Hayward first in unique editorial team to lead political science journal

Clarissa Rile Hayward
Hayward

Clarissa Rile Hayward of Washington University in St. Louis is part of a new, all-women, racially and ethnically diverse editorial team that will lead her discipline’s flagship journal, the American Political Science Review (APSR). The American Political Science Association’s announcement of the new team comes at a time when diverse voices are underrepresented in both the authorship and editorship of many academic journals.

Hayward, professor of political science in Arts & Sciences, will serve as one of two lead editors for the first year of the team’s four-year term, beginning in June 2020. When she rotates off as lead editor, Hayward will serve as co-editor for the remaining three years of the team’s tenure.

“I’m honored to be part of this exceptional team of scholars, and I’m looking forward to working with them over the coming years,” Hayward said. She noted that the team plans to improve the journal by increasing editorial transparency and expanding the “substantive and methodological diversity” of the articles it publishes.

“We believe that our discipline’s top journal should reflect the broad interests, findings, and voices of its members, and that it should include research that takes a wide range of approaches to answering the critically important questions about power and governance that are at the heart of the study of politics,” Hayward said.

The July 26 announcement follows recent research that found that less than one in every four articles published in the ASPR were authored or co-authored by women. By comparison, nearly one of every three members of the parent American Political Science Association are women. This lack of representativeness is not unique to political science. It is a problem in research publications in many academic fields, especially in the natural and social sciences.

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