For further details on the information presented below, please see the Summary of Editorial Activity table. To see editors’ reports from previous years, click here.
American Sociological Review
Review Process. ASR continues to receive a large volume of first rate submissions. Between 2006 and 2007 we witnessed a significant increase in the number of submissions overall, resulting in an acceptance rate that remains under 10 percent. We have worked hard to keep the average turnaround time low (mean = 12.4; median = 9.4 weeks) and to ensure timely feedback for authors.
Publicity Successes. Following the lead of the ASA Publications Committee and ASA Council, the ASR staff is working hard to give the discipline’s best research greater public visibility. Articles with high press visibility this year included Alexander et al., “Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap”; Cherlin and Fomby, “Family Instability and Selection Effects on Children”; Tienda and Sigal, “Diversity, Opportunity, and the Shifting Meritocracy in Higher Education”; and Jacobs et al., “Who Survives on Death Row?” With the help of authors, we are preparing press-friendly abstracts of all ASR articles (available now on the ASR website). The ASA’s press officers and authors’ own university press officers are sent these media-friendly summaries for use in their own press releases, which are then brought to the attention of relevant media outlets. Such coordination—between the ASR office, authors’ own university media relations experts, and the ASA press office—seems to be working. We are and remain encouraged by the enthusiasm that the public holds for sociological topics, especially when they are packaged in a publicly consumable manner.
Range of Submissions. The topics of the articles submitted to the ASR are increasingly diverse, and this speaks volumes about the discipline’s range and appeal. Areas in which only very small pools of submissions were received over the last year include experimental research and manuscripts that are primarily methodological or exclusively theoretical in focus. The submission of qualitative articles continues to be low relative to those using various quantitative methodologies, yet the submission of ethnographic, in-depth interview, and historical work has steadily increased within the last year. This is, perhaps, a response to the publication of several exemplary qualitative articles in the ASR in 2007. As the discipline’s flagship journal we continue to seek innovative manuscripts, from all substantive and methodological approaches that reflect breadth of contribution to the discipline. We thus encourage submissions that fully reflect that diversity, and we continue to pledge our best efforts in providing a fair and timely review for all articles received.
Editorial Board and Reviewers. One of the key ingredients to ensuring that the true richness and excitement of the field makes its way into the pages of the ASR is by assembling a strong and diverse reviewer pool. We have maintained diversity on the editorial board with the help of a large and theoretically/methodologically diverse group of eight deputies. With the recent addition of 21 new board members to replace the 31 who rotated off, the ASR total board is now composed of 59 members. Of these, 37 percent are women and 27 percent are racial/ethnic minority. We will continue to consider diversity in both background and substantive/methodological orientation as individuals rotate onto and off the board. We thank existing board members and especially those recently rotating off the board after a three-year commitment. We also welcome our new board members. Beyond ensuring an active, conscientious and thoughtful editorial board, we have expanded our reviewer pool considerably over prior years. This expansion has been important not only for helping us handle the increase in manuscript submissions, but also for more effectively tapping into the strong body of international scholars who read ASR and are engaged in similar research. One unforeseen but very much welcome consequence, in our view, has been a steady rise over the last year in the number of manuscript submissions from non-U.S. sociologists.
Challenges. Limited page allocations and the desire to publish as many articles as possible push issues of length to the fore. Many sociology journals are restricting submissions to set limits, as low as 8,500 words. We recognize that publishing diverse articles and serving a diverse audience warns against rigid limits. However, we constantly have to encourage reluctant authors to edit their articles toward more reasonable lengths. And, truly, a significant number would be better, tighter, and more effective at two-thirds the length they are initially submitted. We hope that what many experience as negative pressures for shortening articles will end up having positive consequences for creating tighter arguments and more readable prose.
Vincent Roscigno and Randy Hodson, Editors
Contemporary Sociology
Books Considered. The editorial office of Contemporary Sociology received 828 books. The total number of books that the editors examined was 828.
Review Process. Three hundred eighty-nine books were screened by editors and accepted for review for the year, and the number of reviews received for the year was 339. Two hundred ninety-six reviews were finished and published for Volume 36. One hundred sixty-one were classified as No Review and 255 were classified as Take Note. There were 43 New Books pending triage at the time of this report.
Production Lag. The editorial office, on average, schedules reviews, articles, symposia, and review essays for publication within 17.9 weeks after the materials arrive. The journal’s managing editor, Jenny Fan, edits and formats all the work received in preparation for publication. Most contributors send electronic copies of their work. The production lag represents the time between receipt of the review and the publication date. The production lag averages 6.14 months.
Items Published. The breakdown of the items published in Volume 36 contain the following: 296 book reviews, 23 symposium essays, 10 review essays, 11 comments, and 2 other. The total number of items published is 342.
Editorial Board Members and Reviewers. Ten women, 18 men compose the editorial board. This includes 9 minorities. Approximately 114 women and 159 men compose the reviewers.
During its second year at UC-Irvine, CS has followed through with its initiative to present symposia that highlight the ways sociology informs public debate and public policy. Our featured subject titles of 2006 included “Religion,” “Interaction,” “Surveillance,” “States and Development,” “Theory Connections,” and “Political Islam.” CS started off 2008 with “Labor” and some of the upcoming symposia will be on welfare, media, immigration, U.S. electoral politics, and applied/public sociology. Part of the editors’ initiative included plans to disseminate symposia beyond regular subscribers to relevant lawmakers, non-profit organizations, professionals, and media interested in the topics. We have distributed several symposia, recipients including the Homeland Security state offices, NGOs involved with security and privacy rights, members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Attorney General, the ACLU, the Salvation Army, religious organizations, congregations, seminaries, and religion research centers. Over the last two years we have received favorable feedback from the Federal Bureau of Investigations, governors, and members of congress. CS will continue on these mailings with upcoming symposia and thanks the Public Affairs & Public Information at the ASA for coordinating with our efforts for specific dissemination.
Valerie Jenness, David A. Smith, and Judith Stepan-Norris, Editors
Contexts
During our third and final year as editors of Contexts the flow of submissions continued to increase. Because of the large number of proposals and submissions, we now have an acceptance rate comparable to that of most other ASA journals.
At the ASA Annual Meeting last year in New York, we sponsored the second annual Contexts Forum, a well-attended roundtable panel on the governance of corporate America. A version of it appeared two months later, in our Fall 2007 issue. However, the Program Committee for the 2008 meetings did not see fit to continue this emerging tradition, turning down our proposal for a panel in Boston on “Sex as Work.”
All attendees at the New York ASA Annual Meeting received a copy of our special summer issue on justice and change, allowing many ASA members to see the magazine for the first time. The issue contained many articles commissioned by the Program Committee and edited by the indefatigable Peter Dreier, as well as a version of Frances Fox Piven’s presidential address.
Our final issue as editors, Fall 2007, was mostly dedicated to the subject of work, with contributions about diversity training in corporations, women’s choices (or lack thereof) between work and family, and prostitution—as well as a personal essay by the cartoonist Harvey L. Pekar (the subject of the movie American Splendor). Additional articles dealt with the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and with suicide bombers. The cover featured an elegant cartoon by Nick Bertozzi commissioned especially for the special issue.
Sociology instructors continue to use our articles or to ask students to subscribe to the magazine. A recent Footnotes article detailed several ways that you can use Contexts in your classroom, and there is now a page on our website (www.contextsmagazine.org) to further help you. This past summer, W. W. Norton published The Contexts Reader containing almost 70 articles and keyword essays from the first five years of the magazine. They were especially selected for introductory sociology and other lower-level courses. Find out more at www.wwnorton.com/college/soc. The party to launch the Reader, held during the ASA meetings, drew 400 people to a townhouse in Chelsea. More than 60 colleges and universities have already adopted the Reader.
By the end of 2007, Chris Uggen and Doug Hartmann of the University of Minnesota, had established firm control of the editing of Contexts, aided by their extremely competent managing editor, Amy Connor. We already know that they will do an excellent job.
Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, Editors
Journal of Health and Social Behavior
Editorial Transition. The Journal of Health and Social Behavior editorial office at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill began to organize as of August 15, 2007, and started accepting new manuscripts on September 1, 2007. All remaining files were transferred from the UNC office to the Indiana office October 1. The transition went smoothly, thanks to the work of Peggy Thoits, outgoing JHSB editor, and her staff, who organized files and records and responded helpfully to our many questions. We inherited a journal that was in excellent organizational shape with all tasks carefully documented, and this organization greatly eased the transition between offices. Much of the operational structure used to manage JHSB at UNC has been adopted at Indiana, with minor alterations. As Thoits did at UNC, I hired two co-managing editors, for 20 hours per week each, with equal levels of responsibility. Sibyl Kleiner serves as the Managing Editor for Reviews, and the UNC Managing Editor for Production, Brent Winter, continued work for the Indiana office through 2007. Given the ease of communication via e-mail and phone, this staggered transition worked well to ease the transition to a new office. In early 2008, Indermohan Virk took over as Managing Editor for Production. The managing editors share equal responsibility for general management tasks. The Managing Editor for Reviews manages the review process, handling manuscripts from the time of submission to decision. The Managing Editor for Production manages the production process, handling manuscripts from the time of acceptance to publication. Although the UNC office did not have an editorial assistant, prior editors had employed an additional, part-time editorial assistant, and I have requested to reinstate a 10 hour per week editorial assistant to help with general office tasks and speed the flow of manuscripts. The Schuessler Institute for Social Research and the Department of Sociology at IU have provided a large three-person office for the JHSB staff, office furniture, used computers, file cabinets, utilities, and a two-course reduction in teaching load during the first year of the editorship and a one-course reduction each remaining year. The Department and Schuessler Institute also handle the accounting and personnel paperwork for the journal. The Department and Institute also supply excellent computer technical support free of charge to solve hardware, software, and email problems.
Personnel. Sibyl Kleiner, MA, is an advanced graduate student in the Department of Sociology at IU with a specialization in social psychology and medical sociology. Indermohan Virk has an MA in Sociology from UNC and experience as a former managing editor for Sociological Theory and as a copyeditor for a newspaper. Both are extraordinarily competent, and I am fortunate to have them. I am also fortunate that Dr. Andrew Cognard-Black, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, has agreed to continue as copyeditor for the journal; he has now served as copyeditor during several editorial terms.
Overall Operations and Manuscript Flow. JHSB published 29 manuscripts in 2007. This is an increase of three manuscripts from the previous year, made possible by the 64-page permanent page increase allotted to JHSB in 2007. The increase in page numbers also allowed us to increase the percent of manuscripts accepted to a less stringent 14 percent in 2007, compared with 10 percent in 2006. The number of new submissions appears relatively stable over time; while new submissions were down slightly in 2007 (N = 147) compared with 2006 (N = 159), the number of 2007 submissions was slightly higher than that in 2005 (N = 140). The call for a special section on comparative health care in 2006 may be responsible for the slight increase in new submissions in that year. The number of new submissions in 2007 is nearly identical to the mean annual number of new submissions received by the journal since 1990 (mean = 148). In 2007, 268 manuscripts were considered. The outgoing and incoming editors made decisions on 220 papers (82 percent), with 47 (17 percent) remaining under review and 1 paper withdrawn by the author. Of the 206 decisions made, about 26 percent were “revise and resubmit,” 13 percent were “conditional accept,” and another 14 percent were “accept.” The UNC editorial team worked hard to keep the mean editorial lag for JHSB under 12 weeks, and they were very successful in doing so. Even with delays from the transition in editorial office, the mean time lag between manuscript submission and editorial decision in 2007 was 10.7 weeks. The mean production lag (i.e., the time between acceptance of a paper and its appearance in print) continued to be 6 months in 2007, consistent with ASA editorial guidelines.
Special Projects. In 2006, JHSB issued a call for a special section on comparative health care. Seven manuscripts were submitted, and two were issued revise and resubmits. Both of those manuscripts were resubmitted in fall 2007 and were reviewed favorable on the second round. Our goal is for the special section to appear in the December 2008 or March 2009 issue. No special projects are planned for 2008, but we are in early discussion with the Medical Sociology Section to evaluate the feasibility of funding for a special issue to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the section in 2009 and JHSB in 2010.
Editorial Board and Deputy Editors. Two deputy editors, Frederic Hafferty (Minnesota-Duluth) and myself, and 12 other editorial board members—William Avison (Western Ontario), Tony Brown (Vanderbilt), Kathy Charmaz (Sonoma State), Chiquita Collins (Texas-Austin), Peter Conrad (Brandeis), Margaret Ensminger (Johns Hopkins), Ellen Idler (Rutgers), Jennie Kronenfeld (Arizona State), Allen LeBlanc (MDRC), Madonna Harrington Meyer (Syracuse), Scott Schieman (Toronto), and David Takeuchi (Washington)—rotated off the board at the end of 2007. Peggy Thoits and I are deeply grateful for their extraordinary service and commitment to the journal. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the continuing editorial board members and the many, many additional reviewers who have contributed their time and expertise so generously to the journal. Without their contributions, we simply could not fulfill the goal of publishing the very best papers in medical sociology submitted to the journal. The editorial board has four new deputy editors and 11 new board members whose terms run from January 1, 2008, to December 31, 2010. Bernice Pescosolido (Indiana), Pamela Braboy Jackson (Indiana), Jill Quadagno (FSU), and Scott Schieman (Toronto) agreed to serve as deputy editors. New board members are Ronald Angel (Texas-Austin), Christopher Browning (OSU), Brigette Gorman (Rice), Pamela Herd (Wisconsin), Karen Lutfey (NERI), Scott Lynch (Princeton), Elizabeth Menaghan (OSU), Richard Miech (UC Denver), Samuel Noh (Toronto), John Reynolds (FSU), and Michael Shanahan (UNC). I have already begun to rely heavily on the professional guidance of these new deputy editors and editorial board members along with our faithful continuing board members. The editorial board in 2007 was a diverse group, not only in terms of gender (51 percent female) and race/ethnicity (15 percent minority), but in terms of methodological skills and substantive specialties. The 2008 editorial board maintains an equivalent range in its composition demographically, methodologically, and substantively.
Current Problems and Issues. No serious problems confront the journal at this time. The IU office will work to maintain the excellent lag time to editorial decision established by the UNC office and the normal production deadlines for 2008 issues of the journal. We have also been working to update our lists of ad hoc reviewers and their specialties, to enable us to better identify those with appropriate expertise for incoming papers. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Peggy Thoits, outgoing editor, and her extraordinary staff, including Ashley Thompson, Brent Winter, and Andrew Cognard-Black, for producing an excellent set of regular issues during their term. Peggy Thoits and her editorial board also selected the papers that will appear in the March 2008 issue and some of the papers in the June 2008 issue, thus further easing the transition in editorship for us, for which we are also grateful.
Eliza K. Pavalko, Editor
Rose Series in Sociology
2007 was our second full year as an editorial team. We had growth in our number of accepted manuscripts—going from one (in 2006) to four (in 2007). We now have five books under contract (in total) as SBU editors. We would like to further increase the number of published manuscripts in this year, and we believe we have now re-established the productive momentum of the previous editors.
Eleven books are currently under contract:
- George Farkas and Katerina Bodovski. Early Inequality
- Judith A. Seltzer and Suzanne M. Bianchi. Family Relationships across the Generations
- Arne L. Kalleberg. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, No Jobs: Changing Work and Workers in America
- Jeff Goodwin. The Logic of Terrorism: A Comparative Study
- Dawn Wiest, Jackie Smith, and Kiyoteru Tsutsui. Networked for Change: Transnational and Social Movements in a Global Era
- Rebecca Emigh, Dylan Riley, and Patricia Ahmed. The Production of Demographic Knowledge: States, Societies, and Census Taking in Comparative and Historical Perspective
- Ruth D. Peterson and Lauren J. Krivo. Race, Place, and Crime: Structural Inequality, Criminal Inequality
- Pamela E. Oliver and James E. Yocum. Repressive Injustice: Political and Social Processes in the Massive Incarceration of African Americans
- Seán Ó Riain and Chris Benner. Re-Working Silicon Valley: Politics, Power and the Informational Labor Process
- Ellen Reese. “They Say Cutback; We Say Fight Back!” Welfare Rights Activism in an Era of Retrenchment
- Brian Powell, Lala Carr Steelman, Catherine Bolzendahl, Danielle Fettes, and Claudi Giest. Who Counts as Kin: How Americans Define the Family
Javier Auyero, Diane Barthel-Bouchier, Cynthia Bogard, Michael Kimmel, Daniel Levy, Tim Moran, Naomi Rosenthal, and Michael Schwartz, Editors
Social Psychology Quarterly
Numbers are a window into excellence. Not alone says the ethnographer, but progress can be adjudicated through the decisiveness of digits.
One year, four numbers: 125; 373; 7.5; 54.4.
During 2007 Social Psychology Quarterly received a total of 125 new submissions to the journal, an increase from 83 in 2005. We relied on the help of 373 colleagues to review these manuscripts, as well as those revised and resubmitted manuscripts. With the heavy increase in new manuscripts, the journal has become markedly more selective. Our 2007 acceptance rate is 7.5 percent. The comparative figure in 2005 was 10.8 percent (Ahh, the good old days!). Finally 54.4. When I took over, I committed the journal to ensuring that every manuscript received a timely review. During 2007 the average number of days between when a manuscript was submitted and when an outcome was sent was 54.4 days. Under eight weeks. No manuscript submitted in 2007 took over three months to be evaluated.
We now have published a year’s worth of cover photographs and photo essays, including a striking full-color image on the December 2007 issue: our 70th birthday issue. We have published a review essay by Neil Smelser on the work of Philip Rieff and one by Gerald Clore on David Heise. In 2008 we continue our attempt to publish provocative short essays, debates, and commentaries to ensure that SPQ, ASA’s journal of microsociologies, remains a journal for readers.
Numbers like these could not exist without a near-perfect staff. I am grateful to the SPQ team. Our two deputy editors, Jane McLeod and Lisa Troyer; our beloved production typesetter, Robert Marczak; our graduate editorial assistant, Corey Fields; and our undergraduate editorial assistant, Kasia Kadela, who is in charge of the SPQ website. Finally I thank Gianna Barbera, who manages the SPQ journal as both managing editor and copyeditor, keeping the publication on track.
May 2008 bring as happy numbers as 2007.
Gary Alan Fine, Editor
Sociological Methodology
The year 2007 was my first full year as editor of Sociological Methodology, during which Volume 37 was published. This beautiful, new, maize-colored volume contains 11 articles in four important areas: statistical models, data collection/data quality, methods for analyzing social network data, and causal inference in the social sciences. Feedback about the volume has been overwhelmingly positive, and we wish to thank all those who submitted or reviewed articles for making this possible.
Perhaps because authors are now able to submit their manuscripts online, we have seen a large increase in the number of submissions to SM this year, from 23 manuscripts in 2006 to 35 manuscripts in 2007. Of these, only three have thus far been unconditionally accepted for volume 38, but 11 others were given revise-resubmit status, and we expect to have enough manuscripts accepted soon for the volume to appear on schedule.
Volume 38 will highlight a scholarly exchange centered on an article by Stanley Lieberson and Joel Horwich titled “Implication Analysis: A Pragmatic Proposal for Linking Theory and Data in the Social Sciences,” for which Glenn Firebaugh, Jack Goldstone, Mark Mizruchi, Burton Singer, and Charles Tilly have all written comments to which the authors will respond.
Yu Xie, Editor
Sociological Theory
This past year was a very successful one for Sociological Theory. The journal’s impact factor has improved. Article submissions were up about 10 percent, their quality undiminished. Several ST articles won ASA section prizes or were discussed in national news outlets, including the New York Times. True, we winced a little when columnist John Tierney commented that ST style is laden “with all the flair we’ve come to expect from that journal,” but we’re happy that he’s reading us regularly nonetheless.
We continue to strive for a high-quality, intellectually ecumenical journal with international reach. In last year’s report, we noted the broad range of styles of theory reflected in the journal—deductive and inductive, general and middle range, formalistic and interpretive, scientific and normative—and the many different subfields represented. We’re delighted to report that this continues to be the case. Where we felt we had been less successful, a year ago, was in recruiting authors from outside the United States, including not simply those who are foreign born and work at U.S. universities but those who work outside this country. Now, given the articles that we have published this year and those in the immediate queue, we can testify to the expanded internationalization of the journal. That’s a matter not just of demographics, we think, but of wider ways of thinking that benefit us all.
The day-to-day operations of the journal run well, due mainly to our managing editor, Jason Mast. Our biggest task in this area is recruiting reviewers. This is a problem faced by all professional journals, of course, and in this regard we owe special thanks to our editorial board, past and present. Our members not only review for ST but also came together at last year’s ASA meeting for an intellectually stimulating and productive meeting that continues to help guide us in our work. The board is intellectually and demographically diverse on all counts. At this writing, the composition of the board has also reached gender parity.
Our one major desideratum would be a slightly higher page allotment that might allow us to publish the occasional comment or debate. As it stands, we struggle to fit all of our regular articles into each issue. That has meant that on at least one occasion we could not accept a strong article because of its length.
In this next year, our goal is to reduce our turnaround time while maintaining the high level of feedback to authors that ST has been providing. We are also beginning a modest outreach campaign to ASA sections and some international sociological associations, stressing the openness of the journal to substantively grounded as well as capital-T Theory.
Julia Adams, Jeffrey Alexander, Ronald Eyerman, and Philip Gorski, Editors
Sociology of Education
This year Sociology of Education begins its 45th year as an ASA journal of empirical studies focusing on sociological questions in education. Reviewing the journal’s history, one is struck by the interrelationships between sociology and education, not only in relation to social stratification, but also in relation to health and employment particularly for minorities and underrepresented groups. For sociology of education to evolve as an intellectual field, it is important that the articles in the journal tackle educational problems from a broader perspective, expanding both in intellectual content and methodological approaches.
Together with the deputy editor, John Robert “Rob” Warren, we are committed to maintaining the high level of quality that has characterized SOE‘s history. In achieving this goal, the journal continues to solicit manuscripts that focus on the role of educational institutions in the lives of individuals at various stages of the life course, particularly those which adopt a global perspective in addressing these issues.
Please send your manuscripts and reviews to: Editor: Barbara Schneider, Michigan State University, College of Education, 516 Erickson Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824 or [email protected].
Manuscript Flow: This summary of editorial activities covers the calendar year of 2007. The total number of manuscripts considered by SOE has increased from last year, from 258 total manuscripts in 2006 to 264 in 2007. Of the 264 manuscripts submitted in 2007, 196 were new submissions, up from 165 in 2006, and only 68 were carried over, down from 93 in 2006. Forty percent of the new submissions in 2007 were revise and resubmit manuscripts, and 16 were accepted for publication. The editorial lag time averages about 16 weeks; we are continually striving to reduce this number while maintaining the journal’s practice of receiving three outside reviews, at least one of which focuses on substantive issues and one which focuses on methodology.
Editorial Board: The 2007 editorial board consisted of 27 members, of whom 14 were women (52 percent) and 9 (33 percent) were members of racial/ethnic minority groups. Maintaining a diverse board is a goal of ours. We thank the six members whose term ended in 2007, and welcome the 11 new members to SOE‘s editorial board. We are actively seeking new board members who represent a diversity of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.
Acknowledgments: We thank Karen Edwards, the ASA publications director, and Wendy Almeleh, our managing editor, who will be continuing her good work with the journal. At Michigan State University, Jeff Keesler is doing the day-to-day work of the journal as the editorial assistant. Jeff manages the online database that tracks the flow of manuscripts, maintains the journal’s physical files, and does most of the correspondence with authors and reviewers. We would also like to thank Nathan Jones and Timothy Ford, graduate student editors, for their great work on the journal.
As our staff forges ahead with the journal, we are asking our overextended and incredibly busy colleagues to please review for the journal. The quality of the journal depends on the quality of peer review. We look forward to receiving your manuscripts and your reviews.
Barbara L. Schneider, Editor
Teaching Sociology
Manuscript Flow and Editorial Decisions. During 2007, Teaching Sociology considered 140 manuscripts. Of these, 100 were new manuscripts, 24 were revised manuscripts that had been resubmitted, and 16 were still under review from the previous year. The number of new manuscripts was considerably higher than that for the previous year (74).There were 107 editorial decisions made during 2007. Of these, 7 were rejected without peer review (primarily because the manuscripts were inappropriate for the journal), 35 were rejected after review, 43 were invited to revise and resubmit, 4 received conditional acceptances, and 18 were accepted for publication. The overall acceptance rate was 16.8 percent. The mean and median editorial lags (period of time, in weeks, between submission of a manuscript and decision) were 10.31 and 11.14, respectively.
Editorial Board. The editorial board in 2007 consisted of 30 members. Of these, 53 percent were women and 20 percent were racial/ethnic minorities. The journal also tries to maintain a diverse representation of faculty from different types of academic institutions, ranging from Research I to community colleges.I’d like to thank outgoing members of the board for their wonderful support over the past three years: Robert S. Bausch, Nancy J. Davis, Diane Gillespie, Roxanna E. Harlow, Robert J. Hironimus-Wendt, Patrick Moynihan, W. Lawrence Neuman, David Schweingruber, Janet M. Wilmoth, and David Yamane. These individuals have been enormously helpful to me over the past three years. Their assistance is greatly appreciated.
Subscriptions. According to the most recent data available, subscriptions to the journal remain fairly strong despite declines in institutional subscriptions that have hit journals (TS experienced a 4 percent decline in institutional subscriptions from the previous year). However, it experienced a 1.5 percent increase in member subscriptions from the previous year and the subscription rate among ASA members remains strong.
Other Issues. Although TS has not moved toward a totally electronic system, we have implemented several changes that make the submission and review processes easier. Authors now submit their papers electronically. Reviewers receive manuscripts and submit reviews electronically. Although we still lag behind some journals in terms of electronic processing of manuscripts, these small changes have had a big impact on length of time spent processing manuscripts and volume of paper. Finally, some of you may not know that ASA has a forum for all journals in which members can discuss ideas related to the journal or continue conversations about manuscripts published. If you would like to respond to any of the issues discussed here or raise others, go to http://members.asanet.org/Forums/view_forum.php?id=68.
Liz Grauerholz, Editor
