Editor's Notes.(Statistical Data Included)

Responding to my editor's notes in the last issue, one reader asked, "Do you have any statistics (or approximate idea) about what proportion of the 2,000 scholars who have reviewed for the APSR are drawn from outside the United States or Canada?" Since I was making the point that APSR reviewers were a large and diverse group, this is a fair question, and we have now gathered the data to answer it.

So far during my term as editor, 2,043 different scholars have provided reviews.(1) One hundred and ninety-one of these (9.3%) are from 25 countries other than the United States.(2) As the inquiry seems to assume, many of our reviewers are from Canada, but their number (44 or 2.2%) is actually lower than that for the United Kingdom (50 or 2.4%).(3) An additional 8 (.4%) reviewers are from Australia and 4 (.2%) are from Ireland, for a total of 95.9% of reviewers from primarily English-speaking countries. The remaining 4.1% are from 21 other countries, including 11 from Germany, 10 each from Israel and Norway, 8 from the Netherlands, 7 from Switzerland, 5 each from France, Italy, and Japan, 4 from Sweden, and the rest scattered among Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China (including Hong Kong), Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, the Philippines, Poland, South Korea, Spain, and Taiwan. The reviewers from the United States have come from forty-five states and the District of Columbia.

Considering only the 191 reviewers from countries other than the United States, the United Kingdom provides 26.2%, Canada 23%, 4.2% are from Australia, and 2.1% from Ireland. Thus, of our non-U.S. reviewers, only 55.5% are from primarily English-speaking countries. Germany contributes 5.8% of non-U.S. reviewers; Israel and Norway, 5.2% each; the Netherlands, 4.2%; Switzerland, 3.7%; France, Italy, and Japan, 2.6% each; Sweden, 2.1%. The rest are from the other nations mentioned above, including a combined total of 4 (2.1%) from China and Taiwan.

Compared to reviewers, a somewhat larger proportion of scholars who have submitted manuscripts to the APSR over the past five and a half years are from countries other than the United States. Sixteen percent (245) of the 1,535 submitting authors are from 39 other countries, most prominently, 38 (2.5%) from the United Kingdom,(4) 34 (2.2%) from Canada, 27 (1.8%) from Israel, 19 (1.2%) from Germany, and 16 (1%) from the Netherlands.(5) The remaining authors are from all the other countries mentioned above for reviewers (except the Philippines) plus Botswana, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Greece, India, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey, and Venezuela. The minor disproportion between reviewers and authors from other countries is inevitable: Despite the knowledge and resources available to the editor, editorial board, and APSR interns, including bibliographic databases and information available on the Internet, we cannot know about the qualifications of as many scholars in other countries as read and aspire to publish in the Review. When new people submit manuscripts, however, or volunteer to review, they are added to our database and considered as potential reviewers of future manuscripts.

Considering only the 245 authors from other countries, 15.5% are from the UK, 13.9% from Canada, 11.0% from Israel, 7.8% from Germany, 6.5% from the Netherlands, 4.9% from Australia, 4.1% from Japan, 3.7% from Norway, 3.3% from Spain, 2.9% from Sweden, 2.4% from Taiwan, and 2.0% each from Denmark and France, with the balance distributed over the other countries mentioned above. In the United States, we have received manuscripts from all fifty states and the District of Columbia.

Slightly different figures are produced when considering submissions (rather than authors), since American authors tend to submit more papers than others do, or reviews (rather than reviewers), since we receive more reviews from Americans. But one would not draw very different conclusions looking at those data. While 84% of all authors are from the United States, 85.4% of the 2,117 new manuscripts received over the past five and a half years were from here, and while 90.7% of all reviewers are in the United States, 93.9% of the 7,024 reviews originated here.(6)

Scholars in most countries contribute reviews in similar proportion as authors from each of those countries submit manuscripts, reflecting the complementary nature of the processes. For example, scholars in Canada comprise 2.2% of all submitting authors and 1.9% of all submissions; they are 2.2% of all reviewers and contribute 1.7% of all reviews. "On the other side of the pond," scholars from the UK are 2.5% of all submitting authors and contribute 2.2% of all submissions; they are 2.4% of all reviewers and contribute 1.3% of all reviews. We can, of course, expect fewer submissions and reviews to originate in countries whose native language is not English, but Israel, the Netherlands, and Norway present similar relative proportions: Scholars from Israel are 1.8% of all submitting authors and contribute 1.7% of all submissions; they are .5% of all reviewers and contribute .4% of all reviews. Scholars from the Netherlands are 1.0% of all submitting authors and contribute .9% of all ...