AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Report to the Editorial Board and the Midwest Political Science Association Executive Council

April 2016

William G. Jacoby, Editor Robert N. Lupton, Managing Editor Miles T. Armaly, Adam Enders, Editorial Interns

The AJPS Editorial Office and operations are supported by the Michigan State University Department of Political Science (Charles Ostrom, Chair), the Michigan State University College of Social Science (Neal Schmitt, Interim Dean), and the Midwest Political Science Association (Will Morgan, Executive Director).

This Report from the Editor of the American Journal of Political Science to the Editorial Board and to the Executive Council of the Midwest Political Science Association covers the AJPS and operations in the Editorial Offices at Michigan State University during calendar year 2015. The Report presents information about the Journal 's status and influence, usage of AJPS content, manuscript processing statistics, referees and reviews, and the Editorial Board. It also explains several new policies and innovations that have been implemented from the start of the current editorial term through the present time. Finally, the Report will provide information about manuscript processing during the first three months of 2016.

IMPACT AND IMPORTANCE

The AJPS strives to maintain its position as one of the premier publication outlets, not only within the political science discipline, but also throughout the social sciences more generally. To that end, we continue to monitor closely the Journal 's performance on the various metrics that summarize its presence, visibility, and usage within the research community. The main indicators used for this purpose are the Thomson Reuters Impact Factors and the Google Scholar h5-index scores.

The Impact Factor for a journal is defined as the average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the preceding two, or five, years. The 2014 Two-Year Impact Factor for the AJPS is 3.269. This figure represents a fairly sizable increase over previous years' values. For example, the comparable figures for 2012 and 2013 were 2.811 and 2.516, respectively. Figure 1 plots the top fifty political science journals, according to their Two-Year Impact Factors for 2014. The current Two-Year Impact Factor places the AJPS in fourth place among political

Figure 1: Top fifty political science journals, according to 2014 Two-Year Impact Factors

Political Analysis American Political Science Review

Journal of Peace Research American Journal of Political Science

Annual Review of Political Science Political Geography

European Journal of Political Research Political Psychology Journal of Politics Governance

Perspectives on Politics Comparative Political Studies

Policy Studies Journal Environmental Politics British Journal of Political Science

African Affairs Review of International Political Economy

International Journal of Press-politics Journal of Common Market Studies Party Politics Journal of European Public Policy Regulation & Governance Public Opinion Quarterly Global Environmental Politics New Political Economy

Review of International Organizations International Studies Quarterly Political Behavior Journal of Conflict Resolution

Annals of the American Academy West European Politics

British Journal of Politics & International Relations Socio-economic Review

Quarterly Journal of Political Science Public Administration

European Journal of Political Economy European Union Politics Cooperation and Conflict

Review of Policy Research Philosophy & Public Affairs

Comparative Politics Political Studies Review

Electoral Studies Journal of Democracy European Political Science Review Publius-the Journal of Federalism Political Research Quarterly

Politics & Society Parliamentary Affairs Scandinavian Political Studies

Post-soviet Affairs

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American Journal of Political Science Editor's Annual Report for 2015 Page 2

science journals, behind the Political Analysis (2014 2-Yr IF = 4.655), the American Political Science Review (2014 2-Yr IF = 3.688), and the Journal of Peace Research (2014 2-Yr IF = 3.387).

The 2014 Five-Year Impact Factor for the AJPS is 4.506. This value represents an increase over the comparable 2013 figure of 4.324. Figure 2 plots the top fifty political science journals, ranked by their 2014 Five-Year Impact Factors. Here, the Five-Year Impact Factor puts the AJPS in third place among political science journals, behind the American Political Science Review (2014 5-Yr IF = 5.954) and Political Analysis (2014 5-Yr IF = 4.659). The figure also shows that there is a drop-off in the Five-Year Impact Factors after the AJPS ; the next largest score is 3.929 for the Annual Review of Political Science, and only two other journals have scores greater than 3.00 (the Journal of Peace Research at 3.549 and the Journal of Conflict Resolution at 3.099). Thus, the American Journal of Political Science is retaining its position as one of the most widely-cited journals in the entire discipline.

Figure 2: Top fifty political science journals, according to 2014 Five-Year Impact Factors

American Political Science Review Political Analysis

American Journal of Political Science Annual Review of Political Science Journal of Peace Research Journal of Conflict Resolution Global Environmental Politics Political Geography Political Behavior Policy Studies Journal Comparative Political Studies Public Opinion Quarterly British Journal of Political Science Journal of Politics Political Psychology Perspectives on Politics Political Communication Philosophy & Public Affairs Party Politics Politics & Society Governance Socio-economic Review

European Journal of Political Research International Studies Quarterly

International Journal of Press-Politics Journal of European Public Policy European Union Politics

Review of International Political Economy Environmental Politics Public Administration African Affairs

Quarterly Journal of Political Science Journal of Common Market Studies

European Journal of Political Economy Regulation & Governance New Political Economy

Review of International Organizations West European Politics Politics & Gender

Annals of the American Academy International Theory Electoral Studies

Political Research Quarterly Social Science Quarterly

International Political Sociology Journal of Political Philosophy

International Environmental Agreements Political Studies

Comparative Politics Journal of Public Policy

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Five Year Impact Factor

Additional grounds for optimism about the professional visibility of the AJPS are provided by current citation statistics from Google Scholar. The h5-index for the AJPS is 58; this means that 58 articles have been cited at least 58 times during the five-year period from 2010 through 2014. The h5-index value places the AJPS ninth among all social science journals and at second place within political science (see Figure 3). It is exceeded only by the American Political Science Review, which has a slightly higher h5-index value of 61. Once again, the graphical display shows that there is a sharp drop-off after the AJPS, with the Journal of Politics and the Journal of Common Market Studies showing h5-index values of 44 and 39, respectively. The general similarity in the patterns for the 5-Yr IF and the h5-index confirm that the American Journal of Political Science shows a

American Journal of Political Science Editor's Annual Report for 2015 Page 3

temporally reliable distinctiveness in the degree to which scholars look to its content as support for their work. More generally, all of these figures demonstrate that the AJPS is maintaining its stature as one of the premier outlets for high-quality research in the social sciences.

Figure 3: Top twenty political science journals, according to 2014 Google Scholar h-5 index values

American Political Science Review American Journal of Political Science

Journal of Politics Journal of Common Market Studies

Comparative Political Studies West European Politics

European Journal of Political Research Journal of European Public Policy British Journal of Political Science Political Analysis Journal of Democracy Perspectives on Politics Party Politics

Annual Reviews of Political Science Political Studies

Political Research Quarterly Governance

Electoral Studies World Politics

Political Behavior

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CONTENT USAGE

The American Journal of Political Science is disseminated very widely. According to the 2015 Report from the publisher, there are 4,482 institutional subscriptions throughout the world. Of these, 18% are from the United States and 36% are from Europe. There are 5,626 individual subscriptions. Of course, the vast majority of these are obtained through membership in the Midwest Political Science Association. Among individual subscribers, 90% are taking the electronic version of the AJPS only, with 10% obtaining the traditional, print version of the Journal.

Readers of the AJPS increasingly are accessing content by downloading articles from the internet and this provides a useful source of information about usage. The ten most frequently downloaded AJPS articles from 2015 are listed in Table 1. During 2015, a total of 31 articles were downloaded more than one thousand times each!

Further insights about the extent to which scholars rely on AJPS content is shown in Figure 4, which presents the h5-median scores for the journals that received the twenty highest h5-index scores from Google Scholar. The h5-median gives the median number of citations to the articles

American Journal of Political Science Editor's Annual Report for 2015 Page 4

Table 1: Ten most-frequently downloaded AJPS articles in 2014 (Number of downloads in parentheses).

1. Bu?the, Tim and Helen V. Milner. 2008. "The Politics of Foreign Direct Investment into Developing Countries: Increasing FDI through International Trade Agreements?" AJPS 52: 4. (4,040)

2. Brader, Ted; Nicholas A. Valentino; Elizabeth Suhay. 2008. "What Triggers Public Opposition to Immigration? Anxiety, Group Cues, and Immigration Threat." AJPS 52: 4. (2,626)

3. Bechtel, Michael M.; Dominik Hangartner; Lukas Schmid. 2015. "Does Compulsory Voting Increase Support for Leftist Policy?" Wiley Online Library, Early View. DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12224. (2,336)

4. Abadie, Alberto; Alexis Diamond; Jens Hainmueller. (2015) "Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method." AJPS 59: 2. (1,995)

5. Oliver, J. Eric and Thomas J. Wood. (2014) "Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion." AJPS 58: 4. (1,961)

6. Dowling, Conor M. and Amber Wichowsky. (2015) "Attacks without Consequence? Candidates, Parties, Groups, and the Changing Face of Negative Advertising." AJPS 59: 1. (1,803)

7. Kelley, Judith G. and Beth A. Simmons. (2015) "Politics by Number: Indicators as Social Pressure in International Relations AJPS 59: 1. (1,662)

8. Knutsen, Carl Henrik and H?avard Mokleiv Nyg?ard. (2015) Institutional Characteristics and Regime Survival: Why Are Semi-Democracies Less Durable Than Autocracies and Democracies?" AJPS 59: 3. (1,661)

9. Bechtel, Michael M.; Jens Hainmueller; Yotam Margalit. (2014) "Preferences for International Redistribution: The Divide over the Eurozone Bailouts." AJPS 58: 4. (1,529)

10. Mason, Lilliana. (2015) "`I Disrespectfully Agree': The Differential Effects of Partisan Sorting on Social and Issue Polarization." AJPS 59: 1. (1,519)

that are used to create the h5-index score. The AJPS has the second-highest h-5 median score, at 93. This falls slightly below the score for the American Political Science Review (at 104) and it is substantially above the next highest h-5 median score (73, for Political Analysis). Clearly, a very large number of scholars are citing work that appears in the American Journal of Political Science.

Along with aggregate figures about downloads and citations, there is now a great deal of information readily available about the usage and impact of specific articles. Since July 2014, the Wiley Online Library has been displaying Altmetric information for all AJPS articles. Michael Streeter, from Wiley, explains that ". . . Altmetric is a service that tracks and measures the impact of scholarly articles and datasets across traditional and social media, online reference managers, post-publication peer-review sites, and public policy documents." An Altmetric score is derived from three main factors: The volume of distinct mentions and citations; the types of media in which the article is mentioned; and the originator of each mention. Altmetric assigns a score to each article and that is displayed as part of the article's entry in the Wiley Online Library.

Larger Altmetric scores are better, but it is difficult to interpret specific values. Altmetric provides some guidance regarding interpretation. Each article's Altmetric score is linked to a web page that lists "Score in context" information. So, for example, "Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion" by Oliver and Wood (AJPS 58:4, pages 952-966) has an Altmetric score of 169 (as of March 21, 2016). The "Overview of attention for article" information says that this

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