Vital Statistics

We publish our customary EJIL statistics below. The numbers largely speak for themselves. We make every effort to publish diverse scholarship (methodologically, conceptually, normatively and subject matter wise) and to diversify our authorship (gender, regions, seniority, and so on). We are, of course, ‘prisoners’ of our mailbox – the pool of articles submitted to EJIL.

We are often asked about our policy and practice of ‘commissioning’ papers. This was a common practice in the early years of EJIL, but in recent times we do this quite sparingly. We commission the annual Foreword. This year’s Foreword will be written by Tony Anghie – A Retrospective and Prospective of TWAIL (we have seen the first draft and won’t disclose more for the moment …). We commission, too, the Afterword (the brief reactions to the Foreword), but some articles of the Afterword also reach us spontaneously.

A distinct feature of EJIL is the proliferation of Debates (at least one in almost every issue). We commission some of the ‘Replies’, but not infrequently these, too, are unsolicited (and welcome!). Our motto is ‘when scholars vie, wisdom mounts’. We believe that in our Debates the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, to the benefit of our readers and the scholarly mission of EJIL. Overwhelmingly, the Symposia we publish, and the selection of authors therein, are initiatives of our readers, including members of our editorial boards. All symposium papers are subject to the same blind peer review as other papers. For the two large Symposia that EJIL board members recently convened – one on Democracy, the other on Inequality – the contributions were the result of Calls for Papers.

As to linguistic diversity, the numbers in our statistics refer to the language of the country of the authors’ academic institution. Given that universities in many English-speaking countries have faculty members whose native language is not English, the numbers in the statistics are likely not as positive as the real picture.

Finally, there is one element that the numbers do not reveal: the age demographics. We are proud of our track record in publishing young scholars – a commitment and tradition from our very first issue more than 30 years ago: issue no. 1 opened with an article by a young, relatively unknown scholar.

1 Regional Origin (in percentages of total) 

2 Linguistic Origin (in percentages of total)

3 Gender (in percentages of total)