Annual Report 1995

Social Forces Staff:
Editor: Richard L. Simpson
Book Review Editor: Peter S. Bearman
Managing and Advertising Editor: Paul Mihas
Assistant to the Editors: Margaret P. Gibbs

In calendar 1995 we published 61 articles, 2 comments, and 168 pages of book reviews and "take notes" items, for a total of 1,572 pages. Our 119 authors, not including book reviewers, were affiliated with 64 academic and nonacademic institutions. Our paid circulation remained above 4,000. New manuscript submissions decreased 3% to 261. Median manuscript processing time was about 59 days. The acceptance rate was 13%.

Papers and Authors

In calendar 1995 we published 61 articles and 2 comments totaling 1,404 pages. This number of pages was up 7% from the preceding year's 1,316 pages. Our authors numbered 119 ? 33 women and 86 men. Only 111 people were authors. Two wrote three articles each and four wrote two each. Of the articles and comments, 41% had single authors, 35% two authors, 18% three authors, and 6% four authors. The authors were affiliated with 58 U.S. universities, colleges, and institutes and 6 foreign universities. Some instances of multiple authors from an institution represent coauthorship of a single article.

Manuscript Processing

We received 261 manuscripts in 1995, not including resubmission of revisions. This number was down 3% from the 268 submitted in 1994, but still above the 258 we received in 1993.

We can get an approximate acceptance rate by observing that we accepted 33 papers during 1995 while receiving 261 new submissions. It is only approximate because some of the acceptances were of papers first submitted before 1995 and the eventual fates of many late 1995 submissions an earlier ones that got revise-and-resubmit decisions are still unknown. The approximate acceptance rate for 1995 was 13%.

Our backlog of articles accepted and awaiting publication has stayed about the same. As this is written in March 1996, the backlog beyond the June issue now in production will fill the September issue and some of the December issue. The average time elapsed between acceptance and publication of a paper for the three most recent issues was ten months, down one month from the 1994 interval. A safe backlog requires a median lag of eight or more months, given our five-month production and mailing schedule.

Book Reviews

The statistics for book reviews in 1995 are within the range for the previous four years. The number of books received for review was essentially unchanged. The number of books reviewed (most of them in previous years) was up by nearly 50%, though still not back to the level of 1991.

Personnel

In the summer of 1995 we were pleased to welcome six new editorial board members for three-year terms: York W. Bradshaw, Frances K. Goldscheider, George Ritzer, Beth A. Rubin, Lala Carr Steelman, Ross M. Stolzenberg.

Editorial Board, 1995-96*

*Other than those at UNC-Chapel Hill