SECTION 1: KEY INFORMATION
Editorial Staff
Editor-in-Chief:
Charity Butcher, Kennesaw State University, USA
Email: cbutche2@kennesaw.edu
Lead Editor:
Alasdair Blair, De Montfort University, UK
Email: ablair@dmu.ac.uk
Books, Teaching Tools, and Educational Resources:
Alison Rios Millett McCartney, Towson University, USA
Associate Editors:
Tavishi Bhasin, Kennesaw State University, USA
Elizabeth Gordon, Kennesaw State University, USA
Maia Carter Hallward, Kennesaw State University, USA
Simon Usherwood, Open University, UK
Managing Editor:
Rita Kettani Christiansen, Kennesaw State University, USA
Editorial Board:
Yasemin Akbaba, Gettysburg College
Victor Asal, University of Albany
Elizabeth Bennion, Indiana University, South Bend
Jeffrey Bernstein, Eastern Michigan University
Patrick Bijsmans, Maastricht University
Marijke Breuning, University of North Texas
Mitchell Brown, Auburn University
David Carless, University of Hong Kong
Steven Curtis, London Metropolitan University
Michelle Deardorff, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Rebecca Ann Glazier, University of Arkansas – Little Rock
Kerstin Hamann, University of Central Florida
John Ishiyama, University of North Texas
Chris Lawrence, Middle Georgia State University
Darrell Lovell, West Texas A&M
Elizabeth Matto, Rutgers University
Heidi Maurer, Danube University Krems
Mary McHugh, Merrimack College
Alexandra Mihai, Maastricht University
Julie Mueller, Southern Maine Community College
Gabriela Pleschova, Cormenius University
Erin Richards, Cascadia Community College
Mark Carl Rom, Georgetown College
Sherri Wallace, University of Louisville
SECTION 2: REVIEW OF THE YEAR
Over the last year we were delighted to see an increase in article downloads and an increase in our CiteScore. We have continued to work toward promoting stronger and more methodologically rigorous pieces in the tradition of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Perhaps as a side effect of this approach, we have seen the number of articles submitted to the journal decrease over the last year (down from 142 to 111). The acceptance rate also went up a little from 42% to 45%, perhaps because of authors selecting in that area better fit for the journal.
We have sought to continue to raise the profile of the journal through organizing roundtable events at conferences such as APSA, ISA, and APSA TLC. We also had editorial team members attend international conferences, including the UK Political Studies Association in March in Birmingham and the International Political Science Association conference in Seoul in July. We have sought to proactively engage the Editorial Board in undertaking reviews and have endeavored to limit the number of reviews that any member of the board undertakes.
To help provide guidance for authors related to conducting Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research and the importance of following their institution’s and APSA’s ethical guidelines for research with human subjects, we prepared and published on our website a “JPSE Statement on Research Ethics and Institutional Board Approval.”
We published a 20-year anniversary issue (Volume 20, Issue 4) that featured an editorial by our team and a reflection article from John Ishiyama and Marijke Breuning (the journal’s founding editors). The anniversary issue included a diverse range of authors from countries that had not previously published in the journal, including Mauritius and Hong Kong, and with authors from Spain, the issue reflected our commitment to internationalizing the journal’s reach. The anniversary issue had articles on major topics such as teaching with AI, gender in learning, research methods, community engagement, critical data studies, quantitative data in political science education, and a multi-method approach to the future of SoTL, among others.
In addition, in Volume 21, Issue 2, we published an editorial on Artificial Intelligence Challenges and Opportunities where we discussed some of the issues we have seen as editors related to AI within teaching and publishing. The issue also featured four articles on AI in the classroom, three of which stemmed from a roundtable we hosted at APSA.
We have created an initial digital article collection, “Creating and Maintaining an Inclusive Classroom, Curriculum and Political Science Discipline,” which should be online by the APSA conference. This collection will be open access and showcases articles in the journal that focus on an inclusive classroom. During the current political climate, we believe such a collection is more important than ever.
At the APSA 2024 conference we hosted two roundtables: one on “Teaching Contentious International Issues” and one on “Teaching through Domestic Challenges and Culture War.” These roundtables reflect our commitment to shine a light on important issues and based on these two panels, we have an upcoming symposium with five articles related to teaching in difficult political climates. Further, given the challenges currently facing education, political science, the country, and the world, we are continuing with this theme during the 2025 APSA conference, where we will host two roundtables, one on “Teaching Civil Discourse: Talking through Agreement and Disagreement with Classmates, Family, and Friends” and one on “Checking the Headlines on the Way to Class: Teaching American Government in a Time of Sudden Change.” As with previous roundtables, we envisage these papers will lead to further symposiums in 2026. Indeed, symposiums continue to attract interest from the political science community, with the top downloaded article over the last 12 months coming from a 2024 Symposium on Teaching Political Science in Times of Conflict. We also attended the APSA TLC meeting in February 2024 where we discussed the journal and gave tips on publishing in our journal as well as other SoTL or pedagogical outlets.
Author satisfaction surveys indicate a positive publishing experience, albeit with a relatively small number of dissatisfied responses. Authors were generally positive with the refereeing process for the journal and whilst overall we do have a positive response when asking reviewers, on occasion it can take multiple rounds of invitations for enough reviews to be obtained. We have worked to diversify and increase the pool of reviewers through such work as sign-up sheets at APSA meetings.
We take a positive, mentoring, approach on articles where authors are from countries that are non-native English speakers as part of our effort to further diversify the journal. This has been reflected in additional support in terms of editing the article and supporting authors at the point of first submission. At times, we have provided feedback to authors on how to improve the article and allowed them the option of resubmitting following our initial rejection.
Editorial Board
The members of 2024-2025 Editorial Board are the same as last year. However, we have recently invited new members to the board and are rotating out a few of the previous members to help add more diversity to the board in terms of the types of institutions represented (teaching colleges and two-year colleges) (see table 2, 3, 4).
Journal highlights for year ending 2024**
**Source: Taylor & Francis JPSE Annual Report
Editorial Board 2024-2025
Editorial Board by Gender (Percentage of Total)
Editorial Board Members by Location 2024-2025 (Percentage of Total)
Annual Prize
Our second annual prize for the best article published in Volume 19 in 2023 was awarded in 2024 to Mark Carl Rom, Jorge Abeledo, Randall Ellsworth, Noah Martin, and Lina Zuluga for their article, “Engaging Students in American Politics: Effort and Accomplishment.” We thank the prize committee, Kerstin Hamann (chair), Mitchell Brown, and Loan Le, for their outstanding service. The prize was announced at the 2024 annual meeting and in Political_Science_Now .
Our third annual prize for the best article published in Volume 20 in 2024 was awarded to Iva Božovic for her article “Misuse of Data as a Teaching Tool.” We thank the prize committee of Yasemin Akbaba, Chris Lawrence, and Mark Carl Rom. The prize was confirmed at the APSA Annual Meeting in September.
Impact Factor
Whilst we were sorry to see that the Impact Factor of 0.6 for the journal in 2024 was lower than the previous year (0.9), our 5-year Impact Factor is .9 and our CiteScore increased to 2.1. We recognize that it can take time to build a journal’s impact factor, and we hope that the initiatives that we have taken, such as the 20-year anniversary issue at the beginning of 2024 and the use of symposia will have a positive impact on the journal’s Impact Factor. In addition, we published several articles on artificial intelligence in education, as well as an editorial on AI, which we believe will help increase our Impact Factor. We are curating article collections that we also hope to increase focus on and access to articles in specific topical areas and lead to greater citations.
We also have a symposium on “Teaching During Times of Political Upheaval” planned for 2026 that we hope will lead to an increase in citations. With the decline in the usage of Twitter/X, we have decided to move our social media to BlueSky. We hope as more academics move to this new platform, we will be able to again utilize social media to promote the articles published in the journal, which we think can have a positive impact on our Impact Factor.
We hope that these steps, when combined with a focus on research rigor, will build the Impact Factor over coming years.
SECTION 3: REVIEW OF DATA
Submissions
During this past year, the journal continued to receive submissions from a number of authors, from different regions and countries. The manuscript types are categorized differently from the previous years. Currently, the articles are identified as a “Book Review,” “Discussion,” and “Research Article.” Last year, there was an additional category of “Books, Teaching Tools, Educational Resources.” Older designations include “Books, Teaching Tools, Education Resources,” “Political Science Instruction,” “Reflections on Teachings and the Academy,” and “Scholarship of Learning and Teaching.” (See Table 5)
Between July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, a total of 111 manuscripts were received
Manuscripts by Status July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025
Manuscripts Decided between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025
Between July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, a total of 111 manuscripts were received.
Between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, the journal received 111 original submissions. This is down from 142 submissions the previous year. The majority of the manuscripts were research articles (103/92.8%, up from last year’s 87.3%), followed by book reviews (6/5.4%, down from 7.0%), and discussions (2/1.8%, down from 4.9%). Last year, “The Books, Teaching Tools, and Educational Resources” category accounted for 0.7% of the submissions. Table 5 illustrates the types of manuscript categories that were received last year and the percentage of submissions. Last year, the majority of manuscripts focused on “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” followed by “Political Science Instruction.”
At the point of submission, all articles are initially reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief and Lead Editor to determine their suitability for the journal. 45 (40.5%) articles were rejected as inappropriate for the journal. Last year, 55 (38.7%) of the articles received were rejected as inappropriate for the journal. This, along with the lower number of submissions, suggests that authors are self-selecting out of submitting to the journal when they believe they will be unsuccessful in getting published, 9 (8.1%) additional articles were rejected as “unsound” or “unsuitable” for the journal. Articles are typically rejected when they do not focus on political science education. They are deemed “unsound” when the contributions they were seeking to make were unreliable, they were speculative, did not fit the aims of the journal, or did not meet the ethical standards that we have elected for data collection. Decisions to desk reject articles are taken by the Editor-in-Chief and the Lead Editor.
Table 8 (a) lists the number of manuscripts received by month, between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025. February 2025 saw the highest number of submissions, followed by July 2024, December 2024, and January 2025. 15 (15.8%) of the articles were received in February. 14 (14.7%) manuscripts were received In July 2024, followed by 11 (11.6%) in both December 2024, and January 2025.
Manuscripts Decided by Month
Table 8 (b) illustrates the manuscripts received in the previous years (between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, and July 2022 and June 30, 2023). July 2023 saw the largest number of articles (31/21.8%), followed by October (17/12%), and January (14/9.9%). The previous year’s submissions saw the largest increase in May (11/13.9%), followed by August (10/12.7%), then October and February (9/11.4%).
Manuscripts Received by Month between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, and between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024
Table 9 highlights the authors’ country or regions of origin. Authors from 30 specified countries or regions (and one from an unspecified country) submitted articles to the journal. Last year, there were 26 countries represented in the number of manuscripts submitted, and the previous year, there were 24. The largest percentages of original submissions continue to be from authors residing in the United States with 42 manuscripts or 44.21% (compared to 53.5% last year.) Authors from Indonesia and China were next, with six manuscripts each or 6.31% each. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland submitted the next highest number of manuscripts with five manuscripts, or 4.21%. This is down from eight submissions or 5.6% last year. Spain, Türkiye, and Vietnam followed with three submissions each or 3.16%. The rest of the represented countries either had one or two articles accepted during the year ending on June 30, 2025 (See table 9.)
Manuscripts by Country
Reviewer Statistics
Average Days from Submission to a Decision (July 1, 2024-June 30, 2025)
Days to First Decision (All Manuscripts): 38.19
Days to First Decision (Mss. with Final Decisions Only): 21.85
Statistics by Manuscript Type (Final Decision Only): Days to Final Decision
Time to Decision
Over the past year, our average time to first decision was around 38 days, and our average time to first decision on the final decision only was around 22 days. Last year, our time to first decision was around 35.3 days. This year, there were a couple of instances of decision times taking an excessive amount of time (272 days in one case) due to the difficulty of receiving reviewer reports back. This issue is particularly pronounced when reviewers agree to review a piece, but fail to submit their review. This requires us to go back to the pool of reviewers. If this happens more than once, it can significantly delay the response time. One strategy we have employed to deal with this issue is to ask Editorial Board members to quickly review pieces that have been under review for a long time.
Reviewers
During the period of July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, 259 reviewers were contacted to review manuscripts, some on multiple occasions. However, though we had many reviewers to pull from, we sometimes found it difficult to find reviewers for certain articles. This increased the time under review for a handful of pieces. In instances where we have one review and another is outstanding for a considerable period of time (e.g. over 30 days) and the reviewer is not responding, we tend to approach former editors and members of the editorial board to ask them if they can undertake a review in a shortened time period.
SECTION 4: PLANS FOR THE YEAR AHEAD
As mentioned earlier, we are hosting two roundtables at the APSA Annual Meeting in September 2025, one on “Teaching Civil Discourse: Talking through Agreement and Disagreement with Classmates, Family, and Friends” and one on “Checking the Headlines on the Way to Class: Teaching American Government in a Time of Sudden Change.” In addition, we have an upcoming symposium on a similar topic of teaching during the current times.
While we have presented workshops and panels at multiple conferences on publishing SoTL and pedagogical work, and will continue to do so, we know that not all scholars can attend such conferences. As such, in the coming year we plan to have more online options, including potential videos, that can help provide guidance on publishing SoTL for more professors in the US and around the world.
We are working to diversify our editorial board and have invited some additional members from teaching colleges, as well as some from outside the US, to join our board. We will be curating some additional special digital collections which we hope will help to highlight the work our authors are doing and increase our Impact Factor over time. We are building our BlueSky social media platform to increase engagement.
CONCLUSION
Our third year of editing the journal has been a period of continuing to expand or reach and to educate potential authors on SoTL research. As we have worked to reposition the journal back to its core focus on publishing rigorous research in political science education, we have seen some potential challenges, such as a decline in submissions. We received an Impact Factor our first year as a team, and have seen this number decline over the past two years. As a journal focused on teaching and learning, we understand our Impact Factor may be more unstable than other journals, yet we have been working on ways to increase this number, such as publishing special issues and creating curated collections of articles.
As a team, one of our main priorities is to help provide some guidance to faculty teaching during very disruptive times. We are continuing to support faculty by hosting roundtables, publishing special symposia on these issues, and creating curated collections on topics such as inclusive classrooms.
We are grateful to the support of the Editorial Board, colleagues at APSA and Taylor and Francis, and of course our excellent journal administrator Rita Kettani Christiansen.
Points to Raise with the APSA Council
One of the major issues we continue to face is the appropriate use of AI in publishing. We hope that APSA journals can move toward a shared policy related to the use of AI so that we can provide clear guidance to authors and editors.
Another issue is social media and other tactics for improving the reach of our journal. With the changing use of social media in the last few years, this has become a larger issue that we suspect all journals are trying to navigate. It also is an area where we think collaboration could benefit everyone.
