American Political Science Review | 2019
Notes from the Editors
Abstract
When we applied for the APSR editorship, we advertised our European location with the slogan “Going Global.”Now,asweapproach theendofourfirst term,we aim to explore whether and to what extent theAPSR has reachedamoreglobal audienceandwhat the implications are for this outlet. For this purpose, using time series data provided by Editorial Manager, we evaluate the corresponding authors’ location at the time of submission of all submissions received from 2011 to September 2018. According toFigure 1, the shareof correspondingauthors from outside the United States (US) has increased from 29% in 2011 to 40% in the first ninemonths of 2018. This trenddoes not seem tobedriven by an increasing share of submissions from the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany (GER) alone, the two countries with the highest share of submissions after the US and those where the current editorial team is located, but seems to be global. To shed light on potential implications of this development, we examine the manuscripts’ subfield, methodological approach, type of authorship, and editorial outcomes before and after the review process. However, notethatsomeofthesecharacteristicsprovidefor imperfect measures. In addition to methodological approach, for which we can only distinguish reasonably between quantitative and nonquantitative approaches, the division into subfields is neither exclusive nor complete. Table 1 shows the relative proportional share of different subcategories across US and non-US submissions for political science subfields, methodological approach, gender by type of authorship, firstand second-round decisions, and the final disposition for manuscripts in our database since 2011. Starting with authors’ self-assigned subfield classifications, differences in the relative share are most profound for American Politics and Comparative Politics. While American Politics constitutes around 27% of all submissions from the US, the share is, unsurprisingly, much lower among non-US submissions where they account for less than 6% of submissions. In turn, submissions classified as Comparative Politics are about ten percentage points higher among non-US submissions than US submissions (37% vs. 27%). Likewise, the relative share of both Normative Theory (19% vs. 14%) and Formal Theory (7% vs. 5%) as well as ofMethods (4%vs. 3%) is also higher amongnon-US than US submissions. However, submissions from International Relations (17% vs. 13%) and on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (4% vs. 3%) are more frequent amongUS submissions. Some of these differences, such as the higher share of American Politics and the lower share of theoretical pieces among US submissions, may additionally be reflected in the comparatively higher share of quantitative approaches among submissions from the US (71% vs. 56%). Briefly summarized, going global changes the subfield composition of the APSR submissions toward Comparative Politics and Theory. Another hotly debated topic concerns thegenderof the manuscript’s authors, for which we distinguish between solo and team author types. Currently, the role of gender receives high attention in the US-American academic community—perhaps higher than it is, for example, receiving in theMiddleEast,Asia,oreven inEurope.One reason could be that publications inflagship journals have onaverageahigher impactonpromotionwithin theUS. If one consequently assumes—at least in some regional areasoutsideoftheUS—alowerimportance insubmitting to an outlet like the APSR, increasing trends of non-US submissions might imply decreasing female submission rates. Despite the outlined differences in subfield shares, differences in authors’ gender between US and non-US submissions are statistically almost not distinguishable. We find slightly more solo-male manuscripts (41% vs. 39%)but lessall-femaleteams(2.9%vs.3.4%)andmixedgender teams (17% vs. 18%) among non-US submissions. Regarding solo-female submissions (14%) and all-male teams (25%), the corresponding authors’ current location clearly fails to predict differences in the relative submission shares. Together, going global hardly changes the authors’ gender composition of the APSR submissions. Unlike for authors’ gender, we observe stark differenceswith respect to the editorial outcomes betweenUS and non-US submissions both at the initial stage of desk rejections, at the second stage after review and with respect tofinalacceptancerates.During thestudyperiod, the share of first-round desk rejections is much higher among non-US submissions than US submissions (45% vs. 21%). In turn, the second-round rejection share after review is higher among US submissions (71% vs. 51%). However, these different rates offirstand second-round rejections donotbalanceeachotherbut result in ahigher invitation rate to revise amanuscript amongUS thannonUS submissions (8% vs. 4%). As a consequence, we observe ahigher acceptance rate of around6%amongUS submissions compared to non-US submissions of around 3%. Although the overall share of accepted non-US submissions is much lower, it increased from 17% of all accepted manuscripts in the editorial term, 2012–13, to 26% of all accepted manuscripts in the term, 2017–18. As already indicated, going global might change the composition and eventually the perception of the APSR. These days 40% of the submission we receive come from outside of the US—a trend that has increased since the APSR started to collect data on the corresponding authors’ country of residence. With more submissions coming from outside the US, the portfolio of our submissions is likely going to continue to move toward more Comparative Politics and Theory. In Comparative Politics, however, the authors’ self-assigned subfield classification might provide an incomplete picture of the subfield due to the overlap in particular with topics traditionally found in InternationalRelations. In that regard, thismayexplain thehigheracceptance rateof submissions in Comparative Politics than in International Relations (5.9% vs. 2.7%). Although the rejection rate of submissions from outside the US currently is substantially higher, we see more and more articles from authors located outside the US being published in the APSR.