By AJPS Co-Editors Kathy Dolan and Jennifer Lawless
Today marks the day! The new editorial team at AJPS is up and running. We’re honored to serve the discipline this way and we’re excited about what the next four years have in store. Before anything else, we want to introduce the new team:
Co-Editors-in-Chief:
Kathleen Dolan, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Jennifer Lawless, University of Virginia
Associate Editors:
Elizabeth Cohen, Syracuse University
Rose McDermott, Brown University
Graeme Robertson, University of North Carolina
Jonathan Woon, University of Pittsburgh
You can take a look at the new Editorial Board here. We are thrilled that such an impressive, well-rounded, diverse group of scholars agreed to serve.
Over the course of the coming days and weeks, we’ll use this blog to call your attention to new policies and procedures. (Don’t worry – for the most part, processes won’t change!) But we want to take a few minutes now to highlight four central goals for our term.
STABILITY: AJPS has undergone a lot of transitions in a short period of time. And we’re grateful to the interim team for stepping up on short notice last year and working tirelessly to ensure that the journal would continue to thrive. But now we’ve got a permanent team in place for the next four years and are eager to provide the stability the journal needs.
TRANSPARENCY: We’re committed to managing a process that maintains transparency and academic rigor. We will accomplish this, in part, by maintaining the current system of data verification and the professional and personal conflict of interest policy. We will also require authors of work based on human subjects to confirm institutional IRB approval of their projects at the time a manuscript is submitted for consideration. And we’ll be vigilant about ensuring that authors are authorized to use – at the time of submission – all data included in their manuscripts.
DIVERSITY: As scholars of gender politics, we are well aware of the ways in which top journals do not always represent the diversity of a discipline. In putting together our team of Associate Editors and our Editorial Board, we have intentionally worked to represent race, sex, subfield, rank, institutional, and methodological diversity. It is our hope that the presence and work of these leaders sends a message to the discipline that we value all work and the work of all. We want to be as clear as possible, though, that our plan to diversify the works and the scholars represented in the journal in no way compromises our commitment to identifying and publishing the best political science research. Indeed, we believe that attempts at diversification will actually increase the odds of identifying the best and most creative work.
OPEN COMMUNICATION: The journal’s success is contingent on the editorial team, authors, reviewers, and the user-community working together. In that vein, we value open communication. Undoubtedly, you won’t love everything we do. Maybe you’ll be upset, disappointed, or troubled by a decision we make. Perhaps you’ll disagree with a new policy or procedure. Please contact us and let us know. We can likely address any concerns better through direct communication than by discerning what you mean in an angry tweet. We get that those tweets will still happen. But we hope you’ll feel comfortable contacting us directly before your blood begins to boil.
Before we sign off, we want to let you know that we’re aware that, for some people, earlier frustration with the MPSA had bled over into AJPS. We ask for your continued support and patience as the new MPSA leadership addresses issues of concern and seeks to rebuild your trust. We ask that you not take your frustrations out on the journal by refusing to submit or review. A journal can only function if the community is invested in it.
Thanks in advance for tolerating the transition bumps and bruises that are sure to occur. We’ll try to minimize them; we promise.
Kathy and Jen
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