Swan Song: From 7:1 to 11:4

Abstract

As we pass the baton to the incoming editors, it is useful to reflect on the past five years and to measure performance against goals set out in What Is Our Niche? (vol. 7, no. 1). We made clear our intention to build on the work of our predecessors, Craig Murphy and Roger A. Coate, under whose watch Global Governance was recognized by the American Publishers Association as the Best New in business, the social sciences, and the humanities. We wished to continue publishing quality scholarship about multilateralism under-represented in mainstream literature. Our efforts to increase diversity have been only partially successful. Moreover, we altered the shape and form of articles, but their content was largely determined by exogenous events and author preferences. In preparation for our five-year term, we examined past issues to determine the extent to which Global Governance had drawn on a variety of authors and perspectives. In consultation with members of the editorial board, we selected four refereed journals against which to make a snapshot comparison: International Organization, World Politics, Journal of Peace Research, and International Affairs. We identified variables for the cross-journal comparative study that were broken down into two main categories: author profiles (residence, region of origin, and gender and profession of contributors) and article profiles (the number of authors, acknowledgments, pages, endnotes and sources per article, and content). Eight issues from two recent years of each journal were used. The sample was clearly not statistically significant and the conclusions therefore indicative; but Global Governance fared reasonably well. However, there was plenty of room for improvement. Here, in the final pages of vol. 11, no. 4, we briefly revisit the same variables. We compare the eight issues of the two most recent complete volumes of Global Governance (2003-2004) with the eight issues from the period 1998-1999 considered in What Is Our Niche? Who? Author Profiles Our earlier study found a distinct imbalance with respect to residence and of authors, undesirable for a journal with global in its title. Two-thirds of the journal's authors resided in North America and another one-fifth in Western Europe. Only 10 percent resided in the Asia Pacific region and 2 percent in Central and South America and the Caribbean; and there were none residing in Africa, the Middle East, or Eastern Europe (see Tables 1 and 2). These statistics resemble closely the rounded percentages of members from the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) residing in these areas: North America (53); Western Europe (30); Asia Pacific (10); the Americas and the Caribbean (3); Africa (3); and Eastern Europe (1). In consideration of the flow from developing countries toward universities and institutions in the North, we also examined the national origin of authors; but the situation was not all that different. In the 2001 study, 87 percent were born in North America or Western Europe. Only 5 percent were from Africa, 6 percent from the Asia Pacific region, and 2 percent from Central and South America and the Caribbean. No authors had Middle Eastern or Eastern European origins. The data for 2003-2004 reveal minor changes. The percentage of authors residing in the North remains virtually unchanged, although there were slightly more in North America and fewer in Western Europe. The authors residing in the South saw a decrease from the Asia Pacific region, with small increases from authors residing in Africa and Eastern Europe. There were no contributions from authors residing in either the Middle East or Central and South America and the Caribbean. Regarding origins, there was modest improvement in the data from 2003 to 2004. The 16 percent drop in North American authors was produced by a noticeable increase of contributors whose origins were in the Asia Pacific region and also in Central and South America and the Caribbean, along with negligible increases from Western Europe, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe; and those from Africa remained virtually the same. …