Call for the Editorship of Political Science Research and Methods

The European Political Science Association is announcing a call for the Editorship of the association’s journal Political Science Research and Methods (PSRM). The journal was established by the association in 2012 and over the past 10 years has established itself amongst the top journals in political science. PSRM is a general interest journal dedicated to publishing original scholarly work of the highest quality from all subfields of political science. The journal specifically focuses on research applying rigorous methods to empirical or theoretical problems and promotes a scientific approach to the study of politics. PSRM welcomes work at the intersection of political science and related disciplines such as economics and sociology.

The EPSA is committed to building on the success of its current and former editorial teams. The first team of editors were: Vera Troeger (EIC), Cameron Thies, Ken Benoit, Francesco Squintani (until 2014), Massimo Morelli, Paul Kellstedt, Daniel Stegmueller. The current team of editors are: Paul Kellstedt, EIC (Texas A&M), Sara Hobolt (LSE), Tim Betz (Technical University Munich), Nils W. Metternich (UCL), Stephane Wolton (LSE) and Daniel Stegmueller (Duke).

This is a call to appoint a new editorial team from June 2023.

About the European Political Science Association

The European Political Science Association was founded in 2010 to pursue the following objectives:

•     to represent and promote political science;
•     to foster development in postgraduate training of political scientists;
•     to promote undergraduate teaching of political scientists;
•     to facilitate networking by political scientists worldwide;
•     to host an annual general conference of political scientists.

The Journal

The goals of the journal reflect the overall intellectual orientation of the EPSA which is to:

a) Promote the scientific study of politics by publishing diverse work that includes the major fields of political science with a focus on research that is distinguished by being rigorous and analytical.

b) Further develop and maintain a global reputation for scholarly excellence and innovation.

c) Perform well in the journal performance metrics.

PSRM is committed to diversity. Our aim is to have an editorial team composed of scholars that reflect the diversity of the scholarly community. Similarly, the journal aims to ensure that the authors of the rigorous scientific work it publishes also reflect the diversity of our scholarly community.

Editorship

Selection. An editorship selection committee chaired by Ray Duch was appointed by the EPSA Council that consists of the following individuals:

•     Bill Clark (Texas A&M)
•     Ray Duch (Oxford)
•     Sona Golder (PSU)
•     Sara Hobolt (LSE)
•     Paul Kellstedt (Texas A&M)
•     Gerald Schneider (Konstanz)
•     Christina Schneider (UC San Diego)
•     Vera Troeger (Hamburg)

The deadline for the submission of proposals is 1 May 2022. The selection committee will select the editorship for PSRM prior to the 2022 Prague Annual Meeting, subject to the approval of the EPSA Executive Council. The editorship will be for the period June 2023-June 2028.

Selection Criteria

The selection process will consist of an open call for applications to house the journal and we will focus on the following primary criteria: The Editorial Team should possess the intellectual leadership to attract manuscript submissions, the administrative competence to manage them, and the judgment to maintain and further develop the reputation and rigor of the journal. In addition, the editor(s)-in-chief must have adequate finances to accomplish the above while rapidly growing the journal's subscriber base. We emphasize that geography does not matter here, nor does nationality. We are interested in the strongest editorial team – and these could come from non-European departments.

Editorship Proposal Guidelines

The EPSA is seeking an innovative editorship proposal designed to ensure the successful leadership of its journal. We invite applicants to address the following points:

1) Structure of the editorship

● Describe in detail the editorship model being proposed: The current model has worked very well and therefore we encourage applicants to establish a similar structure, or we would like a detailed justification as to why a different model would be more suitable.

The hierarchies are very flat but the EIC allocates manuscripts to associate editors who make autonomous decisions about reviewers, rejections and R&Rs. The EIC approves final decisions to maintain a balance and uphold the same analytical standards across different sub-fields.

● Replication Team: The editorial office includes a team of analysts who are responsible for implementing the replication policies of PSRM. We are very happy to discuss the established workflow model closely with interested editorial teams. This model has worked well in terms of communication, balance, and ensuring scientific standards without requiring a tremendous amount of labor.

● Describe the editorial board; your conception of its composition; and its role in the editorship; a current list of editorial board members can be provided and it is possible to extend membership for further terms.

2) Marketing Plan

● The journal has been rolled out successfully. However, to maintain and increase this success a marketing strategy is necessary. Constant advertisement in collaboration with the publisher is indispensable. Currently, 2 media editors (Ruth Dassonneville and Alexandra Jabbour at the Université de Montréal) support PSRM’s media strategy by publicizing articles through social media and blogs. A publicizing and media strategy needs to be proposed.

● Provide a detailed discussion of your plan for growing the readership of the journal.

3) Financial Package

Include a detailed discussion of the financial support your institution will provide for your proposed editorship. Include discussion of the following points:

● financial support for editors

● teaching relief for editors

● personnel costs – editorial assistants and research assistants

● support for replication analysts

● IT and computing

● Travel and entertainment

● Office expenses

4) Manuscript Review

● What peer review model are you planning to implement? The current model is a single-blind review process. We have very positive feedback and experiences with this model. Please justify in case you want to implement a different review model.

● What strategy do you propose for attracting high-quality manuscripts;

● How do you propose to ensure a sufficiently large and high-quality pool of reviewers.

5) Journal Policies

The current editorial team in collaboration with the editorial board and the EPSA council have created and implemented a host of policies such as submission guidelines, replication policies and standards, policies for reporting of empirical results etc. Please discuss where you see potential for changes to and amendment of current policies as well as need for additional policies.

6) Personal Statement

Provide a personal statement that describes why you are interested in being the editor of PSRM and why you believe you would be particularly successful at editing a journal of this kind. As part of this personal statement we would like you to provide us with an indication of your intellectual vision for the discipline of political science. Would you include as part of your personal statement the following items:

● Provide a list of the five articles from political science journals that you believe have had a major impact on the intellectual direction of the discipline;

● Identify programmes, articles or scholarly directions that you would like to explore in order to put this journal on the leading edge of scientific scholarship in political science.

Editorial Proposal Submission

Editorial proposals should be no longer than 10 pages. These should be sent via e-mail to Ray Duch at raymond.duch@nuffield.ox.ac.uk. The deadline for submissions is 1 May 2022.

Applicants should be available for Zoom meetings with the Committee and should plan to attend the EPSA 2022 meeting in Prague.