Gregory Clark joins as EREH editor

The European Review of Economic History is pleased to announce that Greg Clark has joined the editors of EREH. He is handling papers since July 1. Cormac O'Grada has stepped down, after four years of distinguished service to the journal.

Turnaround statistics and impact factor for 2010

Our average time to first decision was 42 days (median 33) in 2010. Here is a breakdown of the distribution:

time (days)             %

<=60                           0.62

>60 and <=100      0.28

>100                            0.1

The turnaround time is even lower than last year, when the average was 66 days. 
SSCI also just released the impact factor for EREH in 2010 -- 0.594. Last year, our score was 0.828.

IDEAS/REPEC ranking of journals

The European Review is ranked first or second amongst economic history journals, according to IDEAS/REPEC:

IDEAS/RePEc Discounted Impact Factors for Journals
IDEAS/RePEc Recursive Discounted Impact Factors for Journals

Note that the rankings are experimental at this stage...

Submissions and processing time

Following the publication of EREH's citation impact score, the journal has seen a surge of submissions in July (also helped by the Fast Track Initiative). Our editorial management tool, Editorial Express, keeps us informed of how we are dealing with pending papers. The statistics on August 12, 2010 are:

Elapsed Time Statistics for Days Submissions have been Pending (since most recent submission): Mean= 29 Min=3 Max=94, Median=22, std= 22, n=31

That means we have 31 papers "in process". On average, they have been with us 29 days (mean)/22 days (median). The longest time any paper has been pending is 94 days (and since all the reports are in, we expect that we'll make a decision in the next few days).

One of the delaying factors that is not often talked about is the time that authors take to revise their papers. The statistics at EREH look as follows:

Elapsed Time Statistics for Days Submissions have been Pending (since most recent submission): Mean=349 Min=0 Max=1576, Median=150, std= 474, n=19

That implies that for the 19 papers under revision, the average time taken by authors is about 10 times greater than that taken by the editorial office. Even when looking at the medians, and thus reducing the impact of the paper that's out for 1,576 days (and probably not coming back), there is a large difference as shown by the difference in medians.

Fast Track submissions now closed

We had a large number of submissions to the Fast Track Meeting in Lisbon, December 3-4. The deadline (July 31) is now past, and papers are being processed. Submitters will hear from the editors in the next few weeks if their article is going to be included in Lisbon.

EREH scores high on citation impact

Today, Thompson revealed the scores for various journals. It's the first time that EREH was ranked. The Review has achieved an impact factor of 0.828, the second highest impact factor amongst its direct competitors, ranked 3rd overall in the History of Social Science category.

Economic History Review = 0.885
European Review of Economic History = 0.828
Journal of Economic History = 0.691
Explorations in Economic History = 0.576

We are particularly pleased that we are ranked #2 amongst the top four economic history journals. Our thanks go to our authors, who made this success possible!

Decision and turnaround statistics - EREH 2009

The editorial office at EREH handled a total of 96 new submissions, resubmissions, and pending papers in 2009. Of these, 18 were accepted for publication. The average time to first decision was 66 days, with a median of 47.5 days. The distribution overall looks as follows:

period	percentage	cumulative
less than 20 days	27%	27%
60	35%	62%
100	13%	75%
140	13%	88%
more than 140	10%	98%

Almost two-thirds of all papers were back with the author(s) within 60 days or so. We think these statistics are pretty good, but the editors are working hard to make the process faster still.