Contemporary Economic Policy 2003-2004 Editor's Report

Abstract

In 2003, a total of 40 articles and 538 pages covered a broad spectrum of topics as shown in Table 1, with a breakdown by the Journal of Economic Literature topic area code. This year, 2004, we published 42 articles, compared to 38 articles in 2002. Transitions during 2003-2004 This has been a year of transitions for CEP. In August 2003, Burak Taspinar left his position as office manager and returned to Turkey to fulfill his service in the military. Phuoc-Hung Nguyen, our other student assistant, left for a position in a private firm. In October 2003, the CEP editorial office moved to the WEAI headquarters in Huntington Beach; note our new mail and e-mail addresses. Kaulene Gellerman now handles routine correspondence under supervision by Julie Barie. Wade E. Martin, formerly coeditor, is assuming the responsibilities of editor. Darwin C. Hall is resigning as editor to fulfill his new duties as director of the B.A. and B.S. programs in Environmental Science and Policy at CSU Long Beach; he will remain on the CEP editorial team as a coeditor. Although we hit a few bumps during these transitions, we learned from each and every one to become an effective team of staff at the CEP editorial office in Huntington Beach and editors at CSU Long Beach and CSU Fullerton Improvements in the Quality of the Journal Over the past 15 years we have embarked on a path to enhance the quality and reputation of the journal. Thanks to the contributions of the authors, referees, the editorial board, and the coeditors, we have made progress toward this objective. Beginning with the 1990 volume, the articles have passed an anonymous referee process. Table 2 shows that the acceptance rate has varied annually between 23% and 45%. Between 1990 and 2001, the acceptance rate averaged 32%. On the margin, our acceptance rate has fallen. Over the past 5 years (2000-2004), we received 818 manuscripts, or 163.6 per year. During those 5 years we published 203 articles (41-42/year), with an average acceptance rate equal to 24.8%. The caliber of submittals is rising for several reasons. Nonconference manuscripts and conference manuscripts submitted six months after the conference require submittal fees, so there is self-selection of the largest portion of submittals. The coeditors are expanding the pool of expert referees. Past referees have become conference session organizers and new WEAI members. The editorial board members are encouraging quality submittals. January 1994 marked the change in the title (formerly, Contemporary Policy Issues), the internationalization of the content, and the internationalization of the editorial board. Since the January 1997 issue, the print style now permits an increase in content by 30%. That year we published 44 articles and 500 pages or 11.36 pages per article, compared to last year when the average number of pages per article equaled 13.45, another 18% increase in size. During 2000, the editorial board expanded, including 25 members who also served on the editorial boards of the American Economic Review and the Journal of Economic Literature. Along with these changes, the reputation of the journal has grown. According to the most recent volume of the Social Science Citation Index Journal Citation Report (2002), Contemporary Economic Policy has risen among economics journals, based on the impact factor. The impact factor, as defined in the Social Science Citation Index Journal Citation Report, measures the number of citations in the previous two years divided by the number of articles published during the same time. This measure of quality rose from 0.051 for Contemporary Policy Issues in 1990 to 0.482 for Contemporary Economic Policy in 2002. The Annual Cycle of Activities The activities of the Contemporary Economic Policy editorial office follow the annual cycle of the Western Economic Association International. In the past, we considered for publication only those papers presented at the association's conferences. …