Editors' Report 2017

• Author: Chris Ryan,Ross Williams,Ian McDonald
• Date: 01 June 2018
• Published date: 01 June 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.12274

Editors’Report 2017

1. Editorial Changes

At the beginning of 2017, Efrem Castelnuovo

commenced as the Forum Editor, John

Haisken-DeNew as Data Survey Editor and

Jenny Lye as Editor of the For the Student

section. Chris Ryan relinquished his position as

a Co-editor at the end of the year. His

replacement is Nicholas H

erault.

After 34 years of exemplary service as

Assistant Editor, Nellie Lentini has left the

Melbourne Institute. During a period of great

change, Nellie shepherded through 135 issues

of the Review. The journal moved from being

produced and distributed from within the

Melbourne Institute to being produced and

distributed by an international publisher.

Readership moved from hard copy to online

and became more international. The new

Assistant Editor is Rosie Duffy.

2. Articles and Submissions

The Review’s established format of invited

articles, contributed articles, a policy forum, a

data survey and a section ‘For the Student’

were continued in 2017. Readership continues

to grow, especially in Asia. Annual full-text

downloads exceed 80,000 for the f‌irst time,

with 40 per cent from overseas.

A summary of the compositionof the articles

published in the Review over thepast 3 years is

given in Table 1. Table 2 provides information

on the number of articles received and their

disposition. Submissions to the Contributed

Articles section increased by 30 per cent to 76

in 2017. The increase was not matched by

acceptance rates as more submissions were

received from overseas authors and these were

often too narrow in focus for the Review.While

we welcome submissions from international

authors,it is our intention that the Review remain

a policy-oriented journal with particular rele-

vance to Australia and the Asia-Pacif‌icregion.

Submissions that are outside the aims of the

journal or clearly do not meet the required

standard are rejected by the editors without

going to referees. In this way authors get a

quick response to unsuitable articles and

referees are spared unnecessary work. Over

the period 2015–2017 the acceptance rate was

21 per cent, but the acceptance rate for articles

that went to referees was 50 per cent.

As bef‌its a policy-oriented journal, we aim to

keep the time between acceptance of articles

and f‌inal publication in an issue of the journal

to around 6 months. The current backlog of

accepted articles awaiting publication repre-

sents two issues.

3. Referees

At least two referees are used for submissions

of contributed articles that proceed to the

refereeing process. We also use referees for the

other sections of the journal. The integrity of

the system of peer review is crucially depen-

dent on the work of our referees. Editors of

Australian journals continue to press for

greater recognition of refereeing and editorial

work by universities and the Australian

Research Council in its Excellence in Research

for Australia exercise. In another, unrelated

initiative, the international website <www.

publons.com>has been established to give

recognition to the work of referees.

Table 1 Published Articles, 2015–2017

Type of article 2015 2016 2017

Invited Article 2 3 3

Contributed Article 15 14 13

Policy Forum 21 18 21

Data Survey 4 4 3

For the Student 4 4 4

Number of pages 452 524 500

The Australian Economic Review, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 301–2

°

C2018 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

Published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd