A Note from the Editors

Published date01 December 2018
AuthorFrank C. Thames,Sophia Jordán Wallace,Toby J. Rider,Seth C. McKee,David Lay Williams
DOI10.1177/1065912918799740
Date01 December 2018
Subject MatterEditorial
https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912918799740
Political Research Quarterly
2018, Vol. 71(4) 727 –728
© 2018 University of Utah
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1065912918799740
journals.sagepub.com/home/prq
Editorial
It is an honor and a privilege to serve as the newest edito-
rial team for the journal Political Research Quarterly
(PRQ). We thank the Western Political Science
Association (WPSA) Search Committee for recommend-
ing us and the WPSA Executive Council for approving
our editorial tenure.
In this brief note, we highlight the continuity and
changes associated with our editorship of PRQ.
Specifically, we begin with a brief summary of what
remains the same, what has changed, our editorial phi-
losophy, and a discussion of our editorial model.
We are very grateful to have inherited a journal whose
house was already in order. Not only was PRQ running on
all cylinders when the previous editors turned the reins
over to us, but they were very helpful in guiding us through
the editorial transition. We had a bevy of questions and
they were all answered. Furthermore, the technical transi-
tion was without too many hiccups, and this is a tribute to
the willingness of our predecessors as well as the good
folks at SAGE to make sure we had everything we needed
to keep the management of the journal running smoothly.
Jeanette, Clarissa, James, and Jake, thank you; we intend
to extend the same assistance to the team that proceeds us.
Regarding continuity, most of the electronic interface,
that is, PRQ’s Web presence, has remained the same. Now
that PRQ is managed at Texas Tech University, the contact
email address is pols.prq@ttu.edu. Please do not hesitate to
use this address to field any journal inquiries. As one of the
premier general journals in the Political Science discipline,
we have embraced the previous editors’ emphasis on pub-
lishing work with broad disciplinary appeal and/or more
specialized work that is notable for being of outstanding
quality. This stance is a veritable mission statement that
authors and reviewers will be familiar with as they navi-
gate the review process. We are also firm believers in the
“desk reject,” as there is no reason to string along an author
with a manuscript harboring a low probability of making it
to publication and also because competent and willing
reviewers are often hard to find. Also, like our predeces-
sors, we are fierce advocates and defenders of method-
ological pluralism. Good work comes in many different
forms. To this end , we are sympathetic to the Data Access
and Research Transparency (DA-RT) initiative and expect
authors of quantitative work to make their data publicly
available for replication purposes (barring propriety
restrictions), but we also agree with the previous editors
that there is no exact standard for implementing DA-RT,
given the catholic nature of our research. As evident on the
PRQ home page, we continue to recognize award-winning
articles, host article symposiums, and make use of pod-
casts to further the reach and impact of our authors. Finally,
we intend to maintain a vibrant reception at the WPSA
annual conference, the American Political Science
Association (APSA) annual meeting, and the PRQ edito-
rial board meeting at the APSA.
As for new policies, there are a handful that PRQ sup-
porters should be aware of. Foremost, we are adamant
about the importance of responsiveness. We cannot speak
for other editorial teams, but in our case, we are insistent
about having all author and reviewer inquiries answered
in a timely manner. To this end, it should be expected that
you will hear from us no later than two days, and usually
within twenty-four hours. All of us are of course scholars
in addition to editors, and thus we are acutely aware of
the frustration associated with waiting to hear back from
an editor about the status of a manuscript, whether it is
appropriate to review a certain manuscript, a request for
additional time to complete a revision/review, and so on.
As for the PRQ home page, we have chosen to have more
content available to readers, including archived annual
reports, archived lists of outstanding reviewers, and a
new section to the journal called TRENDS, which debuts
in this issue. We have added this component to the journal
to draw attention to work that appears particularly novel
in speaking to the dynamics of contemporary political
phenomena. Finally, upon accepting our editorship, we
made the decision to almost completely overhaul the edi-
torial advisory board, a fairly typical practice when a
journal changes editorial hands. We believe our editorial
board is an accurate reflection of the scholars who pub-
lish and review for PRQ, in terms of methodological, sub-
stantive, and demographic diversity.
During lunch with the previous managing editor, Jake
Mauslein, he averred to one of us that “journals are a life-
blood of our discipline.” We could not agree more.
Journals are the primary conduit for academicians/schol-
ars to persist in a perpetual conversation about how the
political world works. We take our editorship very seri-
ously because authors have important things to say and we
want to make sure that the work published in PRQ is a
leader among the myriad political conversations advanced
by social scientists of all stripes. To this end, we believe an
optimal means to improve the quality of published work is
through an editorial model with informational economies
799740PRQXXX10.1177/1065912918799740Political Research QuarterlyEditorial
editorial2018
A Note from the Editors

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT