Figure 1 graphically illustrates our key results. The left panel shows that in 2010, submissions by scholars affiliated with institutions in the top quartile of the global ranking were significantly more likely to have their work accepted than those at other types of institutions. The right panel shows that in 2014, scholars affiliated with these top institutions still fared relatively well, but the difference between these and other institutions was notably smaller. This difference is similar to the difference in the odds ratios for this variable in model 1 versus model 2 (and model 3 versus model 4) in table 5.

Figure 1

Global Rank of Institution

We also compared differences between US and international scholars for both 2010 and 2014. The results showed no significant differences in terms of acceptances, which indicates that there is no systematic bias against non-US scholars, as has been suggested.

TRENDS AND TRADEOFFS

The evidence presented in this article suggests that authors affiliated with institutions in the top quartile of the global ranking have better odds that their work will be accepted by the APSR. Although this may reassure some scholars, it also suggests that the internationalization of the discipline has not resulted in a broader geographic diversity or a greater diversity of perspectives in the pages of the APSR.

Moreover, the findings suggest that there may be a tradeoff between geographic location and global rank: in 2010, international scholars (at top-ranked institutions) seemed to fare relatively better, whereas in 2014, scholars at less highly ranked institutions (in the United States) fared slightly better. The descriptive data underscored this result. International scholars who are accepted for publication are almost exclusively affiliated with top-ranked institutions in the global north. They have their work accepted for publication at rates roughly equal to those of US-based scholars. Conversely, scholars affiliated with institutions in emerging, transition, and global-south countries were responsible for a rather small but increasing proportion of submissions and were rather unlikely to have their work accepted for publication in either 2010 or 2014.

Overall, international authors who submit their work to the APSR do not simply hail from a narrower range of countries than the APSA membership: they represent only one corner of the globe. This suggests that the internationalization of the discipline is as yet partial and incomplete. In addition, the data hint that there well may be tradeoffs between different types of inclusion. In 2014, work by scholars from non-top-ranked, non-research-focused institutions (e.g., liberal arts universities in the United States) was somewhat more likely to be accepted. However, this inclusion of a broader range of institutions did not extend internationally; instead, it benefited primarily US scholars.

If we assume that theoretically driven, innovative work can originate anywhere, then it is troubling that the internationalization of the APSR’s content has been limited to scholars affiliated with highly ranked institutions. Kristensen (Reference Kristensen2015) noted that high-quality scholarship produced by less-well-published scholars and those affiliated with non-elite institutions faces a higher threshold to gain recognition. Our findings suggest that good scholarship by authors from outside top-ranked, global-north institutions represents a rather small proportion of submissions and rarely makes it through the review process.

Hence, editors might want to carefully evaluate how they assess the value of submissions. One strategy is to make the review process “triple blind”—that is, shielding the author’s identity and affiliation from editors to permit a focus on the merits of the work. This strategy intends to mitigate potential editorial bias favoring specific scholars and institutions. However, it also could reinforce the focus on elite institutions, where scholars enjoy advantages that give their work better odds in the review process. These advantages include participation in small conferences and speaking engagements that provide valuable feedback on works-in-progress, ensuring that a submitted paper is already quite polished. This possibility suggests that there are no easy solutions to fostering a more international discipline that is inclusive of a broader and more global diversity of perspectives.

That said, building on the success of the Africa and MENA workshops, the APSA and other professional societies might continue to foster dialogue through initiatives that bring together scholars from different geographic locations. Scholars from emerging, transition, and global-south countries often lack the resources to attend conferences and therefore lack the opportunity to receive feedback on drafts that might improve their odds once they submit their manuscript. Depending on the incentive structures at their institutions (which vary widely), these scholars may welcome the opportunity to sharpen their arguments to facilitate their success in the review process (Canagarajah Reference Canagarajah2002).

Political science, as represented in the pages of the APSR, has a clear international dimension. However, the scholarship submitted to and accepted for publication in the journal remains dominated by scholars from top universities in the global north. Broader internationalization would add to the diversity of perspectives in the journal and the discipline but will not be easy to achieve.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096518000963