Editor’s Report for the Journal of Political Science Education

Editor in Chief

Victor Asal, University at Albany, State University of New York

Co-Editors

Mitchell Brown, Auburn University (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Section)

Mark L. Johnson, Minnesota State Community and Technical College (Reflections Section)

Joseph W. Roberts, Roger Williams University (Political Science Instruction Section)

J. Cherie Strachan, Virginia Commonwealth University (Books, Teaching Tools, and Educational Resources Section)

Managing Editors

Waffah Ahmed, University at Albany, State University of New York

Mirren Galway, University at Albany, State University of New York

Olivia Vecchio, University at Albany, State University of New York

Editorial Assistants

Stephanie Bickerstaff, Auburn University

Tatevik Khachatryan, Roger Williams University

Chiara Sinigaglia, Roger Williams University

Editorial Board

Lawrence Baum, The Ohio State University

Elizabeth Bennion, Indiana University South Bend

John Berg, Suffolk University (Emeritus)

Jeffrey Bernstein, Eastern Michigan University

Marijke Breuning, University of North Texas

Ellen Claes, Katholieke University of Leuven

John Craig, Leeds Beckett

Michelle Deardorff, University of Tennessee Chattanooga

Rebecca Ann Glazier, University of Arkansas— Little Rock

Kim Hill, Texas A & M University

John Ishiyama, University of North Texas

Chris Lawrence, Middle Georgia State University

Darrell Lovell, Lone Star College

Elizabeth Matto, Rutgers University

Allison Rios Millett McCartney, Towson University

Mary McHugh, Merrimack College

Gabriela Pleschová, Comenius University

Chad Raymond, Salve Regina University

Grant Reeher, Syracuse University

Erin Richards, Cascadia Community College

Mark Carl Rom, Georgetown University

Dick Simpson, University of Illinois at Chicago

James Sloam, University of London— Royal Holloway

Dan Smith, NW Missouri State

Nancy Thomas, Tufts University

Sherri Wallace, University of Louisville

Carol Weissert, Florida State University

Support for the journal is provided by Taylor & Francis, University at Albany, State University of New York, Auburn University, Minnesota State Community and Technical College, University of South Dakota, Roger Williams University, and Central Michigan University

INTRODUCTOON

The editorial team for the Journal of Political Science Education has now been running the journal for the last five years with support from the American Political Science Association (APSA) and specifically from Jon Gurstelle— Director of Publications for APSA. In 2021, our fifth year working on the journal, we have a good team of managing editors and editorial assistants at the University at Albany, at Auburn University and at Roger Williams University to ensure the process has gone smoothly.

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR FIFTH YEAR

In our fifth year of running JPSE as an APSA-wide journal, we continue to get a fair amount of submissions from authors for all four sections of the journal. The section with the highest number of submissions is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) section. The section with the second highest number of submissions was Political Science Instruction. There were an equal number of submissions to the Books, Teaching Tools, Educational Resources, and Reflections on Teaching and the Academy sections this year. We must note that the number of submissions went down this year, which we believe is likely caused by a higher volume of demands on educators as a result of Covid-19. We continue to use our Twitter handle (@JPSE_Editors) to tweet out articles and retweet information relevant to political science pedagogy. We have sent out more tweets this year than in years previous, but are planning to work harder on our Twitter presence by sending out tweets on a more regular basis. Where two years ago we had 300 followers and last year we had 582 followers, we now have 810 followers on Twitter.

This past year, of the articles published by JPSE, 47% of authors were women. This was a slight decline from the percentage published articles written by women last year, which was 53% (see Table 1). We have continued to see diversity in the ranks of submitting authors, having received submissions from various professors, lecturers, students, and administrative personnel. The majority of our submissions have been from Assistant Professors (32%) followed closely by Associate Professors (22%). Authors from public universities make up the most amount of submissions (72.3%), followed by private universities (20.5%). This year, impressively, every reviewer asked to do a review said yes to the request. In sum, our team has enjoyed this fifth year of the journal and look forward to its continued growth and impact. We should note that we believe the external pressure of Covid-19 likely caused the drop in number of submissions this year. We would also like to give credit to our editorial board, who have been extremely helpful in reviewing submissions this year.

Table 1: Authors by gender (percentage of total — includes co-authors)

STAFFING

Our staff at the Journal of Political Science Education consists of five co-editors, who work collaboratively together as well as independently on their own respective sections of the journal. Two student managing editors and two editorial assistants also work on the journal, part-time. Our current managing editors are Mirren Galway, Olivia Vecchio, and Waffah Ahmed, all of whom will be continuing this year. These three managing editors are all students at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Chiara Sinigaglia and Tatevik Khachatryan, who are students at Roger Williams University, and Stephanie Bickerstaf, who is at Auburn University, are currently serving as Editorial Assistants and will continue to do so this coming year.

PRODUCTION AND DELIVERY

AUTHOR DEMOGRAPHICS

The demographic distribution of JPSE authors are reported in tables 1, 2, and 3. Currently, 47% of our article authors are women and 53% are men— almost an even split. The authors of articles in JPSE are spread across different ranks, with assistant professors being responsible for more submissions than any other rank again this year (32%). As stated in table 3, 22% of our submissions were from somewhere other than the United States this year, leading to an increase of 7.5% in international submissions from last year. Submissions came from 6 countries other than the United States. Table 4 shows the Distribution of Authors by type of Institution for accepted papers. Of this year’s authors, 72% were affiliated with public institutions.

Table 2: Authors by rank (percentage of total — includes co-authors, all original submissions)

Table 3: Author by country of submission (percentage of total — includes co-authors, all accepted submissions)

Table 4: Distribution of authors by type of institution (percentage of total — includes co-authors)

CONTENT AND TREATMENT OF MANUSCRIPTS

Table 5 shows the percentage of original articles submitted (both SoTL and Political Science Instruction sections), as well as the percentage of review articles and reflection articles. A total of 57 manuscripts were submitted this year, which were either rejected, accepted, or revised for resubmission (see Table 6). Our current rejection rate is 67%, which is higher than the rejection rate of last year in order to compensate for our article backlog. This year, we had 100% of reviews completed (see Table 7). As shown in Table 8, the average turnaround rate for the editorial board was 30 days. Our general reviewer turnaround was 31 days. These numbers are down from last year’s respective rates of 47 and 42 days. The editorial board this year is made up of 45% women and 55% men, as seen in Table 9. Table 10 shows the editorial board member percentages by type of institution, and Table 11 shows where our editorial board is located. The majority of our editorial board is from Public Universities and the United States. Table 12 shows the ranks of our editorial board, illustrating that the majority of editorial board members are full professors. Our current H5-Index and our H5-Median is visible in Table 13. We should note that our acceptance rates are somewhat inflated this year (as in every year) because book reviews are part of the acceptance rate. The method by which book reviews are processed is different from the processing of other articles, particularly due to the fact that there is no blind review process for book reviews.■

Table 5: Types of submission (percentage of total, original submissions)

Table 6: Manuscript Decision - Total Submissions Decided (Original Submissions)

¹ This is the percentage of all rejected manuscripts, not of all new manuscripts

Table 7: Reviewer statistics

Table 8: Average reviewer turnaround time

Table 9: Editorial board by gender (percentage of total)

Table 10: Distribution of editorial board by type of institution (percentage of total)

Table 11: Editorial board by location (Percentage of total)

Table 12: Editorial board by rank (percentage of total)

Table 13: Current citation rates (impact factor) using Google Scholar