Bill Collins finished a four-year term editing the non-Eurasian submissions to the Journal. Eric Hilt is now entering his first year editing the non-Eurasian submissions. Dan Bogart is in his third year editing the Eurasian submissions to the Journal. Eric Hilt has stepped down as book review editor for the Americas. John Parman is now the book review editor for the Americas. Aldo Musacchio continues his work as the book review editor for the other parts of the world. The Journal is fortunate in having Lily Welch continue as the Journal’s Editorial Assistant and Sally Sztrecska as its Production Editor.
The Journal has benefited greatly from the expert guidance and advice of our Editorial Board and more than 290 referees who contributed their time and expertise to maintaining and enhancing the Journal’s quality. Editorial Board members typically serve four-year terms. Those departing from the Board this year are Sumner La Croix, Caroline Fohlin, and Ewout Frankema. We have one new board member, Matt Jaremski. We also recognize and appreciate numerous scholars’ contributions to the Journal’s book reviews. The editorial office 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, from 2013–2018, the average number of submissions per year was approximately 160, but in the past two years, there was a noticeable jump in the number of submissions to 195 and 209. Time will tell whether these two years are an aberration or a new level for the inflow of submissions. 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 2019– 2020, the publication ratio was 0.15 (30/195), which is lower than in the recent past. This reflects a higher number of submissions. The Journal published 31 articles in total in 2019–2020, including Price Fishback’s presidential address.
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 slower than previous years for new submissions, with a median response time of just under 62 days. Note that this pertains to submissions received from July 2019 to June 2020, some of which may not have received decisions at the time of this report’s writing. The median response time for all submissions (included revised manuscripts) is slightly lower. Unfortunately, a small number of papers have taken longer to review. 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.
The distributions of submissions are documented in subsequent tables. We show the data for eras in Table 3 and for topics in Table 4. The automated part of the paper submission system stopped collecting information on regions for a period of time during 2015 and 2016. This means that we do not have consistent comparisons over all years in the table. What is currently available is shown in Table 5.
Notes: This table corrects errors in previous year’s report for 2014–2015 pre-seventeenth century percent entry and for 2015–2016 twentieth century percent entry.
Notes: This table corrects errors in previous years’ reports for 2014–2015 and 2015–2016 percent entries.
*2014–2015 Region data are from July 1, 2014–October 14, 2015.
**2015–2016 Region data are from March 18, 2016–June 30, 2016.
The Journal’s 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 and growth continue to be particularly strong. Demography emerged as the third most common topic. Nonetheless, the top-three topic areas together account for around half of all submissions, reflecting broadly dispersed interests within the field. Table 5 shows that submissions of Western Europe and the United States are most common. In the past year, there was a dip in the share of submissions on the United States and Great Britain and a rise in the share of submissions on Asia.
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. For instance, in June 2018, the Journal published “Economic History and Contemporary Challenges to Globalization,” a “reviews and reflections” article by Kevin O’Rourke. There were no “reviews and reflections” articles published in 2019–2020, but we are in discussions with various authors for writing more.
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 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 openICPSR, 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 2018 were:
Brian A’Hearn
Martin Abel
Olivier Accominotti
Philipp Ager
Lars Ahnland
Michael Aldous
Guido Alfani
Marcella Alsan
Lee J. Alston
Eduard Josep Alvarez Palau
Haelim Anderson
Abhay Aneja
Leticia Arroyo Abad
Vellore Arthi
Jeremy Atack
Martha Bailey
Richard Baker
Charlotte Bartels
Joerg Baten
Brian Beach
Thor Berger
Sean Bottomley
Andrea Brandolini
Stephen Broadberry
Liam Brunt
Carsten Burhop
Joyce Burnette
Erik Buyst
Gareth Campbell
Edmund Cannon
Davide Cantoni
Ann Carlos
Mark A. Carlson
Mark Casson
Mario Chacon
Areendam Chanda
Eric Chaney
Latika Chaudhary
Carlo Ciccarelli
Damon Clark
Gregory Clark
Karen Clay
Lee Craig
Neil Cummins
Tomas Cvrcek
Guillaume Daudin
Alan de Bromhead
Herman de Jong
Jan de Vries
Melissa Dell
Tracy K. Dennison
John Devereux
Kara Dimitruk
Mark Dincecco
Paul Dower
Mauricio Drelichman
Yannick Dupraz
Nicolas Duquette
Xavier Duran
Andrew Dustan
Alan Dye
Jeremy Edwards
Barry Eichengreen
Shari Eli
Kerstin Enflo
Johan Ericsson
Katherine Eriksson
Rui Esteves
Oliver Falck
James Feigenbaum
Alan Fernihough
Daniel Fetter
Alexander Field
Price Fishback
Martin Fiszbein
Robert Fleck
Caroline Fohlin
James Foreman-Peck
Vicky Fouka
Johan Fourie
Ewout Frankema
Nicolas Fremeaux
Carola Frydman
Leigh Gardner
Thomas Gehrig
Oscar Gelderblom
Robert Gillezeau
Michela Giorcelli
Sun Go
Marc Goni
Felipe Gonzalez
Andrew Goodman-Bacon
Rowena Gray
Daniel Gross
Richard Grossman
Amanda Guimbeau
Timothy Guinnane
Bishnupriya Gupta
Federico Gutierrez
Christopher Hanes
Walker Hanlon
C. Knick Harley
James Harrison
Timothy Hatton
Joshua Hausman
Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur
Carlos Eduardo Hernandez
Alfonso Herranz-Loncán
Brad Hershbein
Eric Hilt
Philip Hoffman
Erik Hornung
Sara Horrell
Jane Humphries
Mark Hup
Kris Inwood
Alejandra Irigoin
Douglas Irwin
Murat Iyigun
David Jacks
Tarun Jain
Andrew Jalil
Matthew Jaremski
Taylor Jaworski
Maggie Jones
Tobias Jopp
Reka Juhasz
Karam Kang
Shawn Kantor
Ian Keay
Sebastian Keibek
Morgan Kelly
Lionel Kesztenbaum
Ekaterina Khaustova
Carl Kitchens
Alexander Klein
Daniel Klerman
Hannah Kling
Atsushi Kobayashi
Christoph Koenig
Paul Kosmetatos
Peter Koudijs
Mark Koyama
Michael Kuehlwein
Sumner La Croix
Markus Lampe
Ryan Lampe
Giampaolo Lecce
Chulhee Lee
Sibylle Lehmann-Hasemeyer
Gabriel Leon
Joshua Lewis
Ling-Fan Li
Peter Lindert
Cong Liu
Trevon Logan
Jason Long
Ernesto López Losa
Ronan Lyons
Debin Ma
Mikołaj Malinowski
Robert Margo
Andrei Markevich
Gabriel Mathy
Noel Maurer
Stephan Maurer
Christopher Meissner
Paul Miranti
Anna Missiaia
Carolyn Moehling
Jon Moen
Eduardo Montero
Lyndon Moore
Salvatore Morelli
Stephen Morgan
Petra Moser
Tomas Murphy
Aldo Musacchio
Alain Naef
Steven Nafziger
Suresh Naidu
Natalya Naumenko
Larry Neal
Tom Nicholas
Greg Niemesh
Pilar Nogues-Marco
Alessandro Nuvolari
Cormac Ó Gráda
Mary O’Sullivan
Sheilagh Ogilvie
Kim Oosterlinck
Christopher Paik
Nuno Palma
Craig Palsson
John Parman
Santiago Perez
Alexander Persaud
Luciano Pezzolo
Florian Ploeckl
Gilles Postel-Vinay
Michael Pottenger
Michael Poyker
Leandro Prados de la Escosura
Jonathan Pritchett
Sarah Quincy
Stephen Quinn
Ahmed Rahman
Angela Redish
Paul Rhode
Gary Richardson
Leonardo Ridolfi
Kilian Rieder
Albrecht Ritschl
Angelo Riva
William Roberds
Richard Roberts
Karen Rolf
Jonathan Rose
Joshua Rosenbloom
Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
Joan Roses
Jared Rubin
Mohamed Saleh
Laura Salisbury
Ethan Schmick
Ariadne Schmidt
Eric Schneider
Daniel Schwekendiek
Peter Scott
Felix Selgert
Edson Severnini
Paul Sharp
Allison Shertzer
Katharine Shester
Carol Shiue
Masato Shizume
Richard Sicotte
Carolyn Sissoko
Tuan-Hwee Sng
Kenneth A. Snowden
Peter Solar
Arthur Spirling
Yannay Spitzer
Steven Sprick Schuster
David Stasavage
Richard Steckel
Judy Stephenson
William A. Sundstrom
Anand Swamy
Kenneth Sylvester
John Tang
Brian Taylor
Sebastian Tello-Trillo
Patrick Testa
Melissa Thomasson
Alex Trew
Chinmay Tumbe
John Turner
Stefano Ugolini
Karine van der Beek
Paul A. van Dyke
Marlous van Waijenburg
Jan Luiten van Zanden
Michelangelo Vasta
Jessica Vechbanyongratana
Francois Velde
Chris Vickers
Elisabet Viladecans Marsal
André Villela
Catalina Vizcarra
Nico Voigtlaender
Dieter von Fintel
Tamas Vonyo
Fabian Wahl
Daniel Waldenström
Marianne Wanamaker
Kirsten Wandschneider
Felix Ward
Zachary Ward
Marc Weidenmier
Jacob Weisdorf
Thomas Weiss
Leonardo Weller
David C. Wheelock
Thomas Wiseman
Nikolaus Wolf
Gavin Wright
Melanie Xue
Noam Yuchtman
Nicolas Ziebarth
Ariell Zimran