Notes from the Editors: A Bigger Pie

A primary goal of our editorial team has been to expand the journal’s substantive, methodological, and representational diversity while also maintaining the high standards of scholarship with which it has long been associated. As we prepared to begin our editorship, we learned that for a variety of reasons, many prior issues of the APSR had not used all the pages allocated to it by Cambridge University Press. We quickly realized that using more pages could provide a way to pursue the dual goals of maintaining its high quality while simultaneously expanding the kinds of work we published. Because the number of submissions was also increasing rapidly, we also requested and were granted additional pages beyond our initial allocation from Cambridge. As a consequence, we have been able to publish similar numbers of articles and letters on topics and using methods that have been traditional strengths for the journal, while also adding other excellent work that better reflects the breadth and diversity of the discipline. We are publishing more work about race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and the Global South, as well as more work that uses qualitative, case study, ethnographic, and interpretive methods, and more work by women and scholars of color. ¹ We have also increased the representation of work in traditional but nonetheless under-represented subfields such as International Relations and Normative Political Theory, as well as work using experimental methods. Our additional pages have allowed us to do this while maintaining high standards, as is evident in highly selective publication rates, increasing impact factors, and the large number of articles receiving awards.

HISTORICAL PATTERNS OF PAGE USE

Using and expanding our page allocation has been particularly important in light of the exponential increase in the number of manuscripts submitted to the APSR over the last decade and a half (Figure 1). Even as submissions increased, however, the number of accepted articles remained fairly steady until 2017. Between 2008 and 2017, the APSR published an average of 52 articles and letters annually, rarely exceeding 500 pages (see Figure 2). Increasing numbers of submissions, however, intensified pressures on the journal, and the number of pages in each volume began to expand under the previous team. We continued this trend apace, and in the first part of our term (2021 and 2022), we published an average of 101 articles and letters each year, using the full, expanded allocation of 1536 pages for each volume (see Table 1 and Figure 2). In just part of our term, we have doubled the annual number of pieces published in the journal. Indeed, to date, we have published 344 pieces, nearly three times the number of articles published under the entire term of the UCLA team (125) and a 27% increase over the previous team (which published 269 pieces; the University of North Texas published 216). This expansion has not been accompanied by “lower standards”; rather, the rapidly increasing number of submissions has meant that the ratio of submissions to articles published has remained relatively stable while the mix of submissions (and accepted articles) is more diverse.

Figure 1. Number of Total and New Submissions to the APSR, 2008–2021

Table 1. Accepted Manuscripts by the Editorial Team

Note: Table shows submission to the editorial team (rows) by editorial team making final decision (columns)

Data for current team are as of March 18, 2023.

Figure 2. Total Number of Pages and Published Manuscripts (Articles and Letters) per APSR Volume, 2008–2022

SUBSTANTIVE DIVERSITY

In our first “Notes from the Editors” (Fall 2020), we noted the strong tradition and large body of work in political science that has shed light on crucial questions about democracy, power, and resource distribution. We also noted, however, that political science’s traditional areas of focus have not “come close to exhausting the range of questions that we must ask in order to truly understand politics” (APSR Editors 2020, v). Making room in the APSR’s pages for excellent work by “scholars who ask questions about political phenomena to which political science has too often given short shrift” has therefore been among our foundational commitments, and among the goals we aimed to further by using and increasing our full-page allocation (APSR Editors 2020, vi).

As we approach the end of the third year of our four-year term, the available data suggest that our strategy is bearing fruit: not only have we been able to increase the number and proportion of accepted articles addressing issues such as race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and the Global South, but we have also already published more methodology pieces than previous teams have over the course of their full terms (see Tables 2 and 3), allowing us better to reflect the growing number and changing mix of submissions received. For example, while the three previous teams published an average of 25 articles about race, ethnicity, and politics over the course of their full terms, we have already accepted 51 such articles. Similarly, while the previous three teams received an average of 20 manuscript submissions focusing on sexuality and politics per term, 52 such manuscripts have been submitted under our editorship, 4 of which have been accepted so far. At just over 1% of all accepted manuscripts, these articles constitute a small but substantively significant contribution, and if submissions continue at the current rate, we should be able to publish more work on sexuality by the end of our term. Finally, examining the country and region on which submissions and articles focus reveals that compared with the UCLA team (the first team for which we have these data) the proportion of accepted manuscripts focusing on the Global South has increased from 14% to about 23% and the number of submissions is increasing even more rapidly, even over the course of our term.

Table 2. Accepted Manuscripts by Substantive Research Topic and Editorial Team (Number and % of Accepted Manuscripts)

Note: Data for current team are as of March 18, 2023. Topics were classified based on keywords from the abstract. See the Appendix for a list of keywords.

Table 3. Accepted Manuscripts by Subfield and Editorial Team Making Final Decision (Number and % of Accepted Manuscripts)

Note: Data for current team are as of March 18, 2023.

Examining patterns in the distributions of manuscripts across subfields in Table 3 reveals similar trends, ones in which the number of published articles in some subfields has increased without reductions in others. While the proportion of manuscripts in American Politics and Comparative Politics has stayed relatively consistent across editorial teams, for example, the number of accepted Political Theory manuscripts thus far is greater than it has been during all previous teams (with the possible exception of the team based at UNT). While formal theory submissions are lower than they were under the Mannheim team (which had placed a particular emphasis on this area), we have nonetheless accepted the same number of formal theory articles during our first three years as the UCLA team did over the course of its whole term, and twice as many as were published by the UNT team. Our team has also maintained roughly the same numbers and proportions of published Methods manuscripts as the previous team. If current submission rates continue, the number of published Methods pieces could exceed those for previous teams. And while the proportion of accepted International Relations manuscripts is currently about the same as it was for the UCLA team (and still falls short of the actual size of this subfield), we have seen an increase in the number of published manuscripts in this subfield (32 so far, compared to an average of 17 during the full terms of the previous three teams).

METHODOLOGICAL DIVERSITY

Our expanded page allocation has also allowed us to publish more work that uses traditionally underrepresented methods while still increasing the number of articles using more traditional ones. For example, the data in Table 4 make clear that while manuscripts using statistical-observational methods continue to account for over half of the pieces published during our term, and while pieces using experimental methods continue to account for about a fifth, work using normative approaches has doubled, and we have accepted more than twice as many interpretive articles as the previous team. We have also published more articles that take poststructuralist and ethnographic approaches. The number and proportion of accepted articles using case study methods have increased more than five-fold over the previous team. However, because we were able to increase our page allocation (and because the absolute numbers of articles were small to begin with), expanding the kinds of methods represented has had little effect on our ability to publish work using experimental and statistical-observational methods (though the proportion of the latter has declined slightly). Even the absolute number of pieces using these methods has increased.

Table 4. Methodology of Accepted Manuscripts by Editorial Team Making Final Decision (Number of Manuscripts and % of All Accepted Manuscripts)

Note: These data are only available for submissions since January 1, 2018 (about halfway through the Mannheim team’s tenure). Data for current team are as of March 18, 2023.

DEMOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY

Over the past several decades, the scholars and teachers in political science have begun to more accurately reflect the demographic diversity in the United States when it comes to characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, and race. While still lagging behind many other social science and humanities disciplines (as well as the broader population), in 2019 16% of political science faculty at degree-granting institutions in the US were Black, Indigenous, Latino, or Asian American (APSA 2021), while 32% were women. The authors represented in the pages of the discipline’s generalist journals, however, have been slow to reflect the increasing numbers of women, BIPOC and LGBTQ scholars, and scholars from the Global South. Our efforts to increase the number of submissions from such under-represented groups have contributed to the patterns of better descriptive representation among the authors of accepted articles: APSR authors are beginning to more closely reflect the discipline’s composition, with more submissions and more accepted manuscripts (both in terms of absolute numbers as well as percentages) authored by women, people of color, and scholars outside of North America, including both Europe (which increased dramatically under the Mannheim team) and the Global South. Once again, however, because we have increased our page allocation, this increased diversity has also been accompanied by an increase in the number of articles by white scholars and by men as well (Tables 5–7). Indeed, while the proportions have shifted slightly, the number of articles accepted have increased across all racial and gender categories.

Table 5. Submissions by World Bank-Defined Region of Corresponding Author (Number of Manuscripts and % of All Accepted Manuscripts), by Team Making Final Decision

Note: Data for current team are as of 18 March 2023.

Table 6. Accepted Manuscripts by Author Race/Ethnicity and Editorial Team Making Final Decision (Number and % of All Accepted Manuscripts)

Note: These data are only available for submissions since January 1, 2018 (about halfway through the Mannheim team’s tenure).

Data for current team are as of March 18, 2023.

Declined means the author declined to identify their race or ethnicity.

Table 7. Accepted Manuscripts by Self-Reported Gender of Author and Editorial Team Making Final Decision (Number and % of All Accepted Manuscripts for That Team)

Note: These data are only available for submissions since January 1, 2018 (about halfway through the Mannheim team’s tenure). In multi-author teams, if at least one author identifies as women and one identifies as men, the team is coded as mixed gender, regardless of whether other authors have answered the gender identity question. Uncoded authors are those in which one or more authors declined to provide a gender identity. The table summarizes the distribution of authors reporting binary gender identities. As of March 18, 2023, 132 manuscripts (0.014922) have had one or more authors who identify as non-binary since 2018. 8714 manuscripts have authors who report binary gender identities. Data for current team are as of March 18, 2023.

INDICATORS OF QUALITY AND IMPACT IN BOTH NEW AND TRADITIONAL AREAS

Our team aimed to increase substantive, methodological, and descriptive breadth and diversity while maintaining the quality of the work we publish. Several indicators suggest that increased breadth and diversity have not come at the expense of traditional areas of substantive focus, methodological strength, or of the demanding standards set by our predecessors. In addition to continuing the APSR’s traditionally selective publication rate, the journal’s impact factor has increased (see Figure 3; Tripp and Dion 2022). Newer measures such as Altmetrics also suggest a trend towards increasing impact and a wider readership.

Figure 3. Journal Impact Factors for American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, 2016–2022

Source: Cambridge University Press, OOR https://ooir.org/journals.php?category=polisci.

APSR articles published during our term also continue to garner accolades, including thirteen that received APSA awards (and two that received honorable mention) in 2022. This bumper crop of prize-winning articles includes ones on traditional topics and subfields, such as the APSA Political Organizations and Parties section’s Jack Walker Award (Cirone, Cox, and Fiva 2021); the State Politics and Policy Best Journal Article Award (Gamm and Kousser 2021); and the Political Economy section’s Michael Wallerstein Award for the best-published article in political economy in a peer-reviewed journal (Baccini and Weymouth 2021). It also includes three articles about gender, including one that won the best article award from the Representation and Electoral Systems section (Betz, Fortunato, and O’Brien 2021); one that won the Political Communication section’s Walter Lippmann Best Published Article Award (Boussalis et al. 2021); and one which won both the Best Article Award from the Foundations of Political Theory as well as the Okin-Young Award, given by three APSA units collaboratively, for an article on feminist political theory (Hutchings and Owens 2021).

CONCLUSION

Taken together, the foregoing data suggest that our efforts to broaden the kinds of research and the range of scholars whose work appears in the APSR have not come at expense of its selectivity, stature, and impact but have instead broadened its appeal and reach. One strategy we employed to maintain the journal’s selectivity while diversifying its topics, methods, and authors has been to expand the number of pages in the journal, which gave us space to add new voices and topics to scholarly conversations while maintaining ongoing dialogues. Without increasing and more diverse submissions, this strategy would not have been as successful, as patterns of submissions are among the factors that drive patterns of acceptance for our team as it has for our predecessors. But while some of these trends are likely related to more general developments in the discipline, this new mix of traditional strengths and new perspectives makes the journal more representative of our changing discipline, while also suggesting avenues for further transformation.