One of the ways that peer-reviewed journals advance the frontiers of scholarly knowledge in political science is by highlighting the best—theoretical and empirical—work of political scientists. Another way is in providing academics with the opportunity to engage in a “virtual colloquium” when they submit papers for review. Though anonymous, reviewers provide an invaluable service by engaging with the ideas, arguments and evidence presented in our manuscripts.
As an editorial team, we are impressed daily with the quality of the reviews we receive. We value the time and contributions of our reviewers, as we cannot make the right decisions on manuscripts without relying on the expertise of our reviewers’ comments. We publish a list of our reviewers on the journal’s website every year, but this is hardly sufficient recognition of our appreciation—or the reviewers’ contributions. So, to those of you who take time out of your busy work schedules and respond positively to our invitations to review manuscripts, I would like to say: thank you.
I would also like to thank those of you who have agreed to serve on our editorial board this year. This distinguished group of scholars—whom I’ve informed will likely be asked to do more reviews, in less time, than others who review for us—will also advise us on editorial policies, and provide us critical feedback on a variety of issues relevant to the peer-review process at AJPS. We will have our first editorial board meeting in Boston during the APSA meeting in late August/early September, and we look forward to discussing a wide range of issues then. Be sure to watch for policy updates on the AJPS website that result from that meeting.
Until then, we will continue to provide the most efficient and relevant reviews of the papers that are submitted to AJPS. We do plan to close the AJPS portal to new submissions from August 4 through August 19. Since this isn’t the typical month-long hiatus, we needed to call it something else. We thought about calling this our “August recess,” following the time-honored tradition observed down the street from AU, the Congressional Recess. Some of us thought recess sounded like elementary school, and suggested instead that it be our “August break.” But since we’re only closing to submissions and otherwise making decisions, calling it a break made it sound like more of a vacay than is the case. Finally, we considered taking an “August holiday,” but, well, that just sounds silly. So, bottom line: we’re working, the first two weeks of August, just not accepting new submissions.
Hope your recess/break/vacay/holiday this summer is a good one!
Jan Leighley, Interim Editor
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