Editors’ Report for PS: Political Science & Politics

I. INTRODUCTION

PS: Political Science & Politics is in its 57th year of publication. PS occupies a unique niche among the APSA portfolio of publications as an outlet for peer-reviewed original research on a variety of topics that are relevant to political scientists and researchers in allied fields. PS publishes research on political events in the US and abroad, political science pedagogy, and research on the state of the discipline. PS welcomes work authored by and reflecting the research priorities of underrepresented groups, those working outside the academy, and scholars residing outside the United States.

This is our first publication report, wrapping up the first of our four years of service as editors. We are thrilled to report that our journal has improved its rankings with a Journal Impact Factor of 3.3 in 2023, up from 2.397 in 2021. We believe that our commitment to expediting the review process and diversifying the publication topics has contributed to raising the profile of the journal. See below for more information.

The success of our first year as editors would not have been possible without the collaboration and support of numerous individuals. We want to thank our Board members, the APSA Council, the Association leadership, and our publication partners at Cambridge University Press, for supporting our transition and work. Please consult our Statement of Philosophy and Mission released at the beginning of our term as editors. We owe a debt of gratitude to our managing editor Marah Schlingensiepen, who has worked tirelessly to ensure a seamless transition to the new editorial team at Wake Forest University. Her contribution has been a vital part of the journal’s continued success. We are also grateful for our three 2022-2023 undergraduate research assistants (Cynthia Wang, Beth Seagroves and Phoebe Dias) who assisted us with the inner workings of the journal’s review, production processes.

One of our team’s core objectives is to facilitate the engagement with and representation of all political scientists at every type of institution across the world and we seek to accomplish this in numerous ways. With the assistance of the Cambridge team and our managing editor, we have updated the APSA version and the Cambridge University Press websites so that they present more comprehensive information and are more user friendly. Comparable to other APSA journals, PS is now solely an electronic journal and publishes a budding number of Open Access publications so as to expand accessibility. Our increasing reliance on social media to promote the latest publications and highlight Open Access journal articles assists us in expanding the knowledge of and access to our journal’s publications. Further, our editorial board differs significantly in terms of subfield, profession, university type and demographic characteristics. Though we still have some progress to make on this front, we are working towards this goal.

Another one of our core objectives is to ensure that scholarly research is ethical, clear and transparent across disciplinary subfields and epistemological, methodological approaches. Submissions to PS are required to adhere to the APSA’s Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science and the APSA’s Principles and Guidance for Human Subjects Research. Further, we require that every author of an empirical paper submit their data file(s) to the Harvard Dataverse for replication purposes prior to the publication of manuscripts. For more information, see https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/ps/. We believe that these requirements not only improve the quality of research publications but the discipline as a whole.

PS is one of the primary outlets for research on the profession, and we’ve been proud to continue publishing important articles and symposia highlighting the challenges of broadening and diversifying our profession (and academia) and combating conscious and unconscious biases in hiring, promotion, and peer review. We feel an important sense of responsibility to provide an outlet for disciplinary debates,

As examples, we have recently published and have upcoming symposia on:

• • Constitution-Making in the 21^st Century: Lessons from the Chilean Process

• • China and the Campus

• • Populism and Democracy

• • Contemporary Politics of the UK

• • Mobilizing for Abortion Rights in Latin America

Our team has also released various Calls for Papers and created upcoming Special Issues in our focused effort to welcome work authored by and reflecting the research priorities of underrepresented groups, those working outside the academy, and scholars residing outside the United States. We have relied upon our subfield networks and listservs in which we are a part of to ensure that our Calls are widely circulated. Examples of our Calls for Papers and Special Issues include research on:

• • Undergraduate Involvement in Research

• • The Effect of Covid-19 on Higher Education

• • Climate Change and Vulnerable Populations

• • Academic Work in the Age of AI

• • Forecasting the 2024 US Election

• • Democratic Backsliding

We sincerely welcome comments, suggestions, and ideas to be shared with us by emailing our team at ps@apsanet.org.

DIVERSITY EFFORTS

PS supports the diversity efforts of APSA and our discipline. The editorial team is committed to attracting more submissions from international and underrepresented scholars, and the Calls for Papers have been crafted with this goal in mind. See Table 1 for the demographic breakdown of authors who submitted to PS in 2022.

Table 1: Demographic Profile of Author Submissions 2022 (N=334)

II. EDITORIAL HIGHLIGHTS

A. OVERVIEW

As shown in table 2, submission rates to PS dropped in 2022 as most people navigated moving back into their in-person work environments and as the previous editors wrapped up their term and the current editors took over at the end of the year. We appear to be on pace for 200-250 submissions this year.

Table 2: New Submissions to PS through Editorial Manager

Table 3: Turnaround Time from Acceptance to Publication on FirstView (Days)

** This is the turnaround time from acceptance within the given year to publication on FirstView.

Table 4: Turnaround Time from Submission to First Decision (Days)

Table 5: Final Disposition on Submissions, by date of final decision

Table 6: Symposia and Spotlights Published in PS

B. PUBLICATION HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PAST YEAR

This past year we published a variety of interesting and engaging articles. Below are listed a few of the more notable articles published this year in the pages of PS which provide a snapshot of the timeliness and diversity of issues addressed in the pages of PS.

Politics Section

• • Fu, Hui-Zhen, and Li Shao. (2023). Telling Our Own Story: A Bibliometrics Analysis of Mainland China’s Influence on Chinese Politics Research, 2001–2020. PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(1), 18–28.

• • Nelson, M. (2023). Independent Redistricting Commissions Are Associated with More Competitive Elections. PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(2), 207–212.

Profession Section

• • Turco, L., Tosun, L., & Watson, S. (2023). Climate Change? Designing and Implementing Climate Surveys to Promote Inclusivity in Political Science Departments. PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(1), 69–74.

• • Teti, A., & Abbott, P. (2023). Scholarship on the Middle East in Political Science and International Relations: A Reassessment. PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(2), 259–264.

• • Castorena, O., Lupu, N., Schade, M., & Zechmeister, E. J. (2023). Online Surveys in Latin America. PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(2), 273–280.

• • Casey, D., Rutledge-Prior, S., Young, L., Malloy, J., & Berdahl, L. (2023). Hard Work and You Can’t Get It: An International Comparative Analysis of Gender, Career Aspirations, and Preparedness Among Politics and International Relations PhD Students. PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(3), 402–410.

Teacher Section

• • Elkins, Z. S. (2023). Underestimated but Undeterred: The 27th Amendment and the Power of Tenacious Citizenship. PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(1), 158–163.

• • Kryder, D., Morgan, J., & Parish, A. (2023). Teaching Social Movements with a Sustained Simulation of Police–Protester Contention: The Hypothetical Case of the Contested Election of 2024. PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(3), 444–448.

• • Sullivan, H., & De Bruin, E. (2023). Teaching Undergraduates Research Methods: A “Methods Lab” Approach. PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(2), 309–314.

III. STAFFING AND EDITORIAL BOARD

The PS: Political Science & Politics staff consists of four co-editors’ time, a full-time managing editor, and undergraduate editorial assistants at Wake Forest University. Co-editors Lina Benabdallah, Justin Esarey, Peter Siavelis, and Betina Wilkinson are based at Wake Forest University. Marah Schlingensiepen continues as the Managing Editor. She started this position in January 2022 after earning her PhD in political science from the University of Florida in 2021. Marah has extensive experience working as an editorial assistant for Perspectives on Politics and serving as Interim Managing Editor for PS in 2021. Tia Gracey recently took over as Associate Editor of Political Science Today and serves as a liaison between official APSA news and events and the journal. She designs PS’s journal covers, too. We thank Madelyn Dewey for her service to the journal in this role as well, as she worked with us until August 2023.

Our current editorial board includes scholars who represent a diverse set of universities and colleges, research interests, methodologies, and perspectives of the APSA membership. We would like to thank the members of our editorial board for their dedication and service to the journal and the profession.

New Board Members:

Karla Mundim, John Jay College

Peter Verovšek, University of Groningen

Sarah Polo, University of Essex

Scott de Marchi, Duke University

J. Cherie Strachan, Ray Bliss Institute

Continuing Term:

Candis Watts Smith, Duke University

Austin Strange, University of Hong Kong

Zaynab El Bernoussi, International University of Rabat

Michelle Taylor-Robinson, Texas A&M University

Lena Wängnerud, University of Gothenburg

Arthur Spirling, New York University

Rebecca Reid, University of Texas at El Paso

Kristina Mitchell, San Jose State University

Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Universidad Diego Portales (Santiago de Chile)

Jane Sumner, University of Minnesota

Julieta Suarez Cao, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Oumar Ba, Cornell University

Nazita Lajevardi, Michigan State University

Andrew Szarejko, Wartburg University

Zachariah Mamphilly, City University of New York

Jennifer Cyr, Universidad Torcuato di Tella

Adam Levine, Johns Hopkins University

Rebecca Glazier, University of Arkansas, Little Rock

Bernard Fraga, Emory University

Andrea Benjamin, University of Oklahoma

Kelly Bauer, Nebraska Wesleyan University

Amy Niang, The Africa Institute

Murad Idris, University of Michigan

Chris Sabatini, Chatham House

We wish to thank the following editorial board members, whose term of service ends at the 2023 APSA Annual Meeting, for their service, time, and dedication to PS:

Charity Butcher, Kennesaw State University

Jonathan DiCicco, Middle Tennessee State University

Lisa Sanchez, University of Arizona

Eric Loepp, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater

Matthew Moore, California Polytechnic State University

IV. PRODUCTION AND DELIVERY

PS has a good working relationship with our publisher, Cambridge University Press. This year saw quite a bit of change as Brian Mazeski, our production manager, left the Press and was eventually replaced by Lucie Taylor, our current production manager. We are grateful for their dedicated work with PS. With their assistance, we streamlined the process of transmitting accepted manuscripts to Cambridge and implemented a conditional accept stage wherein authors prepare their manuscripts for production and upload all data to Dataverse to ensure reproducibility by our team. Below, you can see the Turnaround Time from Acceptance to Publication.

As part of our effort to raise the profile of the journal, we were committed to reducing the time it took to invite reviewers to manuscripts, as well as reducing the time between an author’s submission to PS and receiving a First Decision. As you can see in the table below, these efforts result in a significant reduction in time on both fronts.

V. SUBMISSIONS BY ARTICLE TYPE

In 2022, PS published 68 articles, 62 symposia contributions, and 51 spotlight contributions. The acceptance rate of 71.4% for 2022 was in line with our traditional rates. While the rate of acceptance is high in comparison to other APSA journals, this is partially the consequence of a significantly high acceptance rate of symposia. While all symposia submissions do undergo a double blind peer review, the review of symposium proposals filter out most manuscripts which might be ultimately rejected.

VI. PUBLICITY AND OUTREACH

PS has been on Twitter for five years. We now have over 7,200 followers, up over 1,200 followers from last year, and we continue to build our follower base. Our handle is @ps_polisci. A typical Tweet involves an image with the newly published article’s title and author names, a featured quote from the article, and a link to the FirstView publication. We try to tag (@) authors to increase exposure and encourage authors to retweet the links. The managing editor runs the PS Twitter, in consultation with the undergraduate editorial assistants.

The APSA-run Political Science Now blog continues to feature PS content, especially symposia, spotlights, and research about the profession. PS articles have been featured in news media and other publications including Inside Higher Ed, NewsWeek, The Washington Post’s “Monkey Cage,” and National Public Radio, among others. ■