Annual Reports provide our editorial teams with an opportunity to furnish the ISA membership with a look into the state and management of our journals. Below is a listing of topics which annual reports should cover.
Annual Reports should include the following 7 topics:- Manuscript Flow
- Reviewer Interactions
- “Turn Around” Time
- Participation by Women Scholars
- Participation by International Scholars (if possible)
- Other Rates of Participation (if possible)
- Points of Interest or Concern Specific to Your Journal
Please see the headings below for more detailed descriptions of the topics above.
Manuscript Flow
Number of Submissions since last report and information on their distribution:
- Decline to Review (if appropriate for your journal)
- Accept
- Reject
- Revise & Resubmit
- Pending
Also, please include trends across recent years (or time span you consider relevant) if data is available.
Reviewer Interactions
General statistics on reviewer interactions:
- Number of people contacted with a request to review
- Response Rate
# Agreed to Review
# Actually Submitted Review
“Turn Around” Time
This is the average number of calendar days between receipt of manuscript and sending of decision letter. (We suggest calendar days rather than business days because this is the measure used by most journals.) Also, please include additional trends, if you find them relevant and if data is available.
Participation by Women Scholars
Interest in this question by the larger membership, as well as ISA’s commitment to the competitive standing of women in our profession, behooves us to track this annually. Please provide gender data for all aspects of the publication experience for which we track our authors, submitters and reviewers. Participation trends over time is helpful if the data is available.
Participation by International Scholars (if possible)
This is an item we have attempted to track in the past, with very mixed success. With and increasingly ‘globalized’ academy, such numbers are increasingly difficult to track. How should we count a Japanese scholar with a position at Berkeley? An American at U. Sydney? How often are we unsure of an individual’s citizenship or national origin, and to what extent should we concern ourselves with that? One of our journals, ISP, simply records the location of the institution at which the submitting author resides, and then uses those data to produce GIS-based world maps of submission rates by location.
Other Rates of Participation (if possible)
A few of our journals report data on other author characteristics, such as academic rank. For example, given its breadth, ISQ keeps and reports participation by subject areas. We recommend editors keep data on those aspects of participation that you believe are of use to your journal and readership.
Points of Interest or Concern Specific to Your Journal
Some of our editorial teams have set particular objectives for their stewardship of the journal (new features, attempts to reach new segments of the larger scholarly community, etc.). Feel free to report to the ISA community on any progress, difficulties or ideas that you wish to bring to their attention. Comments you bring forth here can not only inform the membership of activities specific to your journal, but publicize opportunities and concerns you would like members to know.
Examples:
- An expressed wish for increased numbers of certain types of submission may actually increase receipt of those types of manuscript.
- Recent concerns about reviewer responsiveness expressed by some of our editors has at least raised members’ awareness of this growing problem.
- Progress in the effort by some of you to have your journal included in SSCI is worthy of note here.
- Impact scores have been reported by some of you in past years.
While this is routinely part of our Publisher’s report, I encourage any of you to highlight the good news if you have it. Finally, some of you have used this space to acknowledge the help provided by people not on the editorial team (Wiley staff members, grad assistants, others), so please include any of these at your discretion.
We would like to thank Brian Pollins for his assistance
in compiling this outline for Annual Reports.
