41(4) is the final standard issue of the journal to be published under the tenure of the current editorial team. As we are now in the process of handing over the journal to the new editors, we thought it might be useful to summarise the current state of play with the journal. The criterion for articles submitted to be considered by the Review is not only that the submission is serious scholarly work, but that it makes a major, original contribution to literatures in International Studies, which will be of interest to the broader IR community. The journal receives around 300 submissions per calendar year, of which 30-35 articles (not including special issues) are published. After a couple of years when the journal’s impact factor declined because of the large number of articles we published in order to reduce a backlog of accepted papers, we are pleased to see that the Review is now re-established as a top 20 Politics and IR journal. We would be very surprised if there were not further improvements to the journal’s ranking under the auspices of the next team.
The Review receives submissions from all over the world. However, it remains the case that the bulk of submissions come from the UK, Europe, the US and Australia. Submissions from Asia are on the rise and we know that the new team is keen to further develop the journal’s global credentials. We wish them all the best with this – as IR (finally!) goes global, a journal like the Review is well placed to both reflect and, perhaps, lead this trend. When it comes to gender, men outnumber women in terms of both submissions and published manuscripts by a ratio of around 3 to 1. We have been conscious of this discrepancy during our tenure, and have worked with our Editorial Board on developing ways to address it, but have not yet succeeded in reducing the gender gap. Again – over to the new team …
With the challenge to the new team laid down, we would like to take this opportunity to thank those who have helped us over the past 5 years. Both BISA and Cambridge University Press have been terrific custodians of the journal, and their commitment to the Review bodes very well for the future of the journal. So too does the commitment shown by our Editorial Board, who have given an enormous amount of their time to the journal, whether through serving as referees, adjudicators, as members of prize committees, or as participants on conference panels. They have also pushed us to improve both our administrative processes and our representation of the global scholarly IR community. Our final report to them – and to the wider readership of the journal – will be available on the BISA website towards the end of the year.
We would like to think that one of the strengths of our editorial tenure has been the quality of the special issues we have published. With that in mind, we draw your attention to the final issue of our tenure, which will appear in December. The special issue on ‘The Politics of Numbers: The Normative Agenda of Global Benchmarking’ is a hugely exciting contribution to the debate on global governance – we hope that readers find it as stimulating as we do. Equally stimulating is the Forum in this issue ‘Historicising the Social in International Thought’, which challenges the ways in which the concept of ‘the social’ has been used in International Relations. We have been disciplined over the last five years in turning down requests to host forums. But this one was of such a high quality, as exemplified by the uniformly positive comments on it by the external reviewers that we couldn’t turn it down. We think that readers will find the forum both interesting and provocative.
Let us conclude by saying what a challenge and privilege it has been to take responsibility for the Review over the past five years. Our sense is that we leave the journal in excellent health and in excellent new hands. Thanks again to BISA, to CUP, to our Editorial Board and to you, our readers, for all your encouragement and support.
