Number of Papers Submitted

During my first year as editor, submissions rose by 44% overall and by 56% for new manuscripts, compared to the preceding year.¹

The next year, we expected submissions to level or even drop off somewhat, but instead they continued to increase, with total submissions running 9% over the first-year figure and new submissions up 7%. This extraordinary growth over two years was both gratifying and problematic-the latter because it strained our capacity to do business in a timely and efficient manner. During 2003–2004, the expected leveling off of submissions did occur, albeit a year later than we had anticipated. Total submissions were down 9%, reverting to their 2001–2002 level, while new submissions declined slightly from 546 to 523, a 4% drop. We continue to welcome, and in various venues we continue actively to encourage, new submissions, but a realistic expectation for the next few years is for submissions to hover around their current level. I suspect that we have now reached a new equilibrium in terms of submissions.

Turnaround Times

Even as the flow of submissions was rising dramatically during 2001–2002 and 2002–2003, we managed to compile substantially faster processing times than had been achieved in the past—thanks to a combination of new procedures, close monitoring, and the efforts of our reviewers. In the first two years, our median turnaround time, calculated as the number of elapsed working days between the arrival of a paper in our offices until I signed the decision letter, was 39 days. In 2003–2004, the flow of submissions subsided somewhat, but our average processing time actually increased by three working days. The reason for the slight slowdown was simple: We planned it that way.

One of the recommendations of the site visit team that reviewed our operations in the spring of 2003 was that we consider slowing the process down in selected instances. Until then, when the first two reviews of a paper came in negative, we had more or less automatically been canceling the third review and rejecting the paper. The feedback we had received about that procedure from reviewers and authors alike was generally highly favorable. The site visit team, however, suggested that in some cases authors might derive greater profit from receiving an extra assessment of their work than from saving a few days of waiting for what was going to be a rejection letter. (Reading between the lines, I think the site review team was also fearful that the sheer pace of our operation might be taking a toll on the editor and staff.) Acting on the site visit team's recommendation, on several occasions during the past year we waited for the third review to arrive even though the negative outcome of the review process was not in doubt. As a consequence, a somewhat greater proportion of rejections was based on three rather than just two reviews, producing a somewhat—though not, I think, seriously—longer median turnaround time.

More generally, the APSR staff and I continue to take pride in our ability to process submissions in a timely manner, and my reading of annual reports prepared by editors of other journals suggests that our pride is justified. As in the first two years of our operation, the median number of working days between receiving a paper and sending it out for review was one, and the median number of working days between receiving the last review and signing my decision letter was zero. Despite our best efforts, and in several instances due to circumstances for which no one could be faulted, some review processes dragged on for far too long; fortunately, these instances were rare and the authors of these papers earned my gratitude by displaying great patience.

Mix of Submitted Papers

Categorized according to primary analytical approach, as in the top portion of Table 3, the distribution of submitted papers remained virtually identical to the pattern that has become familiar in recent years. Most of what we received was primarily quantitative and/or formal, and about one submission in four (predominantly but by no means exclusively normative theory) was classified as “interpretive/conceptual.” We continued to receive very few “small-N” papers.

When the submitted papers are categorized by subfield, as in the bottom portion of Table 3, some intriguing patterns come into focus. Before proceeding any further, I need to note that the apparent dropoff in the formal theory submissions is largely a coding artifact. Following my predecessor Ada Finifter's practice, we classify papers that employ formal modeling according to their substantive focus. Thus, for example, we would put a paper that presented a formal model of arms races in the international relations category; only if formal work were otherwise unclassifiable (as, for instance, would be the case in an abstract consideration of cooperation in mixed-motive games) would we put it in the “formal” category. By departing from the practice of Finifter's predecessors, who had put formal modeling papers in the “formal” category irrespective of their subject matter, we have in effect reduced the number of entries in that category and thereby increased the number in some subject matter categories—predominantly American politics and international relations. That being the case, the relative decline over the years of American politics-focused papers as a proportion of all submissions becomes all the more striking. Indeed, American politics and normative theory, which together accounted for the clear majority of submissions during the 1980s and 1990s, have during the last three years fallen well short of majority status—and no less strikingly, even the plurality status of American politics submissions is now being challenged. I hasten to add that the APSR is not now receiving fewer American politics and normative theory submissions than it used to. In fact, it is receiving more. But the growth of these two historically dominant categories has been far overshadowed by the growth of other categories.

In recent years, the leading growth areas for the APSR have been comparative politics and research methods. Indeed, it is comparative politics that now challenges the numerical dominance of American politics submissions, a turn of events that not very long ago would have been widely regarded as an extremely remote possibility. Also noteworthy is the increase in methods-oriented submissions. I am especially encouraged by this trend because the best of these submissions, including some that were published during 2003–2004 or are currently awaiting publication,²

present broadly accessible treatments of research issues of widespread interest to political scientists of various stripes.

In short, the flow of submissions to the APSR, while still dominated by work in the quantitative and formal modes, has been moving in a direction directly counter to the traditional dominance of work in American politics and political theory. If it is true, as many editors have responded to those who decry the dominance of “mainstream” journals by work representing certain analytical approaches and substantive fields, that “We can't publish what we don't get,” it is no less true that as we receive more submissions of types that traditionally have not been well represented in our pages, we will undoubtedly be publishing more such work. Thus, the trends depicted in the lower portion of Table 3 convey good news for those in other fields of political science, given that rejection rates vary little across fields. These trends also convey good news for those who see the mission of the APSR as serving as a showcase for the best work being done across the broad sweep of our discipline. I should also note, with some concern, that normative theory submissions have not increased as the numbers of submissions in other fields have grown; I am not certain what to make of this, but we will continue to monitor this situation and to encourage submissions from all corners of the discipline.