Report of the Editor of the Journal of Finance for the Year 2015

• Date: 01 August 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jofi.12414
• Author: KENNETH J. SINGLETON
• Published date: 01 August 2016

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE •VOL. LXXI, NO. 4 •AUGUST 2016

Report of the Editor of the Journal of Finance

for the Year 2015

KENNETH J. SINGLETON, EDITOR

This is my last year as Executive Editor of The Journal of Finance. It has been

an honor to serve the profession in this important capacity, and to have the

privilege of collaborating in this endeavor with my Co-editors Bruno Biais and

Michael Roberts. This has truly been a team effort from which I have learned

an enormous amount. We receive the highest quality research in our field.

Clearly, you, the members of the Association, value the Journal highly, and

Bruno, Michael, and I are honored and feel privileged to be entrusted with this

responsibility.

Throughout the editorial process our Associate Editors have provided out-

standing advice and guidance. Additionally, last year the Journal relied on

more than 1,000 referees who, with few exceptions, made time in their busy

schedules to provide diligent and prompt feedback that plays a vital role in

the Journal’s success. (Appendix Alists the individuals who refereed for the

Journal of Finance during the year.)

One of the most important reasons that the Journal functions smoothly is

that we have an outstanding Assistant Editor, Wendy Washburn. She manages

many of the day-to-day aspects of the submission flow, and very ably super-

vises the copyediting and the pre-publication interface. Wendy has served the

Journal for over 13 years.

I am happy to report that 2015 was another good year for The Journal of

Finance. We received 1,230 submissions, of which 1,110 were new manuscripts

and 120 were resubmissions. In 2015, the Journal published 70 articles, writ-

ten by authors whose primary affiliations include 82 different institutions.

Table Idetails the number and timing of submissions received throughout the

year. The primary affiliations are summarized in Table II, which reports the

number of authors per institution (where an article with nauthors is counted

as 1/n articles for each author’s institution). The institutions with the most

Journal authors last year were Harvard University,Columbia University, Uni-

versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and University of Toronto.

The Journal’s visibility and impact remain extremely high (see Table III).

The articles published in the Journal were cited 23,535 times in all journals

during 2014, a total that ranks first among business and finance journals and

third among all economics journals (behind the American Economic Review

and Econometrica). Our one-year impact factor (cites during 2014 to articles

DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12414

1895

1896 The Journal of Finance R

Tabl e I

Submission and Resubmission Timing

2015 2014

Month Submissions Resub Total Month Month Submissions Resub

Jan. 103 12 115 Jan. 92 11 103

Feb. 78 6 84 Feb. 102 6 108

Mar. 98 6 104 Mar. 92 6 98

April 102 9 111 April 97 9 106

May 93 14 107 May 104 8 112

June 93 14 107 June 83 9 92

July 98 17 115 July 103 11 114

Aug. 98 9 107 Aug. 93 13 106

Sept. 95 9 104 Sept. 107 2 109

Oct. 84 7 91 Oct. 96 12 108

Nov. 85 6 91 Nov. 100 8 108

Dec. 79 10 89 Dec. 87 16 103

Total 1,110 120 1,230 Total 1,156 111 1,267

published in 2012 and 2013, divided by the total number of articles published

in those two years) is 5.424 (down from 6.033 in 2013), which ranks first among

business and finance journals and second among all economics journals. The

five-year impact factor is 7.546 and ranks third among all economics journals

(behind the Journal of Economic Literature and the Quarterly Journal of Eco-

nomics).

Turnaround times remain good (see Table IV), with 69% of the editorial

decisions during 2015 taking less than 70 days and 9% taking over 100 days.

They improved from 2014’s 65.6% and 12.5%, respectively. Figure 1compares

turnaround over the 2011–2015 period. The median turnaround time decreased

in 2015 to 43 days from 45 days in 2014.

There are several reasons that papers take more than 100 days to process.

First, referees occasionally take much longer than we would like to respond.

Most of these papers are in the 100- to 120-day range. In some cases, the late-

ness plays to the advantage of the author. For example, a sequential referee

might be assigned after the first referee had recommended rejection. In ad-

dition, for many of these papers, the Associate Editor is preparing detailed

comments after the referee reports are received, or we are preparing a detailed

decision letter. For revise-and-resubmits, we always provide detailed feedback

and set priorities for authors for the second round. The preparation of this extra

feedback adds to the turnaround time. Nevertheless, we have been successful

at shrinking the upper tail (>100 days) of turn-around times to achieve the

lowest level for the past five years.

Table Vprovides information on the editorial decisions. The backlog of un-

published accepted articles is less than a year, so there is a fairly short time

from acceptance to publication. The absolute number of revise- and -resubmits

declined in 2015 from 2014. The probability of an Editor asking for a revi-

sion on the initial submission decreased in 2015 to 5.4% from 9.6% in 2014.