Louise Curtis: JGE's Crucial Role in the Emerging Field of Government and Economics
Louise Curtis is the Senior Vice President of Life and Social Sciences Publishing at Elsevier. The following text is adapted from her virtual speech at the 3rd Annual Conference of Government and Economics and Launch Ceremony of the Journal of Government and Economics.
On behalf of Elsevier, I'm very happy to congratulate the editorial team of the Journal of Government and Economics on the successful launch. I understand it's the first specialized international journal in the field of government and economics. And I know from having worked in publishing for 22 years that it takes an incredible amount of work behind the scenes to get a new journal off the ground. I saw today that the first three articles have already been published, which is wonderful. And actually, from the very beginning, we are seeing diverse authorship from Europe, the US, and the Middle East. So on behalf of the Elsevier team, we look forward to working in partnership with what is a very prestigious editorial team to ensure the future of this journal. I’d also like to highlight our appreciation of the support from Tsinghua University in this venture.
If we think about the importance of the discipline of government and economics as a relatively new field of study, we can see from the volume of published research that there has been growth in the amount of research focused on the role of government in economic activity over the past 5 years. In that time, the research output of the field has grown as a whole by 30%. And I think what is also important to note, if you look at 2019, is that over a quarter of the output that was published in this research area was published under the gold open access model. I think that was an important driver towards the choice to also launch JGE under a gold open access model.
So why is it important to have a journal at all? I think we really see academic journals as a very important platform, and even a beacon, for academic research. Journals play a very important role in promoting the visibility of research and in helping guide its direction. They also support research findings and create opportunities for them to have new world applications and impact. We can demonstrate this by tracking media mentions and using Scopus data to show the connection of published research to, for example, sustainable development goals. In the same way, we can also link an article's contribution to international cooperation or cooperation between universities, industry, and government. I think academic journals such as this one also support exciting new fields of research like government and economics, and help them become established. They also really help new fields of research connect to adjacent fields, which can help foster collaboration and exchange of research outcomes. If we think, for example, of the recommendation service on ScienceDirect, we actually use very powerful algorithms to match articles of interest based on what we understand the user's focus to be from their research activity. This is just one example of the ways in which we can make sure that the research published in JGE will be made visible to a very broad audience.
I think journals also have an important function to record research outcomes and insights on a permanent basis. So we, as publishers, do a lot of work behind the scenes—also in collaboration with the editorial teams—to ensure that there's only one single version of any given article out in the world. And when issues arise, like ethics issues or authorship issues, we have very robust processes to deal with these. The last point to mention, which is a very important one in terms of the role of a journal, especially in a new field, is that it provides a very important platform to give authors recognition for their work.
What about Elsevier’s role in the development of this new journal? Well, especially in recent years, we have gained a lot of experience in launching new journals under the open access model. Elsevier, as a publisher, has 500+ gold open access journals today, and we're launching new journals at a rate of 100 titles per year. As part of that process, we've developed deep insights into how to support the growth of new journals, including in the very critical initial phase before a journal becomes in-depth. I also think something important to note, in terms of our capability, is the fact that we have great data and great analytics capability, which is supported by Scopus. So we're really well-placed to work with the team of JGE to provide data insights for this journal, and also for the market in general, to help drive the journal to success.
We also apply similar capabilities to our marketing approaches to make sure that we can reach a very broad audience for this particular title. We provide an industry-leading platform in ScienceDirect to ensure the content published in the journal is visible and also a variety of metrics to enable researchers to showcase the impact of their work that is published in this title. Behind the scenes, we also do a lot of work investing in our customer workflows in relation to open access publishing to make it really easy for authors to publish. For example, when an author comes to JGE, we will help to match that author to the funding agreement that might be in place to make it as seamless as possible for them to publish. And we do a lot of work on other tools to optimize all aspects of the process, such as the submission process and the speed of publication. I know, in the case of JGE, this journal is aiming at a 16 weeks submission-to-publication turn-around time, so we're really well-placed and certainly keen to support this ambition.
I think the other thing I will mention is that we have a great team of experienced publishers and marketers to complement the very prestigious editorial team of JGE and to provide that editorial team with all the support they need. In terms of the data and insights I’ve already spoken about, especially in the initial stages of the journal, that support will be very important to help find the right reviewers to review the manuscripts that are coming in.
In conclusion, I would just like to reiterate my congratulations to the team for launching the Journal of Government and Economics, which promises to be a great success. On behalf of the Elsevier team, we look forward to playing our part in ensuring that success in the future.
