Report of the Editor of the Journal of Finance for the Year 2013

I AM HAPPY TO report that 2013 was another good year for The Journal of Finance. We received 1,308 submissions, of which 1,176 were new manuscripts. The number of new submissions was up slightly from 2012. There were 132 resubmissions, slightly above the 129 in 2012. In 2013, the Journal published 66 articles, written by authors whose primary affiliations include 78 different institutions. Table I details the number and timing of submissions received throughout the year. The primary affiliations are summarized in Table II, which reports 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 last year were the University of Chicago, New York University, and the London Business School. The Journal’s visibility and impact remain extremely high (see Table III). The articles published in the Journal were cited 18,729 times in all journals during 2012, a total that ranks first among business and finance journals and third among all economics journals (behind the American Economic Review and Econometrica). Our 1-year impact factor (cites during 2012 to articles published in 2010 and 2011, divided by the total number of articles published in those 2 years) is 4.33 (up from 4.22 in 2011), which ranks first among business and finance journals and third among all economics journals. The 5-year impact factor is 6.19 and ranks third among all economics journals (behind the Journal of Economic Literature and the Quarterly Journal of Economics). Turnaround time remains good (see Table IV), with 62.0% of the editorial decisions during 2013 taking less than 70 days and 15.8% taking over 100 days. These are lower than last year’s 68.4% and 19.3%, respectively. Figure 1 compares turnaround over the 2009–2013 period. The median turnaround time increased in 2013 to 50 days from 47 days in 2012. There are several reasons that papers take more than 100 days to process. First, referees occasionally take much longer than we would like to respond. Most of these papers are in the 100–120 day range. In some cases, the lateness plays to the advantage of the author. For example, a sequential referee might be assigned after the first referee had recommended rejection. In addition, for many of these papers, the Associate Editor is preparing detailed comments— after the referee reports are received. We also provide detailed comments on a large percentage of the manuscripts we receive. For revise-and-resubmits, we