Report of the Editor of The Journal of Finance for the Year 2003

THIS IS MY FIRST REPORT, having begun as editor on June 1, and it is my pleasure to report that The Journal of Finance continues to thrive. Submissions set new records again last year, and the Journal’s impact and visibility remain very high. The previous editor, Rick Green, clearly turned the reins over to me with the Journal in great shape, and I will do my best to maintain the Journal’s superb quality and reputation. I am also very grateful for all of the help Rick has given me during the transition. During 2003, The Journal of Finance published 93 articles, selected from a large number of submitted manuscripts. The Journal continues to attract submissions at an increasing rate. Table I details the number of submissions during the year. Both total and new submissions received during 2003 exceeded the previous year’s record levels by about 12%. The number of total submissions for the first time averaged more than 100 per month, and in July the number of new submissions hit 100 for the first time. There were 970 new submissions received during the whole year. Thus, given the number of submissions relative to the number of papers published, the Journal is likely to remain highly selective, publishing less than one of every ten new submissions received. Table II details the editorial decisions made, by round, in 2003. At the same time, the Journal’s published articles continue to represent a large and diverse base of expertise across our profession, with 102 institutions listed among authors’ primary affiliations (up from 94 last year). Table III lists the affiliations of authors publishing in The Journal of Finance during 2003 as well as the number of authors per institution (where an article with n authors is counted as 1/n articles for each author’s institution). The leading institutions this year were New York University (5–7/12) and the University of Texas at Austin (3–5/12). The Journal’s ability to select from many high-quality submissions no doubt accounts for much of the visibility and impact of its published articles. According to the most recent figures compiled by the ISI Web of Knowledge, the articles published in the Journal during the previous two years were cited an average of 3.5 times per article during 2002. This “impact factor,” up nearly 18% from the previous year, continues to rank the Journal first among business and finance journals and behind only the Journal of Economic Literature and the Quarterly Journal of Economics among all economics journals. This was a year of transition for the Journal in a number of respects. The start of my term on June 1 coincided with the Journal’s move to an electronic system