Political Studies Association, Annual General Meeting (AGM) April 2020 Publications Report
Political Studies Association, Annual General Meeting (AGM) April 2020 Publications Report
The main publications event of the past year has been the signing of a new contract with SAGE which will run from 2021 for five years. The contract keeps PSA on a solid financial footing and provides us with some time to adapt to the new publishing landscape which is shifting fast (more on this later).
Our new contract delivers various member benefits, including: sponsorship of the annual PSA awards, academic prizes and annual international conference; a contribution to our Diverse Voices fund; and, online access to 29 other journals, the Adam Matthew Archives, books and reference works via SAGE knowledge and the CQ Press library. In addition, working closely with SAGE, the PSA has pledged to reduce our environmental impact with fewer printed journals and encouraging online readership. In the coming months, we will be asking members to do their bit by carefully considering if they really need to opt-in for print in the future. Like everything at PSA, negotiating the new contract was a true team effort. Angie, Michelle and I were assisted by Professor Andrew Massey who many of you will remember negotiated our present contract with SAGE. We extend our thanks to Andrew for his continued service and to the SAGE team as we look ahead to the next five years.
Our five publications – Political Studies, Politics, Political Studies Review (PSR), British Journal of Politics and International Relations (BJPIR) and Political Insight – continue to go from strength-to-strength. Our four journals’ impact factors are extremely strong, in particular we saw notable increases for Political Studies Review and BJPIR (which has broken over 2). Politics is now indexed both as a Politics and International Relations (IR) journal and, our flagship journal, Political Studies continues to be the place many political studies scholars aim to have their work accepted. Throughout 2019, all outlets have addressed issues at the cutting edge of politics. This is especially true for Political Insight which is resolutely at the cutting edge, offering accessible scholarship on themes as wide as the: 2019 General Election across the UK nations, the global rise of populism, Hong Kong’s future, the impact of AI and, inevitably, Brexit.
As colleagues will be aware, in May last year we lost a very dear colleague and friend to PSA – Professor John Peterson. An outstanding scholar of European Union(EU)-American relations and EU public policy, John served as editor-in-chief of BJPIR and his leadership, along with co-editor Dr Alan Convery, pushed the journal become a place where the best international scholars reflect and drive the major currents of debate in political science and international relations. We are delighted to announce that we will be renaming BJPIR’s annual Best Article Prize. It will now be known as the John Peterson Prize. We also want to publically thank Alan for continuing the work he and John forged together, and for assembling a fantastic new editorial team for the journal at the University of Edinburgh.
I want to thank all of our editors, their editorial teams, boards and advisors for their first class contributions to our discipline and scholarly community in the UK and far beyond. Taking on this work requires passion, wisdom, patience and the willingness to commit time that could be spent in other ways. We salute you all!
Colleagues will be aware that the last two years have seen the beginnings of what will be significant changes in academic publishing. The move to Open Access initiative by cOAlition S poses challenges to learned societies’ funding models, but undoubtedly offers opportunities for the democratization of access to knowledge. PSA is building a coordinated response that mitigates some of the biggest risks a quick move to OA may pose to parts of the discipline while embracing the emancipatory potential of the OA flip. To this end, we are working with colleagues in the wider social sciences – Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) and are part of a new coalition of learned society publishers – Society Publishers’ Coalition (SocPC). To see our response to the most recent consultation on transformative journals see this article.
