Accept, Reject, Revise and Resubmit
IPR faculty involvement in editing academic journals

Fall, 2008, Volume 30, Number 2

Over the years, IPR faculty have edited some of academia’s most prestigious journals, including Econometrica, Psychological Bulletin, Demography, American Sociological Review—to name a few. Currently, three journals recently named IPR faculty fellows as lead editors.

Political scientist James Druckman took over as co-editor of Public Opinion Quarterly this fall; education economist David Figlio helped launch and edits Education Finance and Policy, now in its third year; and methodologist and statistician Larry Hedges and social psychologist Thomas D. Cook worked on the launch of the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, which published its first issue in January 2008. Hedges currently serves as its co-editor.

Opinion Leader
Public Opinion Quarterly (POQ)
Published since 1937, POQ is the leading journal in the field of communication and ranks fourth in political science and second in interdisciplinary social sciences, according to the 2007 Institute for Scientific Information rankings. Overseen by the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the journal publishes research on opinion and communication theories, polls, and survey methodology and validity.

“It is nerve-racking—but rewarding—to be involved in shaping the intellectual direction of public opinion research by being involved in the production of one of the key journals,” Druckman said.

As the first political scientist to be at the top of the journal’s masthead, Druckman and his co-editor, sociologist Nancy Mathiowetz of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee work to ensure the coherency of each issue.

Another big draw for Druckman is the journal’s emphasis on “critically important” questions of methodology. “Due to technological innovations, political science—and the social sciences in general—are relying more on primary data collection and less on secondary sources,” Druckman said. “As a result, questions of sampling and survey design are becoming increasingly important, and this is why one of my hopes is to highlight these types of issues—especially for political scientists, who generally tend to be behind the curve on methodology.”

Journal Launch Pad
Apart from editing well-established journals, some IPR faculty have helped establish new journals. Yet with more than 7,000 academic journals by some counts, why bother? More often than not, it is to create a research outlet for a particular field. This is the case for two relatively recent journals in the field of education: Education Finance and Policy (EFP) and the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness (JREE).

Education Finance and Policy
EFP published its first issue in 2006 during a decade in which interest in the field of education has “exploded,” Figlio noted. There has been a pointed increase in the number of faculty publishing papers on education finance and policy, he said.

Until EFP came along, however, many education economists were left to publish in economic or public policy journals that were often not good fits for research on education finance. Figlio, who has co-edited the journal from the start, pointed to this as a major reason for his involvement in launching it. “We needed a dedicated forum to discuss issues related to the economics of education,” he said.
Through the journal, Figlio and his co-editor, David Monk of Penn State University, have sought to frame the intellectual discourse on education policy and practice. Past issues have dealt with higher education finance, the fiscal burden of school accountability, and charter school effectiveness, among other topics.

A joint venture between the American Education Finance Association and MIT Press, the quarterly EFP is quickly cementing itself as the “go-to journal” in the field, Figlio said, publishing papers by some of the nation’s most promising young academics in the field of education finance.

Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness
The flagship publication for the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, JREE publishes multidisciplinary articles on studies of interventions, evaluations, and methodology in education four times per year. As two of the leaders in the field, Hedges and Cook collaborated on the launch of the society and its journal.

“To do justice to publishing empirical research about large education studies, you need to devote a substantial amount of space to explanations of study designs and procedures,” said Hedges, who currently serves as co-editor with Barbara Foorman of Florida State University. JREE does this, whereas most other journals only include very small methodological descriptions—if any at all.

JREE seeks to foster strong connections between scientific evidence and education practice by publishing studies on the educational challenges that schools face, such as the effectiveness of interventions in reading, math, and science. To help achieve this goal, an editorial board that includes some of the pre-eminent names in education research and methodology oversees the journal. Members include Cook, David Francis of the University of Houston, Howard Bloom of MDRC, and Catherine Snow of Harvard.