Eric Hilt is now entering his second year editing the non-Eurasian submissions. Dan Bogart is in his fourth year editing the Eurasian submissions to the Journal. John Parman is the book review editor for the Americas. Aldo Musacchio is the book review editor for the rest of the world. The Journal is fortunate in having Lily Welch continue as the Journal’s Editorial Assistant and Sally Sztrecska as its Production Editor.
The Journal has benefited greatly from the expert guidance and advice of our Editorial Board and more than 360 referees who contributed their time and expertise to maintaining and enhancing the Journal’s quality. Editorial Board members typically serve four-year terms. Those departing from the Board this year are Robert Margo, Johan Fourie, John Tang, Latika Chaudhary, and Jessica Vechbanyongratana. We have three new board members, Matthew Jaremski, Allison Shertzer, and Jacob Weisdorf. We also recognize and appreciate numerous scholars’ contributions to the Journal’s book reviews. The editorial office is grateful to all who have worked on behalf of the Journal over this past year.
The number of new submissions to the Journal in recent years is shown in Table 1. Over the years, from 2013–2018, the average number of submissions per year was approximately 160, but in the past three years, there was a noticeable jump in the number of submissions to 195, 209, and 206. It appears the higher number of submissions in the last three years is not an aberration but rather a new level for the inflow of submissions. The publication ratio displayed in Table 1 is the number of refereed papers and notes published in the current year divided by the number of new manuscripts submitted in the previous year. In 2020–2021, the publication ratio was 0.14 (30/209), which is lower than in the recent past. This reflects a higher number of submissions. The Journal published 31 articles in total in 2020–2021, including Hugh Rockoff’s presidential address.
Table 1 SUBMISSION AND PUBLICATION RATES
The “published” count includes refereed articles and notes. It does not include the presidential address, which is published in June, nor “reviews and reflections” articles. In 2017–2018, the Journal published one “reviews and reflections” article.
Table 2 reports the response-time statistics for the corresponding sample. To place the numbers into context, our goal is to have a decision back to the author within 90 days. This past year’s performance has been somewhat slower than previous years for new submissions, with a median response time of just under 68 days. Note that this pertains to submissions received from July 2020 to June 2021, some of which may not have received decisions at the time of this report’s writing. The median response time for all submissions (included revised manuscripts) is slightly higher. Unfortunately, a small number of papers have taken longer to review. We apologize to authors of manuscripts that experienced substantial delays. We continuously work to reduce the time for this small number of manuscripts, taking into consideration that we are, of course, concerned about the quality of the response, not only its speed.
Table 2 RESPONSE TIME STATISTICS
The distributions of submissions are documented in subsequent tables. We show the data for eras in Table 3 and for topics in Table 4. The automated part of the paper submission system stopped collecting information on regions for a period of time during 2015 and 2016. This means that we do not have consistent comparisons over all years in the table. What is currently available is shown in Table 5.
Table 3 DISTRIBUTION OF SUBMISSIONS BY ERA, MULTIPLE SELECTIONS PER SUBMISSION POSSIBLE
Table 4 DISTRIBUTION OF SUBMISSIONS BY TOPIC, MULTIPLE SELECTIONS PER SUBMISSION POSSIBLE
Note: This table corrects errors in previous years’ reports for 2014–2015 and 2015–2016 percent entries.
Table 5 DISTRIBUTION OF GEOGRAPHICAL AREA
*2015–2016 Region data are from March 18, 2016–June 30, 2016.
The Journal’s coverage remains broad. Table 3 shows that the distribution of submissions over eras has been fairly steady in recent years, with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries accounting for the bulk of submissions. Table 4 shows that submissions in political economy and growth continue to be particularly strong. Labor emerged as third most-common topic. Nonetheless, the top-three topic areas together account for less than 45 percent of all submissions, reflecting broadly dispersed interests within the field. Table 5 shows that submissions on Western Europe and the United States are most common. In the past year, there was a dip in the share of submissions on the Western Europe, Africa, and Latin America and a rise in the share of submissions on the United States.
Book reviews are an important component of the Journal, and we sincerely thank the many reviewers. We also remind our membership to have their press send a copy of any new books to the relevant book review editor. In recent years, the Journal has also sought occasional “reviews and reflections” synthetic articles, extended book reviews, and roundtable book reviews when appropriate. There were no “reviews and reflections” articles published in 2019–2021, but we are in discussions with various authors for writing more.
Readers will recall that at the 2013 meetings, the EHA board of trustees approved a policy to make publication conditional on archiving the data sufficient to replicate the results in the accepted articles. The authors of all new submissions from January 1, 2016 onward that were accepted for publication have been required to post data and replication files to maintain and advance the Journal’s efforts to ensure transparency and scholarly integrity. A branded page can be found with openICPSR, and depositors can submit files into openICPSR per the instructions available at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/openICPSR/JEH-deposit-instructions.pdf. The editorial office and ICPSR continue to work to enhance the interface.
Referees for 2020 were:
Ran Abramitzky
Olivier Accominotti
Mike Adams
Philipp Ager
Shameel Ahmad
Hakon Albers
Thilo Albers
Gani Aldashev
Guido Alfani
Eduard Josep Alvarez Palau
D. Mark Anderson
Haelim Anderson
Luz Marina Arias
Leticia Arroyo Abad
Vellore Arthi
Miguel Artola Blanco
Cihan Artunç
Jeremy Atack
Liang Bai
Ying Bai
Gerben Bakker
Jean-Pascal Bassino
Joerg Baten
Guillaume Bazot
Brian Beach
Anne Beck Knudsen
Sascha O.Becker
Stephane Becuwe
Cliff Bekar
Andriana Bellou
Erik Bengtsson
Thor Berger
Asaf Bernstein
Sheetal Bharat
Hoyt Bleakley
Howard Bodenhorn
Lars Boerner
Anne Booth
Fabio Braggion
John Broad
Stephen Broadberry
John Brown
Gillian Brunet
Liam Brunt
Konstantin Buechel
Carsten Burhop
Louis Cain
Cameron Campbell
Edmund Cannon
Davide Cantoni
Gabriele Cappelli
Ann Carlos
Mark A. Carlson
Mark Casson
Benjamin Chabot
Eric Chaney
Jonathan Chapman
Latika Chaudhary
Alex Chernoff
David Chilosi
Carlo Ciccarelli
Francesco Cinnirella
Karen Clay
Christopher Colvin
Carola Conces Binder
Alessandro Corsi
Metin Cosgel
Gary Cox
Neil Cummins
Tomas Cvrcek
Aditya Dasgupta
Guillaume Daudin
Romola Davenport
Joseph Day
Alan de Bromhead
Pim de Zwart
Tracy K. Dennison
Mark Dincecco
Christian Dippel
Paul Dower
Mauricio Drelichman
Martin Dribe
Brandon Dupont
Yannick Dupraz
Xavier Duran
Andrew Dustan
Alan Dye
Merkus Eberhardt
Kerstin Enflo
Katherine Eriksson
José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez
Rui Esteves
Giovanni Federico
James Feigenbaum
Alan Fernihough
Andy Ferrara
Daniel Fetter
Alexander Field
Price Fishback
Martin Fiszbein
Philip Fliers
Caroline Fohlin
James Foreman-Peck
Vicky Fouka
Johan Fourie
Ewout Frankema
Nicolas Fremeaux
Jeffrey Frieden
Dustin Frye
Gregori Galofré-Vilà
Leigh Gardner
Victor Gay
Oscar Gelderblom
Sun Go
Marc Goni
Rowena Gray
Amanda Gregg
Daniel Gross
Richard Grossman
Yanfeng Gu
Timothy Guinnane
Bishnupriya Gupta
Federico Gutierrez
Christopher Hanes
Walker Hanlon
Casper Hansen
C. Knick Harley
Ron Harris
Timothy Hatton
Joshua Hausman
Alfonso Herranz-Loncán
Eric Hilt
Tai-kuang Ho
Nicholas Holtkamp
Richard Hornbeck
Erik Hornung
Sara Horrell
Michael Huberman
Jane Humphries
Thilo Huning
Alejandra Irigoin
Douglas Irwin
David Jacks
Tarun Jain
Andrew Jalil
Matthew Jaremski
Taylor Jaworski
Saumitra Jha
Clemens Jobst
Noel Johnson
Maggie Jones
Tobias Jopp
Enrique Jorge Sotelo
Reka Juhasz
Karam Kang
Steven Karceski
Ian Keay
Wolfgang Keller
Morgan Kelly
Sari Kerr
Lionel Kesztenbaum
Duol Kim
Carl Kitchens
Alexander Klein
Christoph Koenig
Michael Kopsidis
Edward Kosack
Paul Kosmetatos
Mark Koyama
Michael Kuehlwein
James Kai-sing Kung
Sumner La Croix
Alvaro La Parra-Perez
Naomi Lamoreaux
Markus Lampe
Ryan Lampe
Marc Law
Giampaolo Lecce
Woong Lee
Sibylle Lehmann-Hasemeyer
Bryan Leonard
Joshua Lewis
Dan Li
Ling-Fan Li
Zhao Liuyan
Trevon Logan
Jason Long
Paul Lovejoy
Adrienne Lucas
Stephan Luck
Ivan Luzardo-Luna
Ronan Lyons
Chicheng Ma
Debin Ma
Ye Ma
Jakob Madsen
Mikołaj Malinowski
Olga Malkova
Shanthi Manian
Robert Margo
Andrei Markevich
Fabrizio Marodin
Elena Martínez-Ruiz
Gabriel Mathy
Noel Maurer
Eoin McGuirk
Christopher Meissner
Tatiana Mikhailova
Melinda Miller
Chris Minns
Anna Missiaia
Jørgen Modalsli
Carolyn Moehling
Jakob Molinder
Eric Monnet
Lyndon Moore
Stephen Morgan
Chiaki Moriguchi
Matthias Morys
Petra Moser
Tomas Murphy
Aldo Musacchio
Steven Nafziger
Suresh Naidu
Timur Natkhov
Natalya Naumenko
Arpita Nepal
Greg Niemesh
Stefan Nikolic
Dennis Novy
Cormac Ó Gráda
Nonso Obikili
Kota Ogasawara
Sheilagh Ogilvie
Martha L. Olney
Mats Olsson
Massimiliano Onorato
Kim Oosterlinck
Les Oxley
Christopher Paik
Nuno Palma
Craig Palsson
Laura Panza
John Parman
Sahar Parsa
Santiago Perez
Elisabeth Perlman
Alexander Persaud
Ulrich Pfister
Janneke Pieters
Santiago Piquero Zarauz
Florian Ploeckl
Gilles Postel-Vinay
Leandro Prados de la Escosura
Sarah Quincy
Stephen Quinn
William Quinn
Rodney Ramcharan
Indrajit Ray
Angela Redish
Claudia Rei
Alice Reid
Jaime Reis
Paul Rhode
Gary Richardson
Leonardo Ridolfi
Angelo Riva
William Roberds
Hugh Rockoff
Evan Rose
Jonathan Rose
Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
Joan Roses
K. Geert Rouwenhorst
Jared Rubin
Anne Ruderman
Valeria Rueda
Wouter Ryckbosch
David Ryden
Martin Saavedra
Soham Sahoo
Osamu Saito
Mohamed Saleh
Laura Salisbury
Veronica Santarosa
Carlos Santiago-Caballero
Yu Sasaki
Eric Schneider
Kevin Schurer
Robert Schwartz
Daniel Schwekendiek
Peter Scott
Andrew Seltzer
Edson Severnini
Paul Sharp
Viacheslav Sheremirov
Allison Shertzer
Carol Shiue
Masato Shizume
Richard Sicotte
Fan Simon
Carolyn Sissoko
Simon Smith
Tuan-Hwee Sng
Kenneth A. Snowden
Peter Solar
Albert Solé-Ollé
Yannay Spitzer
Steven Sprick Schuster
Mara Squicciarini
Judy Stephenson
Christian Stohr
Nathan Sussman
Anand Swamy
John Tang
Sebastian Tello-Trillo
Melissa Thomasson
Sara Torregrosa
Alex Trew
Francesca Trivellato
Chinmay Tumbe
John Turner
Nicky Tynan
Stefano Ugolini
Stefano Ungaro
Felipe Valencia Caicedo
Christiaan van Bochove
Karine van der Beek
Marlous van Waijenburg
Jan Luiten van Zanden
Michelangelo Vasta
Jessica Vechbanyongratana
Gertjan Verdickt
Chris Vickers
Simon Ville
Stephanos Vlachos
Tamas Vonyo
Angela Vossmeyer
Fabian Wahl
Daniel Waldenstrom
John Wallis
Patrick Wallis
Kirsten Wandschneider
Felix Ward
Ian Webster
Simone Wegge
Marc Weidenmier
Jacob Weisdorf
Colin Weiss
Leonardo Weller
Alex Whalley
Ulrich Woitek
Nikolaus Wolf
Gavin Wright
Yang Xie
Chenzi Xu
Melanie Xue
Se Yan
David Yang
Xuesheng You
Noam Yuchtman
Jing Zhang
Nicolas Ziebarth
Ariell Zimran
Beatrice Zucca
