In addition to providing extensive written comments, each reviewer is asked to fill out the "AJPS Manuscript Rating Form." (These forms do not go to authors.) These ratings may provide a partial, quantitative assessment useful for testing H6.
A mark at the left-hand extreme (a score of "0") indicates that you definitely would not want to see the manuscript published in AJPS. A mark at the right-hand extreme (a score of "10") indicates that you definitely would want to see the manuscript published in AJPS.
"If you were forced to decide a simple |yes' or |no' with regard to publication of this manuscript in AJPS, how would you vote?" yes, or no.
TABLE 1 Editorial Decision by Rating Sheet Vote,(*) AJPS Manuscripts, 1991-92 Rating Sheet Vote Decision Reject Accept Reject 89.7% 45.5% Revise and Resubmit 6.6 20.0 Accept 3.8 34.5 100% 100% (N) (213) (110) (*) For each paper, the responses to the dichotomous vote item (see text, "yes" = accept; "no" = reject) were averaged for the (typically) three reviewers, giving a single vote score for each paper.
Thus, the AJPS editor, like the editors of other major political science journals, is forced by page constraints alone to make yet another quality cut through the papers, reading over the reviews and manuscripts again before making a final decision.
