I. INTRODUCTION
PS: Political Science & Politics is in its 58th 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.
The current editorial team started their tenure in 2022. Over the last two years of our editorship, we have sought to expand the readership of the journal, in part, by increasing our social media presence. Our editors represented the journal at various workshops and conferences including in North Carolina, Santiago (Chile) and in Accra (Ghana). This sort of exposure is raising the profile of the journal by bringing in more readers and potential authors. We have also sought to expand the journal’s scope by creating a “Comments and Controversy” section which has already received fifteen submissions. We also continue to strengthen the review process and the quality of published work in the journal with our triple anonymous reviews and recently approved higher word count. See below for more information.
During this past year, the journal has published (or is in the process of publishing) symposia and special issues on cutting edge topics. For example, in January 2024, we published the first Comment and Controversy Special Issue on Democratic Backsliding. A group of the Special Issue contributors highlighted their contributions’ arguments and findings at a roundtable that we hosted at APSA’s 2023 Annual Meeting in Los Angeles. APSA staff noted that the panel was one of the most heavily-attended journal-sponsored panels in APSA’s history and the special issue received excellent feedback.
While our team of editors has not changed, our undergraduate Editorial Assistants rotate on an annual basis and this past academic year, we onboarded three new members: Nick Aime, David Asiedu, and Geraldine Guzman. We are grateful for their support and for the continuing support of our managing editor and board members.
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 and 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. Our team increased the word count of PS submissions by 20% for articles, symposia, and spotlight contributions. Thus, upon initial submission, article manuscripts can be 4,800 words, symposium contributions can be 3,600 words, and spotlight contributions can be 1,800 words (up from 4,000, 3,000, and 1,500, respectively). 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 published 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). We feel an important sense of responsibility to provide an outlet for disciplinary debates, among others. As examples, we have recently published and have upcoming symposia on:
-
• Qualitative Methods in the Undergraduate Classroom
-
• CMPS 2020: An Introduction to the Oversamples
-
• Rethinking China-Africa Engagements in the Age of Discontent
-
• Populism and Democracy
-
• Contemporary Politics of the UK
-
• The Politics of Abortion in the Americas
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 upcoming Special Issues include research on:
-
• Climate Change and Vulnerable Populations
-
• Contemporary and Future LGBTQ+ Scholarship in Political Science
-
• Forecasting the 2024 US Election
We sincerely welcome comments, suggestions, and ideas to be shared with us by emailing our team at [email protected].
II. 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 manuscripts to PS in 2023.
Table 1. Demographic Profile of Author Submissions 2023 (N=598)
Figure 1. Top-5 Research Outputs (from 2023 Council Report)
III. 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 were right on pace in 2023 with 207 submissions. This year to date, however, we are already at 202 submissions on August 16th, 2024.
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.
Figure 2. All Research Outputs Published in PS Sorted by Mentions (from 2023 Council Report)
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 articles published in the past year in the pages of PS which provide a snapshot of the timeliness and diversity of issues addressed in the pages of PS.
Comment & Controversy
-
• Knutsen CH, Marquardt KL, Seim B, et al. (2024). “Conceptual and Measurement Issues in Assessing Democratic Backsliding.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 57(2),162-177.
-
• Levitsky S, Way L. “The Resilience of Democracy’s Third Wave.” (2024). PS: Political Science & Politics, 57(2),198-201.
Politics Section
-
• Whitt S, Yanus AB, Setzler M, et al. (2024). “Explaining Partisan Gaps in Satisfaction with Democracy after Contentious Elections: Evidence from a US 2020 Election Panel Survey.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 57(1),8-15.
-
• Egan PJ, Mullin M. (2024). “US Partisan Polarization on Climate Change: Can Stalemate Give Way to Opportunity?” PS: Political Science & Politics, 57(1), 30-35.
-
• Busby JW. (2024). “Climate Security: How to Write About the Future Without Lapsing into Prophecy.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 57(1), 45-49.
-
• Wolak J. (2023). “How Political Content in Us Weekly Can Reduce Polarized Affect Toward Elected Officials.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(4), 525-530.
Profession Section
-
• Powell EN, Schwindt-Bayer L, Sin G. (2023). “Women in Legislative Studies: Improving Gender Equality.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(4), 591-597.
-
• Arel-Bundock V, McCrain J. (2023). “Software Citations in Political Science.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(3), 398-401.
-
• Garand JC, Qi D, Magaña M. (2023). “Department Research Productivity in 19 Scholarly Political Science Journals, 1990–2018.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 56(3), 417-429.
Teacher Section
-
• Kesari A, Kim JY, Shah S, Brown T, Ventura T, Law T. (2024). “Training Computational Social Science PhD Students for Academic and Non-Academic Careers.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 57(1), 101-106.
-
• Lamb M. (2024). “Logging in to Learn: The Effects of Online Civic Education Pedagogy on a Latinx and AAPI Civic Engagement Youth Conference.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 57(2), 315-322.
IV. 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. Tia Gracey is associate editor of Political Science Today and serves as a liaison between official APSA news and events and the journal. We also express our gratitude to Tia for designing PS’s journal covers.
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.
Continuing Term:
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
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, Nebraksa Wesleyan University
Amy Niang, The Africa Institute
Murad Idris, University of Michigan
Chris Sabatini, Chatham House
V. PRODUCTION AND DELIVERY
PS has a good working relationship with our publisher, Cambridge University Press. Lucie Taylor is our current production manager. We are grateful for their dedicated work with PS. Together with Cambridge we fine-tuned our 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. 2024’s number is impacted by the special issue on Democratic Backsliding which was published in January 2024 and had a few manuscripts with turnaround times over 100 days.
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.
VI. SUBMISSIONS BY ARTICLE TYPE
In 2022, PS published 68 articles, 62 symposia contributions, and 51 spotlight contributions. In 2023, PS published 44 articles, 32 symposia contributions, and no spotlight contributions. This dip in publications was due, in part, to the editorial team transition in 2022. However, we are on track to publish the projected number of articles this year.
The acceptance rate of 63.0% for 2023 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 anonymous peer review, the review of symposium proposals filter out most manuscripts which might be ultimately rejected.
VII. PUBLICITY AND OUTREACH
PS was active on X, formerly named Twitter, for six years. We have 8,200 followers, up over 1,000 followers from last year, but we decided to utilize BlueSky as our social media platform to communicate journal publications and news. On BlueSky, we have over 6,000 followers. Our handle is @pspolisci.bsky.social, and we welcome your follow! A typical post involves an image with the newly published article’s title and author names, a featured quote from the article or a blurb written by the author that highlights their study’s contribution, and a link to the FirstView publication. We try to tag (@) authors to increase exposure and encourage authors to repost the links. We also share important information regarding calls for papers and other PS-related content. The managing editor runs the PS social media accounts, in consultation with the undergraduate editorial assistants.
The APSA-run Political Science Now blog (www.politicalsciencenow.com) 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. ■
