Category Archives: Journals

Journals News from 2018

The University of Wisconsin Press Journals Division Reflects on the Past Year

This year, our journals underwent several personnel changes, which will continue into 2019. Daniel W. Bromley celebrated his retirement after forty-four years of editing Land Economics, and Daniel J. Phaneuf began his tenure as editor. Ecological Restoration recently welcomed new Assistant Editor Tabby Fenn. Look for an introduction to Fenn in the next issue of ER, Vol. 37.1. After seventeen years of serving as the editor of Monatshefte, Hans Adler will begin to transition into retirement, with Hannah Eldridge and Sonja Klocke joining him as co-editors in 2019 and taking over in 2020. The official announcement will be published in Monatshefte 110.4.

In other journals news, Ghana Studies celebrated its twentieth anniversary with a special issue featuring reflections on the journal. And in the spirit of looking back, we are working to digitize the Ghana Studies archive for inclusion on Project MUSE. Land Economics implemented submission fees as a supplementary source of revenue for the journal. Finally, the Journal of Human Resources announced that, starting in Fall 2019, it will publish two additional articles per issue. We’re excited to see what the coming year holds for our journals.

Here at the Press, in a move to expand our in-house editorial services, Chloe Lauer was promoted to Editorial and Advertising Manager. Chloe serves as a production editor for African Economic History and Ghana Studies, and she provides editorial support for several other publications—on top of coordinating advertising sales for all of our journals.

In April, the Press welcomed Claire Eder as Journals Marketing Specialist. Claire has been focused on author and community outreach for our journals, representing the Press at the Charleston Library Conference and bringing two journals (Land Economics and Contemporary Literature) into the world of social media. In coordination with our journals’ editorial teams, she created a resource for authors with advice for publicizing their articles.

In 2019, the Journals Division will work on several initiatives, such as sending out a Request for Bids for online hosting providers and reviewing our editorial standards. This review involves formalizing a statement of publication ethics and increasing transparency with regards to peer review procedures. John Ferguson, our Production Manager, is in the process of rethinking our metadata standards in order to make articles more discoverable. Additionally, we aim to work more closely with journal editorial offices in the coming year, increasing our reporting frequency from annually to quarterly for those journals published four times a year, as well as organizing an annual get-together where staff from our editorial offices in the Wisconsin area can meet to discuss issues in scholarly publishing. It is shaping up to be another busy year, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. We are grateful to our publication partners, who provide us with the drive to innovate and improve.

Which Renewable Energy Source Is Best for Citizens’ Well-Being?

For a long time, economists lacked an objective way to measure complicated outcomes like well-being, so this aspect of human life didn’t receive much attention in the economic literature. Heinz Welsch is part of a growing movement in research to use subjective data, such as survey responses, to understand human impacts. In a video for Latest Thinking, Welsch describes his study examining the relationship between type of energy source and citizen well-being, the results of which were published in Land Economics journal.

Source: Heinz Welsch on Electricity Supply and Citizen Well-Being | Latest Thinking

The study looked at German citizens’ proximity to solar, wind, and biomass plants. The authors relied on survey responses to find correlations between well-being and the presence of a particular type of power facility in the local area. Welsch and his coauthor Charlotte von Möllendorff found that while the positive financial and moral aspects of solar energy balanced out the negative, “eyesore” qualities of solar installations, resulting in no net impact for citizens, those living near biomass facilities experienced significant decrease in well-being due to the strong odors emitted by the plants. Interestingly, people who had to deal with wind turbines going up in their neighborhoods experienced negative well-being for a certain period following installation, but this changed over time into an overall positive effect.

In the Latest Thinking video, Welsch expresses the hope that his research will aid the many countries that are currently in the process of restructuring their energy supplies in response to climate change. With evidence that certain forms of renewable energy make better neighbors, governments would do well to consider citizen well-being when deciding how to power their futures.

To learn more, read the full article, “Measuring Renewable Energy Externalities: Evidence from Subjective Well-being Data,” in Land Economics.

Previous Journal Editors Reflect on Their Tenure at GHANA STUDIES

Ghana Studies Journal Publishes 20^th Anniversary Special Issue

With the most recent volume of Ghana Studies, the journal celebrates its twentieth anniversary, as well as the thirtieth anniversary of the Ghana Studies Association, of which it is the official publication. Along with the usual articles and book reviews, the current issue features an anniversary forum, where scholars reflect on the history of the field of Ghana Studies as well as the progress of the journal and the association.

One of the forum’s notable offerings is a conversation with previous Ghana Studies editors Akosua Adomako Ampofo and Stephan F. Miescher, in which they discuss their editorial challenges and successes, as well as their thoughts on the journal’s potential future directions. Below is an excerpt from this conversation, centering on the ways in which Adomako Ampofo and Miescher cultivated a focus on Gender Studies in the publication’s pages. The full interview can be found in Ghana Studies Volume 21.

GS Editors: You are both noted Gender Studies scholars, who also brought your respective backgrounds in history and sociology to your term as editors of GS. Has your mark on the journal been shaped by your (inter)disciplinary orientations? Or by other commitments?

Akosua: I like to see myself more as an interdisciplinary scholar rather than as a sociologist. This is why I am attracted more to the works of sociologists like W. E. B. DuBois and Patricia Hill Collins—both authors who speak to questions of gender and race, as well as their intersections, which is where much of my own work is situated—than, say, to the works of Marx and Weber, albeit the latter certainly have their value. There are two ways I tend to respond to an article: If it’s in my field, I am looking for something new and refreshing, or new insights to a question that has puzzled scholars. So to that extent I tend to be more critical, but also, when it comes to a younger scholar, I’m more excited about pushing it to publication. However, if the work comes from an area outside my own area of expertise, then I am looking to be thrilled, sometimes to have my socks knocked off so I have that aha! moment, which I want the whole world to feel. Then I can proudly shout that it came out in a journal I am affiliated with. And then, yes, definitely I think that having spent my entire academic career in a multi- and interdisciplinary institute, I am very sympathetic to interdisciplinary work. And of course gender scholarship is so interdisciplinary. After almost thirty years of teaching, I have found that students respond much more enthusiastically, and tend to engage more with the class, when we have a multidisciplinary set of texts. In the gender classes I coteach at IAS, we have always included literary texts and films, as well as work in history, political science, economics, and so forth. It’s my view that especially for African Studies, this multidisciplinary approach is important since the nuances of our global history and contemporary realities often get lost in the cross-sectional or the single-approach analysis.

Stephan: My own research interests certainly had an impact on the type of work we pursued and published. Questions about gender have been important to me for a long time. As GS editor, I was pleased that issue 14 featured several pieces on gender including Ernestina Dankyi’s article on transnational families, Peace Tetteh on child domestic labor, and Josephine Beoku-Betts on women academics in neoliberal Ghana. In the same issue, we published two articles on same-sex intimacies, a topic then still marginalized in African Studies and in Ghana. The piece by Serena Owusua Dankwa deals with same-sex love and female masculinity; the one by William Banks explores the subjectivities among saso people, a community of men who engage in same-sex erotic practices. The special issue on health and health care (issue 15–16) also includes works with a gender analysis, such as Fidelia Ohemeng’s article on the gender dimension of trust and caregiving for HIV patients and Jo Ellen Fair’s piece on love and newspapers advice columns. My tenure as GS editor corresponded with a period when my scholarly interests expanded to the history of development and technology. For over a decade, I have been researching the history of the Akosombo Dam for my forthcoming book, A Dam for Africa: The Volta River Project and Modernization in Postcolonial Ghana. This interest also led to the “Revisiting Modernization Conference,” for which I wrote with Dzodzi Tsikata a paper that compared discourses and practices of modernization in relation to the Akosombo and Bui Dams. Our paper appeared in GS 12–13.

Akosua: I certainly had my favorites among the papers on gender; however, I’m not telling. What I will say is, all the gender issues that were addressed in the volumes mentioned by Stephan, which we coedited, brought fresh and important issues to the table.

The Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) Turns 30

Partner society of Ecological Restoration journal celebrates major anniversary

This September, the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) looked back on 30 years of bringing together scientists, practitioners, policymakers dedicated to reviving ecosystems around the world. Ecological Restoration journal, published by the University of Wisconsin Press, is a partner journal of SER. The roots of this partnership go deep: William R. Jordan III, who started the journal (originally named Restoration & Management Notes) in 1981, went on to become one of SER’s founders, along with John Reiger, Anne Sands, and John Stanley.

Since the Society was originally incorporated on September 28, 1988, SER’s membership has grown to nearly 3,000, comprising 13 active chapters. The organization has an international reach, holding biennial world conferences and drawing members from over 75 countries. Last year, SER launched the world’s first certification program for ecological restoration. Additionally, SER brings the latest information to members and the public through its online Restoration Resource Center, a database of publications and restoration projects, and its own peer-reviewed journal, Restoration Ecology.

SER’s growth is evidence of how far the field of restoration has come in the past 30 years. As John Reiger, the first SER board president, reflects in the organization newsletter’s anniversary issue, “The mainstreaming of restoration on the international stage, and its recognized role as an important part of climate change and other commitments means that both the global and local reach and vision of SER is more important—and exciting—than ever. But that global engagement should be balanced with continuing to serve a diverse mix of individual members that includes practitioners, academics, and land managers.”

Current Ecological Restoration editor Steven N. Handel agrees that nurturing this diversity of roles is crucial for the success of the field: “The membership of SER is a mosaic of professionals, mirroring in its way the mosaic nature of so many of our habitats. Scientists, students, land managers, nursery operators, conservation organizations, and dedicated volunteers with environmental interests all turn to [SER and] Ecological Restoration. This is quite different from the membership of many science organizations, which is dominated by working scientists.” Handel says that Ecological Restoration has responded by ensuring that its contents are useful to a variety of different professionals, “emphasizing articles that are based on formal tests and that have generalizable findings, but making sure that the work has a practical side, so that practitioners can quickly use the results when working on the land.”

Handel sees design, particularly, as a key instrument in the toolkit of restorationists, especially given the unprecedented environmental challenges of the twenty-first century. He notes, “We have also invited the landscape architect crowd to visit our journal, hoping that designed natural landscapes, many installed on new sites, become a greater part of their efforts. The meshing of restoration and design work remains a critical part for the years ahead as SER members will be dealing with modified lands, changing with the climate, that will need design as well as management inputs.”

Clearly, it is more important than ever to cultivate innovation and conversation across the many disciplines working to restore ecosystems. In an era of intense professional specialization, where deep divides between academic scholarship and communities of practice are the norm, it is refreshing to witness the collaborative spirit that SER and Ecological Restoration have promoted for over three decades.

All SER memberships include a membership in the SER Chapter or Section of your choosing, discounts on Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner program fees, reduced pricing on world conferences, subscriptions to monthly newsletters, complimentary webinars, and discounts on publications including Ecological Restoration. Learn more about membership and join the community: ser.org/join.

Landscape Journal Welcomes New Editor

Landscape Journal volume 36.2 features the first introduction by new editor Brian Lee, Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Kentucky. Lee takes over for previous co-editors David Pitt (University of Minnesota) and Daniel Nadenicek (University of Georgia), and this most recent volume of Landscape Journal is the result of a collaboration between the two editorial teams, with Pitt and Nadenicek selecting the content and Lee moving the issue into production with UW Press staff.

While Landscape Journal’s scholarly focus will remain largely similar to the original aim and scope, Lee plans to introduce new sections to the publication, and wants to expand the number of book reviews as well as articles centered on teaching/learning scholarship. Lee has also updated the journal’s submission guidelines to take advantage of new publishing opportunities as well as efficiencies in the peer-review process. The guidelines can be found on the Landscape Journal website.

Dr. Brian Lee. Photo: Matt Barton.

Lee’s own scholarship focuses on service-learning, geospatial education, community watershed organizations, urban sprawl, and interior forest change. He is co-editor of the book Water in Kentucky: Natural History, Communities, and Conservation, published by the University Press of Kentucky (2017). He has received recognition for teaching excellence from the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture.

To conclude his editor’s introduction, Lee calls on landscape architects to reflect on the state of the profession, creating “words or images that capture the essence of what landscape architecture is, could be, or should be to move the field forward.” By encouraging such content, Landscape Journal will continue to serve as a forum for scholars and practitioners of landscape architecture to analyze the discipline and chart new directions.

Evaluating Teacher Performance

Journal of Human Resources cover image

Journal of Human Resources contributor Matthew A. Kraft believes that we do teachers and students a disservice when we assess teachers based mainly on students’ standardized test scores. His article “Teacher Effects on Complex Cognitive Skills and Social-Emotional Competencies,” which will be published in the Winter 2019 issue of JHR, examined teachers’ influence on students’ social-emotional abilities. These include such qualities as growth mindset, perseverance, and effort in class, w hich have been linked to employment and health outcomes in later life. Kraft also studied student performance on complex open-ended tasks in math and reading—problems more complicated than those required by multiple choice tests—to understand how teachers affect critical thinking skills. Kraft found that a teacher’s ability to impact students’ standardized test scores was not always a good indicator of that teacher’s effectiveness at fostering complex cognitive skills and social-emotional skills, suggesting that we need better methods of evaluating teacher performance.

Kraft, who is an Associate Professor of Education and Economics at Brown University, joined us for a conversation touching on his background as an educator, his ideas on effective teaching techniques, and other topics. To learn more, read about the article on the JHR blog.

How did your time as a public school teacher influence your drive to research topics in education and/or the direction of that research?

As a public school teacher in Oakland and Berkeley, California, I often felt that teaching social-emotional skills had to come before teaching academic content. I tried to help my ninth grade students, most of whom were identified as at risk of dropping out, to feel like they belonged in school, to control their behavioral impulses, and to see value in what they were learning. My students did not take standardized tests, but if they did I doubt their performance would have captured the multiple ways in which I attempted to help them develop as young adults.

Do you remember any particular teachers that helped you develop social-emotional skills as a student?

I don’t ever remember being explicitly taught social-emotional skills. Instead, I remember teachers like Ms. Thomas, my tenth and twelfth grade English teacher, who set extremely high expectations but provided constant support to help us meet these expectations. She helped me to develop my own self-efficacy and perseverance by the way she taught core academic content.

Do you have a sense of what techniques teachers could use to develop students’ complex cognitive skills? Social-emotional skills? Maybe give an example or two.

In my opinion, project-based learning holds great promise for developing complex cognitive skills. Examples such as the curriculum developed by EL Education (formerly Expeditionary Learning) illustrate how authentic and complex tasks require students to use a multitude of skills rather than practicing individual skills in abstract isolation on worksheets.

How to teach social-emotional skills is very much an open question. I’m convinced that the best teachers both explicitly narrate and reinforce the value of these skills, while also designing their curriculum and pedagogical approaches to support their development through academic work. I think we learn things like persistence not by being told about the value of this skill, but by experiencing small successes in overcoming challenges with the support of educators.

What is one takeaway from your article that you’d like to communicate to nonscholars or policy makers?

Our understanding of teacher effectiveness, as well as the multiple measures used in new teacher evaluation systems, fail to capture the full range of ways in which teachers affect students’ success in school and life.

After this publication, where did your research go? Did you find yourself pursuing similar questions or changing course?

My current work in this area is focused on the importance of students’ sense of belonging in schools. Preliminary results suggest that schools and teachers who help support students to feel like they belong are creating environments where students develop their academic and social-emotional skills at faster rates.

Matthew Kraft is an Associate Professor of Education and Economics at Brown University. His research and teaching interests include the economics of education, education policy analysis, and applied quantitative methods for causal inference. His primary work focuses on efforts to improve educator and organizational effectiveness in K–12 urban public schools. He has published on topics including teacher coaching, teacher professional growth, teacher evaluation, teacher-parent communication, teacher layoffs, social and emotional skills, school working conditions, and extended learning time. His research has been featured in The Economist, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Education Week, The 74 Million, public radio, and several blog sites.

Land Economics Journal Welcomes New Editor

Daniel J. Phaneuf

When Daniel W. Bromley assumed the editorship of Land Economics in 1974, the journal had just celebrated fifty years of continuous publication. Bromley is the Anderson-Bascom Professor (Emeritus) of Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and recipient of the 2011 Reimar Lüst Prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Under Bromley’s leadership, the journal has flourished as a forum for scholarship on the economic aspects of natural and environmental resources. Now, forty-four years later, as Land Economics approaches its centennial, Bromley will pass the baton to Daniel J. Phaneuf.

Phaneuf is the Henry C. Taylor Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He boasts an impressive editorial resume, having served as the inaugural editor in chief of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (JAERE) and the managing editor of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. He is the president-elect of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.

In his first “From the Editor” feature, which will appear in Land Economics volume 94 number 3 this July, Phaneuf expresses the ambition “to maintain the journal’s emphasis on empirical and policy-relevant research in the field, while continuing to expand its readership and author community to include broader swaths of researchers in the profession.” He continues, “My early emphasis will be on increasing the journal’s visibility, circulation, and overall impact—tasks for which I will call on current authors, readers, and reviewers for assistance and suggestions.” Phaneuf notes that he does not anticipate making any changes in the journal’s scholarly focus or the way it is managed.

Land Economics was established in 1925 by Richard T. Ely, founder of the American Economic Association, at the University of Wisconsin. (For more on Ely’s legacy, including the story of how he was tried as a socialist and anarchist in 1894, leading the UW Board of Regents to issue a groundbreaking defense of academic freedom, see this article.) Today, the articles in Land Economics contribute crucial knowledge to discussions of scholarly and public policy topics. The journal publishes research related to environmental quality, natural resources, housing, urban and rural land use, transportation, and other areas in both developed and developing country contexts.

Claire Eder joins UWP as Journals Marketing Specialist

Claire Eder

The University of Wisconsin Press has hired Claire Eder as its new Marketing Specialist in the Journals Division. Eder joins UWP from the literary journal Quarter After Eight, where she was editor in chief. She also has experience in scholarly publishing from a past graduate internship at the University Press of Florida.

Eder earned a PhD from Ohio University and an MFA from the University of Florida. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Cincinnati Review, PANK, Midwestern Gothic, and Guernica, among other publications.

Journals Manager Toni Gunnison notes, “Claire’s varied experience will be a great asset to UWP. We feel very fortunate to have her join our program.”

Eder states, “I’m excited to help the crucial research published in UWP journals reach a wider readership, as well as to join a friendly and skilled team. The University of Wisconsin Press is the perfect place to grow my knowledge of scholarly publishing.”

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press, a research center housed within the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is a nonprofit publisher of books, journals, and other works. The Press’s mission is to embody and extend the research, education, and outreach mission of the University of Wisconsin through publishing:

scholarship, research, and educational materials of exceptional quality and distinction valued by a worldwide academic and professional community
works that serve the people of Wisconsin and document our region’s heritage
works that sustain a literate culture and foster an informed and engaged citizenry.

Honoring Mekemson era at Contemporary Literature

Mary Mekemson, hard at work editing Contemporary Literature

The Fall 2016 issue of Contemporary Literature marked the end of an era, the last to be edited by Mary Mekemson. Her nearly thirty years as managing editor with the journal were celebrated at a party in September, given in honor of her retirement. Mary received a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature in 1988 and took the position of managing editor with the journal in 1989. She has read, corrected, and revised every word in Contemporary Literature from 1989 to 2016. She was (and is) a superb editor. Her insistence upon clear writing improved the prose style and argument of many an essay. She regularly received praise and thanks from the authors with whom she worked, and her mentoring of the journal’s graduate-student editorial assistants was much appreciated. The editorial office staff of the journal and staff at UW Press wish Mary the very best.

Executive Editor Thomas Schaub, outgoing Managing Editor Mary Mekemson, new Managing Editor Eileen Ewing

Eileen Ewing is the new managing editor. “Having worked for Contemporary Literature for several years as its editorial and administrative associate, I am pleased to take on the role of managing editor. It allows me to continue my scholarly engagement with the literature of the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. I have a Ph.D. in English, with my dissertation focusing on twentieth-century women’s writing. I am particularly interested in the technical aspects of journal production and find the process of rejigging workflows for an electronic environment both stimulating and fun. I look forward to the challenges of manuscript editing and to carrying on the journal’s tradition of excellence.”

Contemporary Literature journal marks 57 years of publishing

This guest post is written by Eileen Ewing, Managing Editor of Contemporary Literature

This year marks Contemporary Literature’s fifty-seventh year of publication. Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature was begun by graduate students in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1960.

The journal publishes articles on multiple genres, including poetry, the novel, drama, creative nonfiction, new media and digital literature, and graphic narrative. Over the decades, many literary luminaries have been featured in the journal, often early in their careers. CL published the first articles on Thomas Pynchon and Susan Howe and the first interviews with Margaret Drabble and Don DeLillo. It also helped to introduce Kazuo Ishiguro, Eavan Boland, and J.M. Coetzee to American readers. At the links, read some fascinating recent interviews found exclusively in Contemporary Literature with poet Brian Kim Stefans, novelist Rachel Kushner, and novelist Anthony Cartwright.

L. S. Dembo, a scholar of modernist poetry, became editor of the journal in 1966 and shortened its title two years later. During his twenty-four years as editor, Dembo’s dedication to all that is exciting in modern and contemporary literature helped the journal to attain the international readership and large subscription base that he and the associate editors (Cyrena N. Pondrom, Betsy Draine, Phillip Herring, Jay Clayton, and Thomas Schaub) sought for it.

At Dembo’s retirement in 1990, Thomas Schaub took over as editor and shifted the parameters for submissions to work on post-World War II literature in English. The journal continued to publish interviews with established and emerging authors, articles featuring a diversity of critical practices, and reviews of scholarly books. Throughout the next two decades, Schaub and the associate editors (Richard Begam, Lynn Keller, Rafael Pérez‑Torres, Robert S. Baker, Jacques Lezra, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz) kept Contemporary Literature at the forefront of its field as a forum for discussing the issues animating the range of contemporary literary studies.

In 2009, the editorship of the journal was restructured as a collective led by Lynn Keller (poetry), Thomas Schaub (American fiction and drama), and Rebecca Walkowitz (British and Anglophone fiction and drama). The three co-editors worked closely with six new associate editors: Alan Golding, Adalaide Morris, Amy Hungerford, Sean McCann, Matthew Hart, and John Marx.

The current editorial collective is composed of Yogita Goyal (British and Anglophone fiction and drama), Michael LeMahieu and Steven Belletto (American fiction and drama), and Timothy Yu (poetry), with Thomas Schaub acting as executive editor. The associate editors are Elizabeth S. Anker, David James, Heather Houser, Jessica Pressman, Alan Golding, and Adalaide Morris.

Revised 7/10/17 to add byline.