Since my last Editorial (Zucker, 2016), it feels that the Journal has ramped up in terms of “busyness.” When I became Editor in 2002, we had 80 new submissions. There has been, more or less, a linear increase since then, hitting a milestone of sorts in 2017, when we surpassed 500 new submissions for the first time (Fig. 1). I don’t think that this temporal pattern is unique to Archives: Its fraternal opposite-sex twin, Journal of Sex Research, had 477 new submissions in 2017 (C. A. Graham, personal communication, January 1, 2018). Along with dozens of resubmissions, Letters to the Editor, and commentaries on the new Target Article series, the pace has a relentless, yet rewarding, feel to it. One reason for the incremental increase in submissions is that sex/gender/sexual science research has truly gone global (cf. Zucker, 2002). We now routinely receive submissions from all corners of the planet. Maybe one of these days we will get a submission from the International Space Station.

Fig. 1
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Number of submissions (2012–2017)

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Associate Editors

Back in 2010, when the number of submissions was clearly on the rise (N = 295), it became apparent to me that the Journal needed to add Associate Editors, which took place in 2011. The Journal’s boss, Carol Bischoff, at Springer Nature has been very generous in this regard and, at present, we have 15 Associate Editors (Sophie Bergeron, Lori Brotto, Meredith Chivers, Brian Dodge, Shari Dworkin, Lisa Dawn Hamilton, Roland Imhoff, Tuuli Kukkonen, Brian Mustanski, Kevin Nunes, Jeffrey Parsons, Natalie Rosen, Alexander Schmidt, Lori Scott-Sheldon, and Paul Vasey). These scholars all have their own speciality areas and handle submissions that match their areas of expertise. I handle about 50% of the new submissions myself. We also have, by and large, a wonderful Editorial Board currently totaling 139, not to mention the dozens of ad hoc reviewers who are also asked to review manuscripts by me and the Associate Editors. It is this collaborative, collective, communal process that keeps the sexual science engine running.

New Editorial Board Members (2018)

These are: Steven Arnocky, Ally L. Dir, Breanne Fahs, Brian A. Feinstein, Kyle Gobrogge, Lisette Kuyper, Kristen Mark, Bill McCarthy, Andreas Mokros, Sarah A. Vannier, and Julia Velten.

New Look (2018)

Earlier this year, Springer Nature has given the Journal, like all of its other periodicals, a new font face. In addition, the Abstract spans the entire width of the page instead of being in double columns. I like the changes.

Manuscript Disposition (2015–2016)

Table 1 shows Editorial decision data for initial submissions for 2015 and 2016 as a function of who handled them (2017 data are not yet available) (see also Fig. 2). Table 1 does not include 23 manuscripts handled by Vasey for a Special Section (Vasey, 2017), which were by invitation. From Table 1, it can be seen that the percentage of “rejected” manuscripts was 57.8% in 2015 and 53.6% in 2016. It can also be seen that there was variability in the percentage of declined submissions across the “handler.” Of course, this could reflect variation in the standards of the Editor/Associate Editors and the reviewers assigned to the manuscripts; however, it is my view that most of the variance is accounted for by the quality of submissions, which varies across specialty areas. For contributing authors, it is important to note that when manuscripts are given the designation of a Major Revision, the vast majority (of those that are resubmitted) are accepted for publication (it is quite uncommon for a Major Revision to be declined after resubmission—to quote a colleague “It happens,” but not very often). This means that the initial decision indicates that the author has a “foot in the door” and that if she, he, or they can successfully respond to the first round of reviews it means that the manuscript is very likely to be accepted for publication.

Table 1 Editorial decisions for initial submissions (2015 and 2016)
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Fig. 2
figure 2

Manuscript disposition after initial submission (2002–2016)

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Target Articles

Under Paul Vasey’s leadership, we inaugurated the by invitation Target Article series (Vasey & Zucker, 2016). To date, we have published 7 such articles (Blanchard, 2018; Breedlove, 2017; Brotto & Yule, 2017; Chivers, 2017; Frank, 2018; Seto, 2017; Walton, Cantor, Bhullar, & Lykins, 2017). Each Target Article is accompanied by penetrating commentaries, which are also reviewed by Vasey, with a response by the author(s). More are in the sexual science pipeline. I expect these Target Articles will make a contribution to the Journal’s impact factor—we will find out in 2019. Stay tuned. Researchers interested in proposing a Target Article should contact Dr. Vasey at paul.vasey@uleth.ca

Impact Factor (2015 and 2016)

Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5 show the impact factor (IF) data for the years 2015 and 2016 for 86 sex/gender journals in the Annual Web of Science/Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics).Footnote 1 Tables 2 and 4 rank the journals as a function of their 2-year IF, and Tables 3 and 5 rank the journals as a function of their 5-year IF.

Table 2 Impact Factor for the year 2015: Sex- and gender-related journals (N = 86) ranked by 2-year impact factor
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Table 3 Impact Factor for the year 2015: Sex- and gender-related journals (N = 86) ranked by 5-year impact factor
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Table 4 Impact Factor for the year 2016: Sex- and gender-related journals (N = 86) ranked by 2-year impact factor
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Table 5 Impact factor for the year 2016: Sex- and gender-related journals (N = 86) ranked by 5-year impact factor
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For the uninitiated to this treasure trove of numbers, a journal’s IF for a given year is a measure of the frequency with which its recent articles are cited on average during that year. “Recent” refers to the two prior calendar years or the five prior calendar years. Thus, Archives’ 2015 2-year IF is the number of times that its 2013 and 2014 articles were cited in 2015, divided by the number of articles the Archives published in 2013 and 2014, and the 5-year IF is the number of times that its 2010–2014 articles were cited in 2015, divided by the number of articles the Archives published between 2010 and 2014. The 5-year IF was introduced several years ago, and one can find data on it going back to 2007. Although the IF is the best known metric for citation analysis, there are other measures, including the immediacy index (II) and the cited half-Life (CHL). The II is a measure of how frequently the journal’s “average article” is cited the same year in which it is published. Thus, the II for a year is calculated as the number of times articles from that journal are cited during that year, divided by the number of articles that journal published that year. The CHL is a measure of the longevity of the frequency of citations to articles in the journal, that is, for how long the average article maintains its currency. The CHL for a year is determined by the time required to account for a cumulative total of 50% of that year’s citations to the journal.

In these two calendar years, over 3000 journals in the Social Sciences received IF ratings. In 2015–2016, across all of these journals, the median IF ranged from 1.00 to 1.27 (across the 2-year and 5-year rankings). During these 2 years, we published 351 articles (“Citable Items”) and Archives ranked between the 87th and 90th percentiles, which is not bad. Two years ago (Zucker, 2016), I indicated a greater fondness for the 5-year IF than the 2-year. I still feel that way. I hope that will be the case this year!

How “stable” is the IF among the sex/gender periodicals? As a cursory look at this, I examined the IF comparing the years 2012 and 2016. For 80 periodicals for which there were data from both years, a paired samples t test showed that the mean IF was significantly higher in 2016 (M, 1.75; SD = 1.15) than in 2012 (M, 1.47; SD = 1.31), t(79) = 4.44, p < .001, Cohen’s d = .54. The two scores were, however, highly correlated at r = .92, p < .001. Rank ordering the periodicals yielded an r = .90, p < .001. These numbers suggest a fair bit of stability. Out of curiosity, I looked at a few of the periodicals that had the most “movement” between 2012 and 2016 (based on the 80 periodicals for which there were data from both years). On the positive side, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health ranked 35th in 2012 and 6th in 2016; differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies ranked 71st in 2012 and 42nd in 2016; and Feminist Review ranked 63rd in 2012 and 41st in 2016. On the negative side, Evolutionary Psychology ranked 23rd in 2012 and 49th in 2016; Journal of Men’s Health ranked 47th in 2012 and 71st in 2016; and Sexual Health ranked 27th in 2012 and 50th in 2016.

I must confess that I had never heard of the IF until I heard my old pal, A. Koos Slob, from Erasmus University in Rotterdam shout out in a dimly lit bar at some meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research (a long time ago, maybe 1995 in Provincetown) “What’s the impact factor?” I almost choked on my White Russian. Although there are many criticisms of the IF, we know that it is taken seriously (e.g., for promotions at universities or medical centers). Of course, every Editor worth her, his or they’s salt thinks about how their IF can be improved. It is well known (from many bar room convos) that one unnamed sex/gender periodical for a time “padded” its IF by asking authors to cite publications from the journal, even if the publications were completely irrelevant to the content of the paper. But one has to be careful with too many “self cites” because this is monitored by Journal Citation Reports and, if there are too many, a journal can get into trouble. So, are there ways to legitimately improve a journal’s IF? I am sure that there are. It has been argued that review articles and special topics can be contributory. I know, for example, that when this Journal published the literature reviews from the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Workgroup for the DSM-5 in 2010 it had a clear impact (Zucker, 2010). As noted earlier, it is my hope that the introduction of the Target Article series will be one bona fide way in which the IF might be improved.

Who’s on First?

Willis and Jozkowski (2018; see also O’Neil, Willis, & Jozkowski, 2017) studied “linguistic sexism” in 10 social science journals, including four sex research periodicals, for articles published in 2016. They coded for reference to common gendered pairs (e.g., women and men; male and female) and reported the percentage of cases in which men were presented first. Across the three journal types (sex research, health, psychology), men were on first more often than women. Of the four sex research journals, Sex Roles was the most equitable (57.7% “male firstness”), followed by Journal of Sex Research (74.7%), Archives of Sexual Behavior (81.6%), and Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy (88.8%). This is, potentially, a nice example of unconscious/implicit bias. However, interpretation of the data is limited by the fact that Willis and Jozkowski did not consider potential confounding factors, such as the gender/sex of the first (or senior) author and country of the researchers. It is also unclear if who is on first has any bearing on the quality of the publications and their contribution to advances in sexual science.

The Hypatia Fiasco

The practice of science is far from perfect. We are acutely aware of unethical conduct (think The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment [Jones, 1981]) or questionable conduct. Consider, for example, the 2018 resignation of Brenda Fitzgerald as the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after just 6 months on the job, apparently because of “…criticism of her investments with her husband in tobacco and health care companies…” (Kaplan, 2018). This gives a variant meaning to the 1978 comedy film “Up in Smoke” (think Cheech & Chong). In modern times, Retraction Watch (https://retractionwatch.com/) provides one with a daily dose of scientist/scientific misconduct, abuse of power, retractions, etc. It costs nothing to get its daily alerts.

In 2017, there was, what I would like to call, the Hypatia fiasco, which was not a typical example of what might make its way into Retraction Watch. I will wager a bet that this feminist philosophy journal is probably not on the “content alert list” of journals of most members of the International Academy of Sex Research or readers of this Journal (see Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5). Last year, after going through peer review, Tuvel (2017) published an essay in Hypatia entitled “In Defense of Transracialism” (think Rachel Dolezal) and philosophized about the similarities and differences between “transracialism” and “transgenderism” (think Caitlyn Jenner). This did not go over well and social media went wild (see, for example, Brubaker, 2017; Dreher, 2017; Duggan, 2017; McKenzie, Harris, & Zamudio-Suaréz, 2017; Schuessler, 2017; Singal, 2017; Walters, 2017; Winnubst, 2017; see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_transracialism_controversy) as some philosophers jumped off the ivory tower down to the streets of virtual reality. It would be a bit too dramatic to label the reaction to the article’s publication a form of intellectual terrorism–intellectual venom feels more accurate, with, among other things, calls to retract the article (the Editor of Hypatia refused to do so—see McKenzie et al. [2017]). Perhaps the attempt at intellectual censorship will boost Hypatia’s impact factor—it could use the help. If you have time on your hands, reading about what went down, and thinking about the implications for “academic freedom,” is worth the effort (for a thoughtful earlier volume on the issue, see Brubaker [2016]).

Sex/Gender/Sexual Science in Everyday Life, with Apologies to Freud

Do “mainstream” and social media cloud our perception of the salience of sex/gender/sexual science in everyday life? Maybe. In any case, not an hour goes by when there is “something” about sex/gender/sexual science on television, in print media, on social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc., etc., etc.). If I grab from my tray of news clippings, the last 10 are:

  1. 1.

    “Investigating sexual misconduct accusations, Arizona State suspends a physicist” (Chang, 2018)

  2. 2.

    “Yale student is found not guilty in a rare college rape trial” (Wang & Weinstock, 2018).

  3. 3.

    “Belgian is convicted of sexism in public” (Schreuer, 2018).

  4. 4.

    “Resignation at Harvard over claims of abuse” (Saul, 2018).

  5. 5.

    “No safe space on campus to debate bathroom politics” (Kay, 2018).

  6. 6.

    “Danish police charge 1000 in child porn case” (Sorensen, 2018).

  7. 7.

    “60% of youths say they’ve ‘sexted’” (Bresge, 2018).

  8. 8.

    “Drug regimen is said to enable transgender breast-feeding” (Yeginsu, 2018).

  9. 9.

    “Defending a legitimate therapy: Pelvic massage, when prescribed correctly, can provide pain relief” (Rabin, 2018).

  10. 10.

    “Killings in Toronto’s gay community anger activists” (Levin, 2018).

In case you are wondering, I don’t save newspaper articles on the sex life of Donald Trump.

While Foucault is rolling over in his grave, I think about the interface between what appears in the everyday discourse about sex/gender life and the work we, as sex/gender clinicians and scientists, do: writing papers, writing grants, giving talks, speaking to the media, writing trade books, fretting about writing papers, fretting about writing grants, teaching sex/gender/sexual science, fretting about teaching sex/gender/sexual science, and seeing clients in the consulting room. It is my hope that sexual science will continue to have impactful benefits for the public that we serve and that Archives will remain part of that mission.