A Note from the Editor

Transition and thank yous: Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques is in its 42nd annual volume as the leading peer-reviewed public policy journal in Canada. We changed Editors beginning with the September 2015 issue. I have the honour to succeed John Vander-kamp, Tony Scott, Ken Norrie, Nancy Olewiler, Charles Beach, Ken McKenzie, Jim Davies, and Herb Emery. I thank particularly my immediate predecessor Herb: he did a wonderful job in advancing the journal during his term and has helped me immensely in the transition.

We also changed Associate Editors. The journal owes debts of thanks to Katherine Cuff (Economics, McMaster), Martial Foucault (Political Science, Sciences Po Paris), Steven Lehrer (School of Public Policy, Queen’s), and Kevin McQuillan (Sociology, Calgary). Our incoming Associate Editors Stephen Gordon (Economics, Laval), Peter Graefe (Political Science, McMaster), Tammy Schirle (Economics, Wilfrid Laurier), Lisa Strohschein (Sociology, Alberta), as well as Business Editor Bob Dimand (Economics, Brock) are doing terrific work. Olivier Lebert continues to be the mainstay of the journal as its manager and has been instrumental in the smooth transition we have had.

We cannot thank our referees enough for their generous service.

Finally, we also thank our colleagues at University of Toronto Press for their important contributions, including Carrie Macmillan (Marketing), Antonia Pop (Senior Manager, Journals), Lizzie Di Giacomo (Editorial) and Anne Marie Corrigan (former Vice-President, Journals, who we wish well in retirement). We also thank the publication unit of the School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University who works on our special issues. In particular we send our best wishes in retirement to Valerie Jarus, who many will know for her many years of editorial work on a variety of social science publications in Canada.

Quality: The journal continues to publish about a third of its submissions. As Table 1 shows, its ISI Web of Science Journal Citation Reports impact factor has now risen from 0.269 five years ago to 0.625, higher than that of the Canadian Journal of Economics (CJE), the Canadian Journal of Political Science, and the Canadian Review of Sociology, The 5 year impact factor has also increased to just below that of the CJE (Table 2).

Table 1.

Journal Citation Reports: Impact Factors

Table 2.

Journal Citation Reports: 5 Year Impact Factors

While these are flawed measures of journal quality, I nonetheless hope that they encourage those who have influence in university departments to try to ensure that publications in the journal are given sufficient weight in tenure, promotion, and other internal review processes.

Timeliness: Currency is particularly important for a public policy journal. Current average time to first decision is about 70 days. We are striving to reduce that to 60 days. Of the 12 articles in the September and December 2015 issues, 5 were published within 6 months of initial submission. We will continue to fast-track appropriate papers while recognizing that in some cases, peer review and revision will take somewhat longer.

Compliance with Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications: We are fully compliant through a repository to be run by University of Toronto Press which will provide open online access to the accepted versions of Tri-Agency-funded articles after one year, with no charge to authors. We also will offer permanent ungating of the version of record from day one for an author fee of $2000 and permanent ungating on the journal page at one year for $500. These prices may change without notice. Ideally we would like to offer no-charge permanent ungating from day one if we could figure out how to pay the bills.

Journal visibility: In each of the September and December 2015 issues, the lead articles were announced in press releases and temporarily ungated.

We continue to sponsor one or two CPP/Adp Lectures at the Canadian Economics Association meetings. Past lecturers include Evelyn Forget, Don Drummond, Jack Mintz, Wayne Simpson, Paul Boothe, Nancy Gallini, David Green, and Miles Corak, with Jean-Yves Duclos and Randall Morck scheduled for 2016. We are open to other sponsorship arrangements...