Editors’ Notes

doi:10.1017/S0022050715000091

Editors’ Notes

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2015

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Type: Editorial
Information: The Journal of Economic History , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 250 - 258

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050715000091 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Economic History Association 2015

Every even-numbered year represents the time of transition at the editorial offices of The Journal of Economic History. The year 2014 witnessed more changes than previous years. After four years of outstanding service as co-editor (including two years as senior editor), Jean-Laurent Rosenthal is concluding his term and after eight years of nonpareil service as production editor, Sabrina De Jaegher is transferring the reins. Additionally, after two years of sterling service as book review editor for the Americas, Martha Bailey is ending her term. We offer our sincere thanks to each for excellent work and dedication on our behalf.

Ann Carlos has begun a four-year term as the co-editor for Eurasia articles. Paul Rhode has assumed the job as senior editor as well as continuing to serve as the rest-of-the-world co-editor. The editorial offices have moved from Pasadena, California to Ann Arbor, Michigan and Sally Sztrecska has taken over as production editor. John Murray is now the book review editor for the Americas. We are thankful to Timothy Guinnane who has continued to serve as the book review editor for rest-of -the world during this time of transition.

We have benefited from the expert guidance and advice of our Board of Editors and the more than 200 referees. “Graduating seniors” of the Board include Peter Rousseau, Melissa Thomasson, William Summerhill, and Ken Pomeranz; we thank them profusely for their service. The incoming frosh include Juliette Levy, Frank Lewis, Anne Murphy, John Murray, Jonathan Rose, and Patrick Wallis. Each will serve a four-year term. Gillian Greenough continues as our liaison with Cambridge University Press and her help in the editing and distribution process is greatly appreciated. More than 60 scholars contributed book reviews. The editorial office is grateful to all who helped the The Journal of Economic History (JOURNAL) over this past year.

The number of submissions to the JOURNAL slightly increased last year from 144 to 159 (see Table 1). Careful readers will note that the numbers reported for past years differ from those presented in previous editors’ reports. Each new senior editor faces difficulties reproducing the exact methods and statistics of the previous editors. Our current “improved” estimates indicate the past editors handled even more papers than they had claimed. (One hypothesis—consistent with the available evidence—is that they relied on data from the Manuscript Central reporting system that tabulated only what the referees reviewed, not all that passed before their own eyes. This oversight was due perhaps to overwork or perhaps to a desire to forget some of what they had seen.) In any case, the numbers in Table 1 are higher than in past versions but the trends are similar. The publication ratio displayed is the number of refereed papers and notes published in the current year divided by the number of new papers submitted in the previous year. In 2013–2014 we published 32 refereed pieces. The ratio of this year's publications to the past year's new submissions is in line with the recent past.

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. Our means and medians typically range between 70 and 90 days. This year's performance has been roughly on par with other years—the median response time of 75 days overall and of 79 days for new submissions. (Note these numbers are truncated at 1 August for the current year.) The minimum response time was four days and the maximum was 243. We apologize for the long delays in the latter case and will seek to do better in the future.

Table 1

PUBLICATION RATES

The distributions of submissions are documented in Table 3 on eras, Table 4 on regions, and Table 5 on topics. Coverage remains broad. As with last year, there has been a growing number and share of submissions for the twenty-first century. The popularity of North American listing remains low relative to the JOURNAL's long history. Topics on growth appear to be in decline. Labor is also down. Otherwise coverage is quite similar to that in the recent past.

At the 2013 Economic History Association (EHA) meeting, the JOURNAL ’s editors recommended and the EHA board of trustees approved a new policy to make publication conditional on archiving the data sufficient to replicate the results in the accepted articles. The new rules read:

It is the policy of The Journal of Economic History to publish papers only if the data used in the analysis are clearly and precisely documented and are readily available to any researcher for purposes of replication. Authors of accepted papers must archive, prior to publication, the data, programs, and other details of the computations sufficient to permit replication. These will be archived at ICPSR and a stable URL link to these data will be published with each article. The Editors should be notified at the time of submission if the data used in a paper are proprietary or if, for some other reason, the requirements above cannot be met.

As soon as possible after acceptance, authors are expected to deposit their data, programs, and sufficient details to permit replication with ICPSR. Questions regarding any aspect of this policy should be forwarded to the Journal Editor.

Our work with Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) to implement this policy has been subject to unfortunate but not unexpected delays. We are looking forward to launching the new data archiving policy in early 2015.

Table 2

RESPONSE TIME STATISTICS