Report of the Editor of The Journal of Finance for the Year 2004

I AM PLEASED TO REPORT that 2004 was another successful year for The Journal of Finance. Submissions again set new records, and the Journal’s impact and visibility remained very high. During 2004, The Journal of Finance published 90 articles and received 1,255 submissions. There were 1,020 newly submitted manuscripts, marking the first time that number topped 1,000. Table I details the number and timing of submissions received throughout the year. Clearly the Journal remains highly selective, publishing less than 1 of every 10 new submissions received. Table II details the editorial decisions made, by round, during 2004. The authors of the 90 articles that appeared in 2004 have primary affiliations with 89 different institutions, which are listed in Table III along with the number of authors per institution (where an article with n authors is counted as 1/n articles for each author’s institution). The institutions with the most JF authors were New York University (3–5/6) and Duke University (3–2/3). The Journal’s published articles in recent years have again been highly visible. As reported by Thomson’s ISI Web of Knowledge, the articles published in the Journal during the previous 2 years were cited an average of 3.3 times per article during 2003. This “impact factor” ranked the Journal second among business and finance journals, behind the Journal of Accounting and Economics, and fourth among all economics journals (with only the Journal of Economic Literature and the Quarterly Journal of Economics also ranking higher). The transition from the previous editor has continued smoothly. This year Rick Green made 84 editorial decisions on papers that he had handled previously, and he is still handling some papers as we enter 2005. I began accepting a few papers around the end of 2003 and that pace gradually picked up during the year, in moving toward a “steady state.” The April 2005 issue will be the first to contain articles that I accepted, with four in that issue. About half of the June issue will contain articles that I accepted, and then that fraction should increase during the remainder of 2005. Our typical lag from acceptance to publication continues to run somewhere around a year or so. The Journal reflects the collaborative efforts of a great many of our colleagues. The associate editors have continued in their role begun last year, giving me preliminary assessments of papers’ potential suitability for the Journal and suggesting referees. I continue to make the editorial decisions once referee reports are submitted, but occasionally I also consult with associate editors at