Knowing our authors, knowing our impact, knowing our ... - CiteSeerX

Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 2011, volume 29, pages 381 ^ 396

doi:10.1068/c2903s

Knowing our authors, knowing our impact, knowing our audience: the future of Environment and Planning C Andre¨s Rodr|¨ guez-Pose

Department of Geography and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, England, and IMDEA Ciencias Sociales, C/Isaac Newton, 2, 28760 Tres Cantos, Madrid, Spain; e-mail: a.rodr|¨ [email protected]

Andrew Jordan

Tyndall Centre, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, England; e-mail: [email protected]

Katie Nudd

Pion Ltd, 207 Brondesbury Park, London NW2 5JN, England; e-mail: [email protected] Received 27 January 2010; in revised form 15 March 2011

Abstract. Over nearly thirty years Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy (EPC) has been publishing agenda-defining papers on a number of topics related to government and policy in the broad sense. We examine what has been published, assess the impact it has made, and identify who the main audiences have been. The analysis reveals that EPC has made significant improvements in the diversity of the geographical origin of its submissions and publications, and in terms of impact, but that there is still room for improvement in both respects. We find that the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of EPC is one of its main strengths but possibly also one of its weaknesses. We conclude that it should remain a research-driven journal which seeks to advance both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary debates on a wide range of pressing contemporary policy issues arising from the governance of the economy, society, and the environment.

Introduction Journal editors tend to write overviews about their journals when they first take over (eg Martin, 1998) or when they bow out (eg Martin et al, 2005; Pike et al, 2008). Robert Bennett (2008), the chief editor of Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy (EPC) for the first twenty-five years of its life, did exactly that when he decidedödespite remaining as one of the editors of the journal öto pass on the baton of managing editor in 2008. It is often the case that editors want to flag a particular occasion or eventösuch as a special anniversary (Dear and Thrift, 1992; Duranton, 2010; Florax and Plane, 2004; Pike et al, 2007) or when doing particularly well or better than expected in terms of their academic impact (Puga and Wrigley, 2006; Van Dijk, 2010; Wrigley and Overman, 2010)öwith a reflection on where the journal has been and where it is going. Less customary is for editors to engage in reflection for no apparent reason. EPC is approaching its thirtieth birthday öit is still young, but well established and looking forward to the prime of its life. There have beenödespite some very promising additionsöno radical changes to the editorial team since 2008. And there is no major crisis. In fact, the journal is in a healthier state than it has ever been. In 2009 and 2010 it received more than 200 submissions, with a whopping 86% increase between 2007 and 2010, and the quality of papers has continued to rise. Despite significantly increasing the number of papers publishedöfrom forty-eight in 2007 to sixty-six in 2010 öour impact has kept on growing, surpassing the one citation per paper barrier in the twoyear impact factor published by the ISI Web of Science's Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) in 2009. At 1.23, the five-year impact factor is even higher.

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A Rodr|¨ guez-Pose, A Jordan, K Nudd

If there is no overhaul of the editorial team, no special anniversary or ephemerides, and no obvious crisis, what, then, is the point of doing an exercise of introspection about the journal? The reason is simple. When we took over from Robert Bennett as managing editors in 2008, despite already having been involved with the journal and in different guises for almost a decade, we felt not only that it was somewhat unknown among many potential audiences, but, more worryingly, that it really did not know itself well enough. In short, EPC appears to have suffered from the curse afflicting many multidisciplinary journals. Having tried to cover topics ranging from environmental policy to urban planning and local governance, which are at the core of the social sciences, the growing importance of disciplinary divisions within academiaö and, in spite of efforts by, for example, research councils in the UK and elsewhere to promote interdisciplinarity ö often meant that scholars working in related fields had only a hazy vision of what EPC stood for. Political scientists and management experts often thought it was run by and for geographers. Geographers frequently considered that it was more of a planning or interdisciplinary journal, and most certainly not geography. Economists had the impression that it was anything but economics. And sociologists viewed the journal as standing at the margins of their discipline. Yet geographers, political scientists, management experts, planners, economists, and sociologists interested in environmental politics, planning, government and governance, and public policy have provided the bulk of submissions and have found in the journal a forum to discuss topics and policies that criss-cross disciplines in the social sciences. There are two ways of addressing this situation. One option is to dictate top down which way to goöthat is, to let the editors and the editorial board decide what the journal is about and which areas and topics it should focus on. The other alternative is to let the authors and the audience of scholars decide for themselves, informed by the monitoring, over a period of time, of submitted papers, which papers are submitted and on which topics, and which papers and topics are more popular with what might be termed the EPC `community'. Despite some initial doubts (see Jordan and Rodr|¨ guezPose, 2008), the editorial team has become more and more reluctant to go down the former route. A journal belongs first and foremost to its authors and readers, and trying to impose top down the preferences of the editors and the editorial board would probably have been counterproductive in the short term and damaging for the reputation of the journal in the medium and long terms. Letting the authors and the readership speak was a more attractive and just option, and that is what we are now doing. In other words, in order to really get to know EPC, we wanted to let the EPC community speak for itself and to itself. This paper is an attempt to begin that conversation. Knowing our authors Who submits to EPC?

Over the last three years EPC has enjoyed a surge in submissions. We have grown from 122 submitted papers in 2007 to 146 in 2008, 208 in 2009, and 227 in 2010. This represents a rise in submissions of more than 70% in the space of two years and a sudden hike on historical trends. The geographical origin of papers has also experienced a significant change. Submissions had been traditionally dominated by UK-based authors, who for long periods during the 1990s represented around 50% of all submissions (Bennett, 2008, page 13). Authors from the UK now represent only a quarter of all submissions (table 1). Their place as leaders has been taken by continental European authors, who in 2009 contributed almost 40% of all submissions. It is unclear whether the rise in such submissions reflects either a stronger standing of the topics of interest for the journal in continental Europe or a more proactive attitude by the journal towards attracting

The future of Environment and Planning C

383

Table 1. Submissions by geographical origin (source: authors' elaboration).

Continental Europe UK USA Canada Australia/New Zealand China and Southeast Asia Other emerging world Other

2008 (%)

2009 (%)

2010 (%)

35.88 30.53 11.45 5.34 3.82 5.34 0.76 6.87

39.05 26.67 13.33 2.86 3.33 8.57 1.43 4.76

35.68 27.31 9.70 3.52 6.60 12.77 1.76 2.64

manuscripts from such places, especially by its continental European editors. Both factors, together with some imitation, may be doing the trick. Submissions from China and Southeast Asia are also growing vigorously. Whereas manuscripts from this part of the world barely featured in the 1990s, in 2010 they represented almost 13% of all submissions. And the number is likely only to grow. The appointment of Fulong Wu as an editor is a clear acknowledgment of the rising importance of Chinese and Southeast Asian scholars in the fields that interest readers of the EPC, and a sign of our willingness to engage more with a part of the world whose prominence in research is expected to rise. In contrast, our presence in the North American market has declined significantly in relative terms. Submissions from the US and Canada have hovered slightly above the 15% mark in recent years (table 1), when in the early 1990s manuscripts from the US alone represented about 40% of all submissions (more than 50% in 1993) (Bennett, 2008). This does not imply that the absolute number of manuscripts from the US and Canada has fallenöthere were thirty-four manuscripts from those two countries in 2009 alone öbut that growth has taken place elsewhere in the world, and mainly in Europe and Asia. Other parts of the world where our presence is limited are Africa and Latin America. Manuscripts submitted from these parts of the world barely amount to 1% of total submissions. While there has been significant change in the geographical composition of submissions, much less can be said in terms of the field or discipline of origin of the authors who submit papers. Geographers and planners still contribute around 40% of all submissions (table 2). This percentage has remainedödespite some ups and downsörelatively stable since the inception of EPC in 1983 (Bennett, 2008, page 4). The number of submissions by business and management scholars, who did not feature at all until 1995, has continued to rise steadily and is fast approaching levels of around 25%. During the 1980s and early 1990s the contribution of political scientists and public policy experts often exceeded 30% of all submissions (Bennett, 2008). However, since 2000 it has never exceeded 20% and in 2002, 2003, and 2008 it was below 10%. Table 2. Submissions by discipline of origin (source: authors' elaboration).

Geography/planning Business/management Economics Sociology/law Political science/public policy Other

2008 (%)

2009 (%)

2010 (%)

36.64 20.61 16.03 4.58 8.40 13.74

40.00 23.81 15.24 3.81 11.43 5.71

37.00 18.06 14.10 2.20 13.66 14.98

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Submissions by sociologists and lawyers have remained at very low levels, as has been the case since the foundation of EPC. Overall, it can be said that over the years EPC has become a more European journal with a strong anchor in geography and planning, and solid groups of interest in business and management, economics, and political science and public policy. In some geographical areasösuch as North America, Oceania, Africa, and Latin Americaö interest in EPC has either waned in relative terms or remained low. EPC has also failed to source a firm hold in fields such as sociology and law. The rise of Asia, in general, and China, in particular, and the interest that scholars from this part of the world have shown in EPC means that the Euro-centred composition of submissions is likely to wane in the future, at least in relative terms. However, whether these changes eventually make EPC more global, or simply more two-headed, remains to be seen. Who publishes in EPC?

Submission is of course only the first stage in the long publication process. As in many other refereed journals, only a fraction of all papers submitted to EPC make it through to publication. The year 2007 was particularly harsh for submissions, with only 12.3% of all papers submitted making it to publication. In 2008 and 2009 the figures rose to 23.1% and 26.4%, respectively. Still, in recent years only one in four papers submitted to EPC has survived the thorough refereeing process. This is well below the 50% historical acceptance rate which dominated during the first two decades of EPC's life (Bennett, 2008). Although an acceptance rate of around 25% of all papers submitted may seem harsh at first sight, it is roughly in line with that of many journals in the social sciences (Iowa State University, 2005). The high rejection rate is the result of a number of different factors, but mainly reflects the increasing competition among social science scholars. Demand to publish in EPC has rapidly outstripped the growth in supply, represented by the one-fifth increase in the pages published in 2008. A rapidly rising number of submissions competing for a limited amount of pages automatically leads to tougher criteria in order to get published and to a higher rejection rate. Which manuscripts are published?

A huge variety of authors publish in EPC. Some 920 different authors have signed the 520 papers published between January 2001 and October 2010; 109 authors have published more than one paper in this ten-year period, with David Smallbone alone publishing eight papers in total. His coauthor Monder Ram has published six papers, and five others have published four full papers (Richard Bird, Del Roy Fletcher, Mark Hart, Arthur Mol, and Richard Walker). Only Smallbone and Ram have signed more than 1% of the output of EPC during that time. The fact that 109 authors have repeated over a ten-year period is an indication of the faith shown in EPC by many of our authors, but alsoöwith 11.85% of repeat authors since 2001öa sign of the broader scholarly community covered by EPC in comparison with cognate journals.(1) The geographical composition of the authors of the papers published is much less diverse. Almost 60% of all papers published in the last decade had been signed by an author based in a UK institution. England alone represented more than 40% of all papers, with 18% of the total stemming from the rest of the UK.(2) The domination of the UK in the journal becomes evident when one considers that US-based authors (1) The percentage of repeat authorship for other Environment and Planning journals during the same period are considerably higherö14.81 for Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (EPD), 16.21 for Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design (EPB), and 18.65 for Environment and Planning A (EPA). (2) Please note we are referring to authors, rather than papers, and many papers published in the journal are multiauthored. The overall figure exceeds 100%.


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were placed in a very distant second position, signing only 12.5% of the papers published during this decade. Then came Spain with almost 7% and the Netherlands and Canada with 6% each. Germany contributed 4%. Papers from China did not exceed 2% and there was a worrying absence of papers from the Indian subcontinent (zero papers), as well as from Africa (five papersöof which four were from South Africa), and Latin America (three papers). The domination of UK authors, in particular, and authors based in Englishspeaking countries could have been justified in the past by mentioning that the journal is UK based and that traditionally the majority of the editors and members of the editorial board were based in UK or North American universities. However, in a world where science is becoming much more international and where the standards of research activity across universities and countries the world over are constantly improving, this situation is becoming more and more difficult to justify. It also undermines the international claim of the journal (Gutie¨rrez and Lo¨pez-Nieva, 2001). Fortunately, the recent evolution of publication in the journal very much mirrors the recent inernationalisation in submission trends described above. As can be seen in figure 1, the UK remained the main source of papers for the journal between 2001 and 2007. During this period between 60% and 80% of all papers published had at least one author based in the UK. Academic developments in the UK had a strong influence in publication trends. The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) caused a hike in submissions by British-based authors in 2004 and 2005 which was later translated into a peak of UK-based papers. In 2006 more than 78% of all papers published in EPC involved UK-based authors. However, once the RAE was over, submissions and publications by British-based authors as a percentage of the total declined significantly. In 2008 a watershed was crossed when `British' papers went below 50% of the total. By 2010 that percentage had declined to below 30%. The gap left by British authors has been taken by continental European authors (figure 1). 90 80

UK

Published papers (%)

70 US and Canada

60 50

Continental Europe

40 China and rest of Asia

30 20

Oceania

10

10

09

20

20

08 20

07 20

06 20

05 20

04 20

03 20

02 20

20

01

0 Publication year Note: As the lines represent authors, rather than papers, the total can exceed 100%.

Figure 1. Publication in EPC between 2001 and 2010, by place of origin of authors (source: authors' elaboration using data from the ISI Web of Knowledge).

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Continental Europe had traditionally been the second largest constituency, but always at some distance from the UK. All that has changed over the last three years. Continental European authors now not only contribute the largest number of submissions, but since 2010 have signed more than 50% of all papers published during the year. In addition to the traditional presence of Dutch and German authors, most of the growth has come from Spanish, Scandinavian, and Italian authors. Spanish authors were involved in 12% of the papers published between 2008 and 2010, while Scandinavian authorsöwith a very strong incidence of Norwegian scholars örepresented around 8%. France, by contrast, has had a very limited presence in EPC. There was not a single paper published by a French author between 2001 and 2006. However, the tide is starting to turn, and the five French papers in this decade have all been published since 2007. With ups and downs, the presence of American scholars has remained relatively stable at levels of around 20%. There are indications that their share has been growing since 2006. But, in contrast, and following a similar trend to that witnessed by other journals in the field (Rodr|¨ guez-Pose, 2006), there has been a significant decline of contributions from Oceania (figure 1), coinciding with the departure of Clive Spash, our Australian-based environmental editor. Finally, authors from China and other Asian countries are gradually gaining greater presence, albeit starting from a low base. Knowing our impact What has been the impact of EPC? There are many potential ways of assessing the impact of a scholarly journal: subscriptions, readership, presence of its research in the media, or citations, among others. In academic circles, citation counts are increasingly becoming the main way of measuring impact. Whether papers published in a particular academic outlet are cited by their peers has become a sign of academic prestige and a fairly objective measure of impact. The presence of a number of databases that specialise in citation counts has made tracing citations easier. In order to measure our impact, one can rely on what are arguably the three main citation bases: the Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge's SSCI, Elsevier's Scopus, and Google Scholar. The Thomson ISI SSCI is generally regarded as the most prestigious of all citation bases. Despite its standing, it is certainly not without flaws. These include a limited coverage of journals in some disciplines vis-a©-vis other competitors (eg Scopus), a penchant for English-language journals to the detriment of journals published in other languages, and a tendency to favour journals over books, working papers, conference proceedings, and other research documents (Meho and Yang, 2007, page 2105). As EPC has been included in the SSCI since its inception and our interest is on measuring the impact of the journal, these criticisms may be of limited value for the purpose of this paper, as all papers published in EPC are included in the SSCI. However, it may affect how papers published in the journal have been cited in books and in other research documents, or how they had been received by journals in languages other than English. In order to address these potential problems we resort to two alternative databases: Elsevier's Scopus and Google Scholar. Elsevier's Scopus has the advantage over the SSCI of its larger coverage of journalsöincluding a considerably larger number of journals in languages other than Englishöbut is still less than perfect in its coverage of books and working papers and has a more limited time span, as it records papers and citations only since 1996. Google Scholar has the great advantage of assessing the impact of scholarly papers or articles well beyond what is published in other peerreviewed journals. Its coverage of conference proceedings is particularly impressive.


387

There is no other source citation measurement that can match Google Scholar for sheer breadth. The combination of the prestige of the SSCI, the depth of Scopus, and the breadth of coverage of Google Scholar should give us a more accurate picture of our overall impact. When looking at the citation counts for EPC, the first feature that stands out is the lack of what could be called, using Foster et al's (2007, page 310) terminology, `splashmaking' papers.(3) If we follow the same criteria applied by Foster et al and focus solely on the ISI Web of Knowledge data, in the first twenty-eight years of EPC's life there have been only two splash-making papers: Stoker and Mossberger (1994) and Harding (1991) (table 3). Using Google Scholar and Scopus, the panorama is only marginally better. Some fifteen papers can be considered as splash making in Google Scholar, and three papers in Scopus. This compares poorly with the other journals in the Environment and Planning stable. EPA has a total of fifty-seven splash-making papers in forty-two years of life. EPD, which was born in the same year as EPC, has forty-seven splash-making papers, and EPB has seventeen in thirty-eight years. If we go down one step and focus on `wave-making' papersöthose with forty or more ISI Web of Knowledge citesöthe panorama is not much better. Five or six additional papers can be added, according to the ISI Web of Knowledge or Scopus, respectively, to what is a seemingly small list of papers published in the journal that have left a deep impact (table 3). Table 3. Splash-making and wave-making papers in Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, according to cites in the ISI Web of Knowledge, Google Scholar, and Scopus. ISI Web of Knowledge

Google Scholar

Splash-making papers Stoker and Mossberger (1994) Harding (1991)

Splash-making papers Stoker and Mossberger (1994) O'Neill (2001) Jordan (1999) Wave-making papers Rodr|¨ guez-Pose and Gill (2003) O'Neill (2001) Harding (1991) Keating (1997) Keeble (1989) Rodr|¨ guez-Pose and Gill (2003) Bloomfield et al (2001) Keeble (1989) Asheim et al (2007) Malecki (1984) Peck (1999) Smith (2000) Edwards et al (2001) Goddard and Chatterton (1999) Beierle and Konisky (2001) Cowell and Martin (2003) Bryson and Daniels (1998) Bird and Tarasov (2004) Wollman (2000)

Scopus Splash-making papers Stoker and Mossberger (1994) O'Neill (2001) Keating (1997) Wave-making papers Rodr|¨ guez-Pose and Gill (2003) Bloomfield et al (2001) Harding (1991) Bryson and Daniels (1998) Cowell and Martin (2003) Jordan (1999) Stirling and Mayer (2001)

Note: Papers are ordered by level of impact, measured by number of citations.

On a more positive note, it seems that many of the more recent papers published in the journal are likely to become future wave-making and perhaps splash-making papers. Of all the papers published since 2001, seventeen have been cited on average three of more times per year in the ISI Web of Knowledge. Of those, fiveöRodr|¨ guezPose and Sandall (2008), 6.33 times, Rodr|¨ guez-Pose and Gill (2003), 6.25 times, O'Neill (2001), 5.80 times, Asheim et al (2007), 4.57 times, and Jordan (2008), 4.33 timesöhave had an average number of citations which exceeds four per year. (3) Papers

with sixty or more cites in the ISI Web of Knowledge.

388


There does not seem to be a single topic which dominates among the most popular papers. The most-cited papers deal with topics as diverse as urban regime theory (Stoker and Mossberger, 1994), urban growth coalitions (Harding, 1991), environmental values and deliberative democracy (O'Neill, 2001), new regionalism (Keating, 1997), or the economic consequences of decentralisation (Rodr|¨ guez-Pose and Gill, 2003). In recent years, however, environmental-policy-related papers seem to have gained ground, relative to traditional foci such as local governance. Six of the ten most-cited and ten of the twenty most-cited papers published since 2001 deal, according to the ISI Web of Knowledge, with environmental topics. The ratios in Scopus and in Google Scholar are very similar. But probably the single common denominator of the most highly cited papers in EPC is either that they tend to strike a fine balance between theory and empirical evidence, or that they adopt an openly comparative perspective (Bennett, forthcoming). Moreover, papers in theme issues have, on average, a higher citation impact than regular papers. A special mention should be made of volume 19, issue 4 (`Participation, representation, and deliberation in environmental policy') which was edited by our former editor Clive Spash. It received exactly 50% of all citations in 2001 (six issues) and more than any individual issue before or since. What are the reasons behind these patterns? Possibly the most important reason has been our interest in detailed empirical case studies. Around two thirds of all papers published in EPC over the last decade have contained in-depth case studies. Successive editors have believed that they are vital, from an inductive perspective, for raising new research questions and for testing existing ones which may have been overlooked by mainstream theory, and therefore that they are essential for the progress of scientific knowledge. From a deductive perspective they provide key evidence in order to test dominant theories. But the problem is that, on average, they do not generate citations. Giving greater priority to comparative analyses, theoretical papers, reviews, and debatesöwhich tend to appear more profusely in cognate journalsöwould certainly help to increase the impact of EPC. However, going squarely in that direction may also have a number of drawbacks. First, it would undermine what we believe has been one of the key services provided by EPC to the social scientific community: providing a forum for testing and developing new theories on the basis of hard empirical evidence. It would also further diminish the number of outlets which remain devoted to this type of research. And they would also reduce the opportunities available to younger scholars to publish; traditionally, they have been more likely to conduct this type of time-consuming and detailed analysis. Our lack of identification with any particular discipline may have also cost EPC dear in terms of citations. Environmental studies, with close to 40% of the total, provide the largest number of citations to the papers published in the last ten years according to the ISI Web of Knowledge. This is followed by geography, with slightly more than one quarter of all citations, and public administration, which represents almost 18% of all citationsömany of which would be self-citations. But urban studies (15%), economics (9%), political science (8%), environmental sciences (5.5%), and management (5.4%) also provide a sizeable proportion of citations. This means that, as a result of its multidisciplinary nature, EPC is used by readers from a wide variety of disciplines, but lacks a single core constituency to guarantee a strong impact in academic circles. By contrast, the other three Environment and Planning journals appear to have a better-defined identification with a particular discipline, which is maybe translated into a more stable and better-organised audience and, ultimately, into a greater academic impact. EPA, for example, is much more closely associated with geography (more than 50% of all citations to papers published in the last ten years come from journals in that discipline) and, to a lesser extent, with environmental studies


389

Citations per year

(30% of citations). Citations from other disciplines are relatively small in comparison and only urban studies (13%), economics (8%), and planning and development (8%) exceed the 5% threshold of citations. This means a total of five disciplines above the 5% threshold, in comparison with the eight disciplines represented in EPC. The association of EPD with geography is even greater, with 64% of all citations to papers published in the last ten years coming from geography journals. A further factor to consider is that it has normally taken longer for papers published in EPC to get cited, relative to those published in cognate journals. As figure 2 indicates, the peak impact of papers published in EPC in terms of citations in the ISI Web of Knowledge takes place between four and five years after publication. After that, citation trends reach a sort of plateau. As with good wines, there are vintage years in which papers age much better (eg 2001) and years when this is not the case (eg 2000 or 2002) (figure 2). The delay between publication and citation peak is longer than for papers published in the other Environment and Planning journals. As the ISI Web of Knowledge impact factor is calculated on the basis of the citations to any given paper in the two years following publication, this delay has a detrimental impact on EPC's impact factor, but not on the five-year impact factor, which is probably a better indicator of the true impact of the papers published. Figure 2 also indicates that in recent years the peak of citations has taken place earlier. The more recent years, identified by dotted lines, show that the peaks for the final years of the decade have moved to the left, denoting a tendency for the papers in EPC to start having an impact earlier. 1.8

2000

1.6

2001

1.4

2002

1.2

2003

1.0

2004

0.8

2005

0.6

2006

0.4

2007

0.2 0.0

2008 0

1

2

3 4 5 6 Years since publication

7

8

Figure 2. Delay between publication and citation for papers published in EPC between 2000 and 2008 (source: authors' elaboration using ISI Web of Knowledge citation data).

The multidisciplinary nature of EPC may be having an additional negative impact for citations, as EPC lacks what can be called a `friendly' or a series of `friendly' journalsö that is, cognate journals which provide a significant percentage of all citations. EPC relies on a wide array of journals for its citations. During the period between 2000 and 2010 only EPA provided more than 3% of all citations to EPC. Regional Studies was close to the 3% mark, while Urban Studies provided 2.9%. This is in stark contrast to EPD, for example, where the bulk of citations comes from a much smaller coterie of journals. During the last decade six journals provided more than 3% of the total citations received by papers published in EPD, including 7.2% coming from EPA, 7.1% from

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Progress in Human Geography, and 6% from Geoforum. Even the larger EPA has three journals (Progress in Human Geography, Geoforum, and Urban Studies) supplying more than 3% of the total citations. Only EPB relies less on friendly journals. Finally, our limited presence in the North American market also impacts on citations. EPC lacks the substantial number of cites by North American authors that seem to fuel the impact of other journals. Some 23% of all citations to EPC stem from papers published by authors based in North America (15% of the total in the US). This is low in relation to our sister journals, which have a much higher level of citations by North American authors: 40% of the total in EPD (33% from the US), 32% in EPA (24% from US), and 32% in EPD (23% from the US). Knowing our audience Getting to know one's audience is probably the trickiest part of all. Our publishing house, Pion, has information about subscriptions to EPC. We know how many institutions subscribe to EPCö442 institutional (mainly university library) subscriptions to the paper and online version of the journal, plus 30 online-only subscriptions, in 2010. However, beyond that we know relatively little about who actually reads EPC. Do our individual subscribers make the most of their subscription and read the majority of papers in every issue? Or do they shelve the issue as soon as they receive it? Is EPC flying off the shelves of university libraries? Or is it just gathering dust? As it is impossible for us to answer these questions directly, we have used our website as a proxy. Our papers are available online on the common Environment and Planning website from the very first issue, and Pion has monitored downloads of individual papers in recent years. In addition, we publish on our website a list of the thirty most-downloaded papers over a twelve-month cycle. This list is updated monthly. Monitoring the website has given us a wealth of new information about which papers and topics are more popular. The first fact which can be extracted from this monitoring is that the number of downloads has been rising steadily over the years. The journal website had 118 293 downloads in 2010. Figure 3 shows the downloaded papers in 2010 per year of publication since 1983. Papers published in 2008, with a total of 8908 downloads, were downloaded the most times. Papers published in 1996, by contrast, were the least popular. 10 Number of downloads (thousand)

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1980

1985

1990

1995 2000 Publication year

2005

Figure 3. Total downloads in 2010 by publication year.

2010

2015


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When moving to the analysis of individual papers, some interesting figures emerge (table 4). Bearing in mind that papers published earlier have had a greater opportunity of being downloaded, an interesting fact emerges from a quick look at table 4. It shows the popularity of environmental papers amongst our readers. In contrast to the tendency of citations to be spread amongst the different areas of interest, visitors to our website seem to prefer environmental policy papers above all others. Five of the ten most downloaded papers deal with environmental policy issues in one way or another. The two most downloaded papers in 2009 and 2010 were, again, on environmental policy [Jordan (2008) and Cowell and Owens (2006), respectively]. Downloads also reflect a preference for papers dealing with UK topics. Six of the top ten and 41% of the top 150 papers downloaded in 2010 concern the UK in some way. As we will see later, this is closely related to the geographical origin of those downloading papers. Table 4. Top-ten downloaded papers (full-text downloads) in 2010. Rank Downloads

Title

Author(s)

Year

1

905

Andrew Jordan

2008

2

707

Monder Ram, Trevor Jones

2008

3

576 473

Richard Cowell, Susan Owens Adrian Smith

2006

4 5

470

``The governance of sustainable development: taking stock and looking forwards'' `Èthnic-minority businesses in the UK: a review of research and policy developments'' ``Governing space: planning reform and the politics of sustainability'' ``Policy networks and advocacy coalitions: explaining policy change and stability in UK industrial pollution policy? '' ``Converging agendas? Energy and climate change policies in the UK''

2009

6

468

``Deliberation and inclusion: vehicles for increasing trust in UK public governance? ''

7

412

8

408

``The territorial governance of the shadow economy'' ``The limits of property-led regeneration''

9

386

Heather Lovell, Harriet Bulkeley, Susan Owens Dan Bloomfield, Kevin Collins, Charlotte Fry, Richard Munton Luigi Burroni, Colin Crouch Rob Imrie, Hugh Thomas Andrew Jordan

10

373

Harriet Bulkeley

2000

``The implementation of EU environmental policy: a policy problem without a political solution? '' ``Discourse coalitions and the Australian climate change policy network''

2000

2001

2008 1993 1999

Downloads by country of origin also display a much greater level of concentration than citations. More than 75% of all downloads of papers with more than one hundred downloads in total were from UK addresses (figure 4). The US and Canada, with 9% and 7%, respectively, were in very distant second and third positions. The concentration of downloads in the UK reflects neither the subject of the most downloaded papers, nor the country or countries they are dealing with, which is much more diverse. Figure 5 represents the subject countries of the papers downloaded more than a hundred times in 2010. The number of papers dealing with the UK, at around 37% of the total, is much less skewed than the origin of downloads. Other top-downloaded papers concern the US (13%), Europe, including Central and Eastern Europe (11.5%), and Canada (5%). Global and comparative papers represent

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100 90 80

Percentage

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

GB

US

CA

NZ

NL

AU

IE

Notes: GB Great Britain; US United States; CA Canada; NZ New Zealand; NL The Netherlands; AU Australia; IE Ireland.

Figure 4. First-ranking download countries for papers with at least a hundred downloads, 2008. 50 45

Number of papers

40 35 30 25 20 15 10

Thailand

India

Italy

Netherlands

Germany

Russia

LDCs (general)

Sweden

Norway

Australia

China

Africa

France

Eastern Europe

Note: LCD less developed country

Theoretical

Canada

Global

Europe

US

0

UK

5

Figure 5. Subjects of papers with at least one hundred downloads.

6.6% of downloads of the one hundred most downloaded papers, while theoretical papers close to 5% (figure 5). The greater diversity of downloads suggests that our readership is clearly interested in what is happening elsewhere in the world, making the journal much more ìnternational' in terms of the papers downloaded than in the geographical origin of who downloads papers. Where next? The future of EPC So, what have we learnt from this analysis? Looking at the authors, the impact, and the audience has certainly revealed many interesting facts, challenged some of our own internal assumptions, and pointed to some possible courses of action. First, it has become clear to us that, although EPC is becoming more international than it once was, it is still not a truly international journalöat least according to the conception put forward by Gutie¨rrez and Lo¨pez-Nieva (2001). EPC is definitely no


393

longer a British journal; it has become a European rather than a `global' journal. Our authors, impact, and audience are fundamentally European öalthough in the latter case still mostly British. The recent rise in submissions and publications from China and Southeast Asia and the efforts to attract further submissions and papers from that part of the world do not compensate for our limited presence in a number of continents and the Indian subcontinent. Our showing in the US, the largest national scientific market by quite some margin, also leaves a lot to be desired. We will have to take actionöfor example, by actively encouraging more high-quality submissions by authors located outside Europeöin order to break from this European mould and become a more truly `global' journal that, without compromising on quality, better reflects the sensitivities of a changing world. It has also become clear that there has been a huge improvement in our impact factor. However, despite recent and significant progress in our impact measurements and the publication of a number of papers that seem to be starting to make waves, there is still room for further improvement. Does this mean ditching our traditional specialisation in detailed case studies and becoming a slave to different impact factors? Not in the least, but it also has to be made clear that we ignore impact factors at our peril. Despite the controversy surrounding impact factors, there is little question that citationsöand especially five-year and longer impact measurementöare as good an indicator of the quality of a paper and a journal as can be found today. They also represent a marker for good and promising young authors who aim to showcase their research in journals which attract other quality authors and audiences and have a wide geographical coverage. EPC can certainly improve on this front. This is why we would like to encourage and promote more theoretical and comparative papers, which should appeal to wider audiences and mature more steadily. In terms of the topics covered, there is no indication that any of our core topics are less popular or make less of an impact. Citation analyses reveal that the impact of the journal is spread amongst a large number of topics which have been at the heart of EPC since its inception. Having said that, environmental policy is rapidly becoming one of the hallmarks of EPC. A growing community of scholars in this field, mainly in the UK but also beyond, identifies EPC as one of the key journals of note in their discipline. This represents a tribute to the work of our environmental editors in the past and in the present, and a development that we would like to further encourage. Theme issues have proven popular in terms of citations and downloads. Many have become key references in their respective fields and, like fine wines, a large number of the papers in them have aged particularly well. We would like to continue to encourage authors and ö sometimes, actively solicit ö theme issue proposals on cutting-edge topics in our main areas of interest. Finally, we can certainly do better in terms of our audience. Downloads from EPC's website still stem mainly from the UK. We seem to be attracting more and more authors from elsewhere in Europe and in the world, but our audience remains stubbornly stuck in the Anglo-Saxon world: mainly in the UK and, to a lesser extent, in North America. We will therefore redouble our efforts in reaching out to audiences elsewhere, as having an international audience and readership is as, if not more, important for a genuinely international journal as having international authors and citations. We suspect that many of the findings that our exercise has disclosed are generalisable to most multidisciplinary social science journals. As mentioned earlier, in a world where, despite efforts to promote multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, the trend towards specialisation is rising and where dialogues across disciplinary fences are becoming rarer, the life of a multidisciplinary journal is not easy. Those who publish

394


in core disciplinary journals tend to see their careers blossom, while publication in journals straddling disciplinesöwith very few exceptionsöis often disregarded by promotion committees. Does this means that we should ditch the multidisciplinary ambitions of EPC? We believe that such a step would be detrimental for the journal. Possibly one of the greatest strengths öas well as one of the greatest weaknessesöof EPC is its multidisciplinarity. However, we also need to be aware that this has consequences in a world where the measure of the influence of a journal is increasingly being reduced to a single indicator. However, looking at our authors, impact, and audience has reassured us that, although there is considerable room for improvement, there is demand for scholarly fora such as EPC, where real-life government, governance, and policy problems can be addressed from different angles, and where we can all enrich our own knowledge by learning from others addressing the same issues but from different approaches, a different toolkit, and perhaps a different cultural sensitivity. In fact, our aim goes beyond remaining simply a multidisciplinary journal, where different disciplines publish side-by-side with little interaction. We intend to become a truly interdisciplinary journal, actively encouraging cross-disciplinary dialogue, cross-fertilisation, and joint publication by scholars. Many of our papers already reflect this, but more can be still done in this respect. Therefore, in future we welcome papers in the fields of decentralisation, environmental policy and governance, and regional and urban policy and planning, which aim to overcome disciplinary barriers. The front page of the EPC website has been updated to reflect what we perceive to be the most important priorities during the next and exciting stage in the journal's continuing evolution. Acknowledgements. This paper has enormously benefited from the collective input of the editors of the journal ö namely, Robert Bennett, Gillian Bristow, Harriet Bulkeley, Henrik Selin, and Fulong Wuöto earlier drafts and from the work in gathering the submission data by our editorial manager, Lee Mager. References Asheim B, Coenen L, Vang J, 2007, ``Face-to-face, buzz, and knowledge bases: sociospatial implications for learning, innovation, and innovation policy'' Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 25 655 ^ 670 Beierle T C, Konisky D M, 2001, ``What are we gaining from stakeholder involvement? Observations from environmental planning in the Great Lakes'' Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 19 515 ^ 527 Bennett R, 2008, ``Reflecting on editorial publishing challenges: Government and Policy; the first 25 years'' Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 26 1 ^ 16 Bennett R, forthcoming, ``Government and policy'', in Environment and Planing Ed. S Elden (Sage, London) Bird R M, Tarasov A V, 2004, ``Closing the gap: fiscal imbalances and intergovernmental transfers in developed federations'' Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 22 77 ^ 102 Bloomfield D, Collins K, Fry C, Munton R, 2001, ``Deliberation and inclusion: vehicles for increasing trust in UK public governance? '' Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 19 501 ^ 513 Bryson J R, Daniels P W, 1998, ``Business Link, strong ties, and the walls of silence: small and medium-sized enterprises and external business-service expertise'' Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 16 265 ^ 280 Bulkeley H, 2000, ``Discourse coalitions and the Australian climate change policy network'' Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 18 727 ^ 748 Burroni L, Crouch C, 2008, ``The territorial governance of the shadow economy'' Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 26 455 ^ 470 Cowell R, Martin S, 2003, ``The joy of joining up: modes of integrating the local government modernisation agenda'' Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 21 159 ^ 179 Cowell R, Owens S, 2006, ``Governing space: planning reform and the politics of sustainability'' Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 24 403 ^ 421


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