Notes from the Editors

When we applied for the APSR editorship, we advertised our European location with the slogan “Going Global.” Now, as we approach the end of our first term, we aim to explore whether and to what extent the APSR has reached a more global audience and what 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 to Figure 1, the share of corresponding authors from outside the United States (US) has increased from 29% in 2011 to 40% in the first nine months of 2018. This trend does not seem to be driven 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.

FIGURE 1. Annual Relative Submission Share From the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and All Other Remaining Countries since 2011

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, note that some of these characteristics provide for 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, first- and second-round decisions, and the final disposition for manuscripts in our database since 2011.

TABLE 1. Proportional Share of Subfield Classification, Methodological Approach, Authors’ Gender, First Round Decisions, and Final Acceptance for Non-US and US Submissions

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 of Methods (4% vs. 3%) is also higher among non-US than US submissions. However, submissions from International Relations (17% vs. 13%) and on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (4% vs. 3%) are more frequent among US 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 the gender of 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 the Middle East, Asia, or even in Europe. One reason could be that publications in flagship journals have on average a higher impact on promotion within the US. If one consequently assumes—at least in some regional areas outside of the US—a lower importance in submitting 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 less all-female teams (2.9% vs. 3.4%) and mixed-gender 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 differences with respect to the editorial outcomes between US and non-US submissions both at the initial stage of desk rejections, at the second stage after review and with respect to final acceptance rates. During the study period, 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 of first- and second-round rejections do not balance each other but result in a higher invitation rate to revise a manuscript among US than non-US submissions (8% vs. 4%). As a consequence, we observe a higher acceptance rate of around 6% among US 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 International Relations. In that regard, this may explain the higher acceptance rate of 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. Thus, we are confident that going global has promoted and is going to continue to promote the visibility of the APSR.

On a less related note, not only for non-US submissions but more generally, we observe an increasing quality of submissions which we send out for review. This is documented by the recommendation of our reviewers, and we even receive feedback from authors of rejected papers who are grateful for the valuable comments from the reviewers. As a consequence of receiving more and higher quality manuscripts, recent volumes were among the first since the delegation of book reviews to Perspectives on Politics to increase the number of published articles, thereby raising our page number usage. We hope that the dynamic interaction between authors’ manuscripts and reviewers’ reports will continue to make APSR more attractive for our global community of authors, reviewers, and readers.

INSTRUCTIONS TO CONTRIBUTORS

Our submission guidelines can be found at the APSA website at: http://www.apsanet.org/APSR-Submission-Guidelines. Do not hesitate, in any cases of doubt, to consult the APSR Editorial Offices with more specific questions by sending an e-mail to: [email protected].