Three decades of publishing research in population economics

J Popul Econ DOI 10.1007/s00148-016-0620-1 O R I G I N A L PA P E R Three decades of publishing research in population economics Alessio J. G. Brown 1 & Klaus F. Zimmermann 1,2 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 Abstract The Journal of Population Economics is celebrating its 30th birthday. When the first issue was published, population economics was non-existent as a field. Hence, the aim has been to provide a high-quality outlet to publishing excellent theoretical and applied research in all areas of population economics. The article summarizes key developments in the Journal’s editorial process, thematic orientation, international reach, and successes. Furthermore, we discuss the benefits of working papers in economics and investigate the impacts of the current working paper culture on journal citations. Finally, we try to identify the citation impacts in the Journal itself. The Journal of Population Economics has established itself as the leader in its field. Publishing in working papers and in the Journal seem to be complementary activities. Keywords Demographical economics . Population economics . Working papers . Kuznets prize . Citation impacts JEL classification A11 . A14 . B20 . J1 We are indebted to Milena Nikolova, former Managing Editor of the Journal of Population Economics, for her great support for this article. We also thank Daria Golokhvastova, Anna Schwippert, and Sarah Stahlmann for excellent research assistance. We are also very grateful to Anna Cardoso, Margard Ody, and Maria Muskalla for various valuable help and advice. This paper was written on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Journal of Population Economics by the Editor-in-Chief and the Managing Editor of the Journal * Klaus F. Zimmermann 1 UNU-MERIT, Maastricht, The Netherlands 2 Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA A.J.G. Brown, K.F. Zimmermann 1 Introduction Throughout the last three decades, the Journal of Population Economics, an international quarterly journal that publishes original theoretical and applied research in all areas of population economics, has been at the forefront of population economics research. 1 The issues stretched from micro-level topics as individual, household, or family behavior, including household formation, marriage, divorce, fertility choices, education, labor supply, migration, health, risky behavior, and aging to macro-level analyses as economic growth with exogenous or endogenous population evolution, population policy, savings and pensions, social security, housing, and health care. Moreover, the Journal has also featured research into economic approaches to human biology, the relationship between population dynamics and public choice, and the impact of population on the distribution of income and wealth. In addition, the Journal has attracted papers dealing with policy issues and development problems that are relevant to population questions. Today, issues related to population economics such as the demographic composition of the labor force, including aging populations, migration and refugees, declining fertility rates, and many more policy-relevant topics have been at the fore. With the aim of guiding readers, the Journal traditionally features a lead article with temporary open-access and group articles into thematic clusters. In its 30 years of publishing high-quality research in population economics, the Journal has experienced exciting developments in its editorial processes, its geographical and thematic perspectives, and its successes in impact and ranking. In the next section of this article, we present some selected aspects of these developments. The proliferation of working papers and the respective working paper culture in economics has implications for publishing peer-reviewed journal articles. Some journals in demography and other disciplines have been worried about the potential competition working papers may have for journals. In section 3, we, thus, discuss these implications, the benefits and potential costs of working papers. Specifically, we look into the implications for citations. We argue that the dissemination function, the resulting benefits, and resulting early cites clearly outweigh potential citation losses of journal articles. Finally, we try to identify the citation impacts of working papers in the Journal of Population Economics. Section 4 concludes. 2 Three decades of the Journal of Population Economics We focus on several aspects of the Journal’s development and position in the field. We first take a closer look at the evidence related to the editorial development of the Journal. 2.1 Some editorial developments Submissions to the Journal of Population Economics have continuously been increasing over time; in the last 20 years, nearly tenfold. This is substantially more than the 1 See Zimmermann (1997). Three decades of publishing research in population economics doubling of submissions to the top five economics journals between 1990 and 2012 as evidenced by Card and DellaVigna (2013),2 which can be rationalized by the Journal of Population Economics’ younger age and its position as a field journal. The Journal has been receiving over 400 articles per year on average over the last 5 years and is expected to receive over 450 articles in 2016. Figure 1 shows the development of the number of submissions over the last 20 years. The Journal of Population Economics published between 16 (in the early years) and 61 (in 2013) articles per year. Since 2014 the Editors have established a strict policy of publishing only 10 papers per issue, totaling to 40 papers per year. In total, until the end of 2015, the Journal has published 1007 articles. Figure 1 also shows the development of the number of published articles over the last 20 years. A rising number of papers were published, in particular between 2007 and 2013, with more than 50 articles per year after 2009. The continuously increasing submissions over time, recently up to well over 400 articles, and the fixed number of 40 published articles per year result in a decreasing acceptance rate well below 10 % in recent years. Again, the reduction in published articles and the decreasing acceptance rate is in line with the trends identified by Card and DellaVigna (2013) for the top five journals in economics.3 Figure 2 displays two acceptance rate measures for the last 20 years: acceptance rate 1 is calculated as the number of published articles in a given year as the share of the number of submissions in the given year, and acceptance rate 2 as the number of articles published in a given year divided by the number of previous year’s submissions. In light of these developments and the slowdown in first decision times in economics journals to 3–6 months4 in 2013, the Journal has implemented a strict desk rejection policy which aims to provide authors with an early signal for better targeting of their work and at the same time saving editorial and re (...truncated)