Editors’ Report for 2018

Even-numbered years mark a time of transition in the editorial offices of the Journal. Dan Bogart has begun his first year as the Eurasian editor. He has succeeded Ann Carlos, whose term as Eurasian editor ended in June 2018. We are grateful for Ann’s exemplary service. Bill Collins is in the third year of his four-year term as non-Eurasian editor. Eric Hilt continues his work as book review editor for the Americas. Carol Shiue stepped down as the book review editor for the rest-of-the-world. Aldo Musacchio succeeds her. The Journal is fortunate in having Lily Welch continue as the Journal’s Editorial Assistant and Sally Sztrecska as its Production Editor.

We have greatly benefited from the expert guidance and advice of our Board of Editors and the more than 200 referees who contributed their time and expertise to maintaining and enhancing the Journal’s quality. Editorial Board members typically serve four-year terms. Those graduating from the Board this year are Juliette Levy, Anne Murphy, Jonathan Rose, and Patrick Wallis. Sadly, two board members passed away this year, Frank Lewis and John Murray. We miss them as colleagues and scholars and are grateful for their many contributions to the Journal. New board members are Lisa Cook, Kerstin Enflo, Leigh Gardner, Mark Koyama, Steven Nafziger, and Noam Yuchtman. Numerous scholars contributed book reviews. The editorial staff is grateful to all who have worked on behalf of the Journal over this past year.

The number of new submissions to the Journal in recent years is shown in Table 1. Over the last several years, the average number of submissions per year is 160, which is close to last year’s number of 155. That said, the past year’s new submissions are somewhat lower than in the previous three years.¹ The publication ratio displayed in Table 1 is the number of refereed papers and notes published in the current year divided by the number of new manuscripts submitted in the previous year. In 2017–2018, the publication ratio was 0.18 (29/162), which is in line with the recent past.² The Journal published 31 articles in total in 2017–2018, including the presidential address and one “reviews and reflections” essay.

Table 1 SUBMISSION AND PUBLICATION RATES

The “published” count includes refereed articles and notes. It does not include the presidential address, which is published in June, nor does it include “reviews and reflections” articles. In 2017–2018, the Journal published one “reviews and reflections” article.

Table 2 reports the response-time statistics for the corresponding sample. To place the numbers into context, our goal is to have a decision back to the author within 90 days. This past year’s performance has been somewhat faster than previous years for new submissions, with a median response time of 64 on new submissions. Note that this pertains to submissions received from July 2017 to June 2018, some of which may not have received decisions at the time of this report’s writing. The median response time for all submissions has fallen to 47 days. Unfortunately, a small number of papers have taken much longer. We apologize to authors of manuscripts that experienced substantial delays. We continuously work to reduce the time for this small number of manuscripts, taking into consideration that we are, of course, concerned about the quality of the response, not only its speed.

Table 2 RESPONSE TIME STATISTICS

The distributions of submissions are documented in subsequent tables. We show the data for eras in Table 3 and for topics in Table 4. As mentioned earlier, prior to 2016–2017, distribution statistics may be affected by a slight undercount of submitted articles. Also, the automated part of the paper submission system stopped collecting information on regions for a period of time during 2015 and 2016, but that feature has recommenced. This, however, means that we do not have consistent comparisons over all years in the table. What is currently available is shown in Table 5.

Table 3 DISTRIBUTION OF SUBMISSIONS BY ERA, MULTIPLE SELECTIONS PER SUBMISSION POSSIBLE

Table 4 DISTRIBUTION OF SUBMISSIONS BY TOPIC, MULTIPLE SELECTIONS PER SUBMISSION POSSIBLE

Table 5 DISTRIBUTION OF GEOGRAPHICAL AREA

* 2014–2015 Region data are from July 1, 2014–October 14, 2015.

** 2015–2016 Region data are from March 18, 2016–June 30, 2016.

Coverage remains broad. Table 3 shows that the distribution of submissions over eras has been fairly steady in recent years, with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries accounting for the bulk of submissions. Table 4 shows that submissions in political economy, labor, and growth continue to be particularly strong, with political economy and labor rising and growth declining in their shares. The top-three topic areas together account for less than half of all submissions, reflecting broadly dispersed interests within the field.

Book reviews are an important component of the Journal, and we sincerely thank the many reviewers. We also remind our membership to have their press send a copy of any new books to the relevant book review editor. In recent years, the Journal has also sought occasional “reviews and reflections” synthetic articles, extended book reviews, and roundtable book reviews when appropriate. In March 2018, the Journal published “Big Data in Economic History,” by Myron P. Gutmann, Emily Klancher Merchant, and Evan Roberts.

Readers will recall that at the 2013 meetings, the EHA board of trustees approved a policy to make publication conditional on archiving the data sufficient to replicate the results in the accepted articles. The new rules read:

“It is the policy of the Journal of Economic History to publish papers only if the data used in the analysis are clearly and precisely documented and are readily available to any researcher for purposes of replication. Authors of accepted papers must archive, prior to publication, the data, programs, and other details of the computations sufficient to permit replication. These will be archived at ICPSR and a stable URL link to these data will published with each article. The Editors should be notified at the time of submission if the data used in a paper are proprietary or if, for some other reason, the requirements above cannot be met.

As soon as possible after acceptance, authors are expected to deposit their data, programs, and sufficient details to permit replication with ICPSR. Questions regarding any aspect of this policy should be forwarded to the Journal Editor.”

The authors of all new submissions from January 1, 2016 onward that were accepted for publication have been required to post data and replication files to maintain and advance the Journal’s efforts to ensure transparency and scholarly integrity. A branded page can be found with open ICPSR and depositors can submit files into openICPSR per the instructions available at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/openICPSR/JEH-deposit-instructions.pdf. The editorial office and ICPSR continue to work to enhance the interface.

Referees for 2017 were:

• Brian A’Hearn

• Olivier Accominotti

• Philipp Ager

• Guido Alfani

• Marcella Alsan

• Francisca Antman

• Leticia Arroyo Abad

• Vellore Arthi

• Cihan Artunç

• Jeremy Atack

• Gareth Austin

• Liang Bai

• Ying Bai

• Martha Bailey

• Richard Baker

• Gerben Bakker

• Victoria Bateman

• Joerg Baten

• Brian Beach

• Jessica Bean

• Sascha Becker

• Silvi Berger

• Daniel Bernhofen

• Asaf Bernstein

• Hoyt Bleakley

• Howard Bodenhorn

• Dan Bogart

• Karol Borowiecki

• Leah Boustan

• Fabio Braggion

• Stephen Broadberry

• John Brown

• J. Lawrence Broz

• Gillian Brunet

• Charles Calomiris

• Leonard Carlson

• Celeste Carruthers

• Eric Chaney

• Latika Chaudhary

• Qiang Chen

• David Chilosi

• Gregory Clark

• Karen Clay

• Charles Clotfelter

• Dora Costa

• Nicholas Crafts

• Lee Craig

• Neil Cummins

• Tomas Cvrcek

• John Dalton

• Aditya Dasgupta

• Pim de Zwart

• Claude Diebolt

• Mark Dincecco

• Christian Dippel

• Nicolas Duquette

• Shari Eli

• Benjamin Elman

• David Eltis

• Herb Emery

• Stanley Engerman

• Katherine Eriksson

• José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez

• Rui Esteves

• James Feigenbaum

• James Fenske

• Alan Fernihough

• Daniel Fetter

• Price Fishback

• Marc Flandreau

• Nathan Foley-Fisher

• Vicky Fouka

• Johan Fourie

• Ewout Frankema

• Dustin Frye

• Alfredo García-Hiernaux

• Leigh Gardner

• Rafael Gonzalez-Val

• Andrew Goodman-Bacon

• Markus Grabka

• Regina Grafe

• David Greasley

• Amanda Gregg

• Ben Groom

• Pauline Grosjean

• Daniel Gross

• Bishnupriya Gupta

• Federico Gutierrez

• Stephen Haber

• Michael Haines

• Christopher Hanes

• Walker Hanlon

• Leslie Hannah

• Zeynep Hansen

• C. Knick Harley

• Kyle Harper

• Timothy Hatton

• Joshua Hausman

• Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur

• Carlos Eduardo Hernandez

• Brad Hershbein

• Matthew Hill

• Eric Hilt

• Katie Hinde

• Philip Hoffman

• Sok Chul Hong

• Richard Hornbeck

• Michael Huberman

• Elise Huillery

• Daniel Hungerman

• Kris Inwood

• Ian Irvine

• Douglas Irwin

• Murat Iyigun

• David Jacks

• Taylor Jaworski

• Saumitra Jha

• Joost Jonker

• Tobias Jopp

• Gisella Kagy

• Shawn Kantor

• Ian Keay

• Morgan Kelly

• Hugh Kennedy

• Alexander Keyssar

• Zorina Khan

• Christopher Kingston

• Carl Kitchens

• Jan Tore Klovland

• Edward Kosack

• Mark Koyama

• Sumner La Croix

• Alvaro La Parra-Perez

• Jeremy Land

• Tim Larsen

• Tomas Larsson

• Frank Lewis

• Dan Li

• Gary Libecap

• Peter Lindert

• Amy Liu

• Cong Liu

• Trevon Logan

• Sara Lowes

• Thomas Maloney

• Joseph Manning

• Brian Marein

• Robert Margo

• Brian Marien

• Ben Marx

• Catherine Massey

• Noel Maurer

• Stephan Maurer

• Anne E. C. McCants

• Terra McKinnish

• Eoin McLaughlin

• Grant Miller

• Melinda Miller

• Chris Minns

• David Mitch

• Jørgen Modalsli

• Carolyn Moehling

• Jon Moen

• Alexander Moradi

• Petra Moser

• Anne Murphy

• Tomas Murphy

• Aldo Musacchio

• Steven Nafziger

• Suresh Naidu

• Larry Neal

• John Neufeld

• Tom Nicholas

• Paul Niekamp

• Greg Niemesh

• Sergey Nigai

• Pilar Nogues-Marco

• Tomas Nonnenmacher

• Nathan Nunn

• John Nye

• Kevin O’Rourke

• Moses Ochonu

• Claudia Olivetti

• Alan L. Olmstead

• Christopher Paik

• Sevket Pamuk

• Eugene Park

• Se Mi Park

• John Parman

• Saumik Paul

• Krishna Pendakur

• Santiago Perez

• Salvatore Piccolo

• Florian Ploeckl

• Stephen Quinn

• Nicholas Radburn

• Sarah Reber

• Angela Redish

• Claudia Rei

• Paul Rhode

• Joshua Rosenbloom

• Jean-Laurent Rosenthal

• Joan Ramon Rosés

• Peter Rousseau

• Jared Rubin

• Anne Ruderman

• Bruce Rusk

• Martin Saavedra

• Mohamed Saleh

• Laura Salisbury

• Kristina Sargent

• Ethan Schmick

• Kai D. Schmid

• Max-Stephan Schulze

• Andrew Seltzer

• Edson Severnini

• Allison Shertzer

• Katharine Shester

• Adrian Shin

• Carol Shiue

• Pierre Sicsic

• Petra Sijpesteijn

• James Siodla

• Aloysius Siow

• Andrew Smyth

• Tuan-Hwee Sng

• Kenneth A. Snowden

• Peter Solar

• Steven Sprick Schuster

• Mara Squicciarini

• William A. Sundstrom

• Nathan Sussman

• John Tang

• Melissa Thomasson

• Werner Troesken

• John Turner

• Martin Uebele

• Andrey Ukhov

• Marlous van Waijenburg

• Jessica Vechbanyongratana

• Martina Viarengo

• Jordi Vidal-Robert

• Nico Voigtlaender

• John Wallis

• Patrick Wallis

• Marianne Wanamaker

• Kirsten Wandschneider

• Zachary Ward

• Warren Weber

• Simone Wegge

• Marc Weidenmier

• Alex Whalley

• Eugene White

• Glenn Withers

• Anthony Wray

• Laura Wreschnig

• Guo Xu

• Melanie Meng Xue

• Noam Yuchtman

• Shuang Zhang

• Nicolas Ziebarth

• Ariell Zimran