Awokuse, Titus O.

Duke, Joshua M.

English

Research Papers in Economics

Editors’Note
We are pleased to publish for the first time three issues in a volume of Agricultural and Resource
Economics Review. This special issue contains thirteen refereed papers from the 2009 joint conference of
the Research Committee on Commodity Promotion (NEC-63) and the Food and Agricultural Policy
Section (FAMPS) of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. Former ARER editor Harry
Kaiser guest-edited this issue with Shida Henneberry, Chanjin Chung, and Joe Balagtas. We will also be
publishing three issues in 2010.
The addition of a third issue of the journal is part of our larger effort to expand the appeal and coverage
of the journal while maintaining a high-quality threshold for accepted and published papers. Our central
message is that the expansion does not reflect lower quality standards, but rather indicates an expansion
in interest with our topic areas and an increasing quality of the journal articles. Indeed, the journal maintains
a rigorous refereeing process, and during our editorship the acceptance rate has been 36 percent (to date,
on decided manuscripts).
Historically, our journal published two issues annually. In recent years, there have been some discussions
about expanding the journal.As editors, we have engaged in various activities to help promote the visibility
and quality of the journal and to offer authors quicker feedback. For example, all manuscript submissions
and review activities are now conducted online via the Editorial Express web interface, which shortens the
time lag from submission to first decision—the average wait in 2009 was fifty-four days. In addition, PDF
files of published papers are now easily accessible online viaAgEcon Search, Google Scholar, and EBSCO
search databases.
The journal has grown in the total number of submitted papers. The last two years have seen a 29 percent
increase in submissions relative to our first year of editing. In addition, the submissions have been from
a diverse group of research interests (agribusiness marketing, agricultural production and risk, resource and
environmental economics, international trade and development, etc.).We are pleased to see that authorship
and readership increasingly reflects the national and international status of the journal. For example,
published papers in recent years and upcoming issues have authors and use referees from academic
institutions from all parts of North America, Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world. We look forward to
more growth in this area as the visibility of the journal grows.
In addition, since 2003 the journal and the NortheasternAgricultural and Resource EconomicsAssociation
(NAREA) have sought to grow and increase quality by sponsoring a June workshop and dedicating a
yearly special issue to refereed papers from this workshop.Workshop-based issues offer a medium for rapid
dissemination of research, with approximately nine months between the workshop presentations and
ultimate publication. This is possible because we expedite our normal refereeing process. As editors, we
are grateful for the hard work of the workshop organizing committees, reviewers, authors, funders, and
NAREA board members. We believe this model has brought a set of top-flight papers to the journal—
papers that might have gone elsewhere without the benefit of publishing a focused set of papers on a
workshop topic. We gratefully acknowledge the support of previous editors and the NAREA members
who have helped organize and seek funding for these workshops. We also thank the funding agencies.
Collectively, these initiatives have paid dividends.As the journal’s quality and reach increases, the number
of submissions rises. This in turn increases referees’expectations and allows editors the flexibility to be
more selective. In sum, the state of the journal is excellent and we are optimistic about the future.
Titus O.Awokuse, Editor
Joshua M. Duke, Editor

Editors' Note

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Research Papers in Economics