I. INTRODUCTION

PS: Political Science & Politics is in its 58th year of publication. PS occupies a unique niche among the APSA portfolio of publications as an outlet for peer-reviewed original research on a variety of topics that are relevant to political scientists and researchers in allied fields. PS publishes research on political events in the US and abroad, political science pedagogy, and research on the state of the discipline. PS welcomes work authored by and reflecting the research priorities of underrepresented groups, those working outside the academy, and scholars residing outside the United States.

The current editorial team started their tenure in 2022. Over the last two years of our editorship, we have sought to expand the readership of the journal, in part, by increasing our social media presence. Our editors represented the journal at various workshops and conferences including in North Carolina, Santiago (Chile) and in Accra (Ghana). This sort of exposure is raising the profile of the journal by bringing in more readers and potential authors. We have also sought to expand the journal’s scope by creating a “Comments and Controversy” section which has already received fifteen submissions. We also continue to strengthen the review process and the quality of published work in the journal with our triple anonymous reviews and recently approved higher word count. See below for more information.

During this past year, the journal has published (or is in the process of publishing) symposia and special issues on cutting edge topics. For example, in January 2024, we published the first Comment and Controversy Special Issue on Democratic Backsliding. A group of the Special Issue contributors highlighted their contributions’ arguments and findings at a roundtable that we hosted at APSA’s 2023 Annual Meeting in Los Angeles. APSA staff noted that the panel was one of the most heavily-attended journal-sponsored panels in APSA’s history and the special issue received excellent feedback.

While our team of editors has not changed, our undergraduate Editorial Assistants rotate on an annual basis and this past academic year, we onboarded three new members: Nick Aime, David Asiedu, and Geraldine Guzman. We are grateful for their support and for the continuing support of our managing editor and board members.

One of our team’s core objectives is to facilitate the engagement with and representation of all political scientists at every type of institution across the world and we seek to accomplish this in numerous ways. With the assistance of the Cambridge team and our managing editor, we have updated the APSA and Cambridge University Press websites so that they present more comprehensive information and are more user friendly. Comparable to other APSA journals, PS is now solely an electronic journal and publishes a budding number of Open Access publications so as to expand accessibility. Our increasing reliance on social media to promote the latest publications and highlight Open Access journal articles assists us in expanding the knowledge of and access to our journal’s publications. Our team increased the word count of PS submissions by 20% for articles, symposia, and spotlight contributions. Thus, upon initial submission, article manuscripts can be 4,800 words, symposium contributions can be 3,600 words, and spotlight contributions can be 1,800 words (up from 4,000, 3,000, and 1,500, respectively). Further, our editorial board differs significantly in terms of subfield, profession, university type and demographic characteristics. Though we still have some progress to make on this front, we are working towards this goal.

Another one of our core objectives is to ensure that published scholarly research is ethical, clear and transparent across disciplinary subfields and epistemological, methodological approaches. Submissions to PS are required to adhere to the APSA’s Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science and the APSA’s Principles and Guidance for Human Subjects Research. Further, we require that every author of an empirical paper submit their data file(s) to the Harvard Dataverse for replication purposes prior to the publication of manuscripts. For more information, see https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/ps/. We believe that these requirements not only improve the quality of research publications but the discipline as a whole.

PS is one of the primary outlets for research on the profession, and we’ve been proud to continue publishing important articles and symposia highlighting the challenges of broadening and diversifying our profession (and academia). We feel an important sense of responsibility to provide an outlet for disciplinary debates, among others. As examples, we have recently published and have upcoming symposia on:

• • Qualitative Methods in the Undergraduate Classroom

• • CMPS 2020: An Introduction to the Oversamples

• • Rethinking China-Africa Engagements in the Age of Discontent

• • Populism and Democracy

• • Contemporary Politics of the UK

• • The Politics of Abortion in the Americas

Our team has also released various Calls for Papers and created upcoming Special Issues in our focused effort to welcome work authored by and reflecting the research priorities of underrepresented groups, those working outside the academy, and scholars residing outside the United States. We have relied upon our subfield networks and listservs in which we are a part of to ensure that our Calls are widely circulated. Examples of our Calls for Papers and upcoming Special Issues include research on:

• • Climate Change and Vulnerable Populations

• • Contemporary and Future LGBTQ+ Scholarship in Political Science

• • Forecasting the 2024 US Election

We sincerely welcome comments, suggestions, and ideas to be shared with us by emailing our team at ps@apsanet.org.