Fifteen years of Critical Policy Studies: achievements, challenges, and the tensions of growth

Fifteen years ago, in 2009, the journal Critical Policy Analysis was renamed Critical Policy Studies. Since its inception, the journal has become a crucial platform for a diverse community of scholars working on policy and governance in a critical tradition. Together, we have been asking the question of what’s socially relevant about policymaking and how we can expose the political again and again vis-à-vis the burning as well as more hidden issues of our changing times. To celebrate this milestone and open a new year of reflection on our past development and future perspectives, we would like to share with you some of our thoughts on the evolution and expansion of the journal and the CPS community, and on the tensions of this growth.

Our community has been growing both quantitatively and qualitatively speaking, and holds a wonderful diversity of identities, geographical backgrounds, social milieus and experiences, and thematic scholarly content. Between 2019 and 2023, submissions to the journal increased by almost 60%. This naked number hides a qualitative growth we much value: the CPS community now spans the globe. Indeed, CPS has been attracting increasingly more authors, readers, and reviewers from outside the confines of the Global North, in new places and spaces in the Global South where scholars engage with critical traditions and interpretive approaches to policy analysis. Our communities in Brazil, China, and Indonesia have grown fastest, but we also saw more engagement with colleagues from Eastern Europe, for example.

While critical scholars working in a post-positivist tradition may be skeptical of metrics (or the requisite growth imperative firmly ensconced in academic journals), these increases can prompt reflection on our part, allowing us to gain valuable perspective on our work past, present and future, and the community we seek to support and facilitate. What these numbers mean for us is that our journal is expanding and changing – growing in the volume of submissions we receive, in the diverse positionalities of community members that give such diversity apt attention and representation in how journal content is produced, in the geographical locations community members are situated in, and in the theoretical and methodological traditions different places feature. For example, papers in the past couple of volumes have taken up decolonial perspectives, engaged with the post-truth turn, and discussed the role of emotions in public policymaking. New themes relating to the struggles over climate justice, extractivism, pandemic governance, and new digital technologies found wide coverage. The achieved expansion of our journal has been the result of the tremendous efforts made by our community members, including CPS readers, authors, and reviewers, along with our dedicated editorial team and active board.

And while the expansion of the CPS community has its distinct benefits, there are tensions associated with such growth, especially given the relatively short time frame over which it has occurred. With increasing numbers of high-quality submissions, the acceptance rate will decrease, much to the chagrin of some authors. Due to changes to our publishing model, we have been able to accommodate part of this growth by publishing approximately one research article more per issue in 2023 compared to earlier volumes. At the same time, higher submission numbers also require us to substantially expand our pool of active reviewers; not an easy task considering the often high (and increasing) levels of both pressure and precarity in many academic jobs, and the unremunerated labor going into peer review (and article-writing, for that matter). More importantly, perhaps, and in line with the ambitions discussed in our last editorial, ‘Democratizing science is an urgent and collective project’ (de Freitas Boullosa, Paul, and Smith-Carrier 2023), we believe that the journal’s expansion requires grounding through strategic governance and continued collective self-reflection. As we stated in last year’s editorial, we aim to curate content that foregrounds the social and political implications of policies that advance democracy, global equality, and social justice.

Over the past year, we have already taken steps to bring a more diverse group of scholars onto the editorial board. Our Board is currently composed of 31 scholars, spanning 15 countries and six continents, from varied academic traditions and disciplines. The themes captured and the empirical foci reflected on the board have evolved, shifted, and expanded in what we consider exciting ways. Our team has also continued as well as initiated projects to promote our editorial priorities. We have recognized the valuable contributions of our authors by consolidating our annual paper prizes, the Herbert Gottweis and Early Career Awards. We have been happy to feature important interventions in our field for the symposium format. Curated by guest editors, the most recent and forthcoming symposia cover indigenous knowledge (with three individual articles published online over the past 12 months), policy ontologies and power, and institutional activism. We have also recently started to create bridges with Latin American scholars working in a critical tradition, for example during major conferences in Buenos Aires and Toronto this past year, and through the upcoming workshop in Mexico during the 4WPPA. The team of editors and board members convened several panels, roundtables, and streams and we particularly cherish the dialogs, exchanges, and friendly chats we had with many of you in person. Not only was this a true social treat after pandemic conference years; we also see exciting new content for the journal to spark from these events already (for example, in the Forum article published in this issue, with more to come).

As for our current challenges, we highlight three here.

• The first is the ongoing peer-review ‘crisis’ (Dance 2023). We are experiencing increasingly greater difficulty finding reviewers willing to see through manuscripts over several revision rounds and in receiving high-quality reviews promptly. To be clear, this tendency co-exists with high levels of dedication, thoughtfulness, and constructive collegial support for authors from a pool of dedicated reviewers; and we are very grateful to you all. To discuss the shortage of – and strains on – reviewers, we facilitated a roundtable at the 2023 International Conference on Public Policy in Toronto and shared experiences and strategies with editors from other academic journals in policy studies. As discussions about the future of publishing and review models continue, we welcome community ideas and initiatives on the matter.

• Second, the constraints on our time have, at least in part, resulted in CPS maintaining a lower presence on social media over the past year. Although some recognize the vital need for greater use of accessible online communications, others are skeptical about digital technologies due to the troubling arc of AI, big tech, and the threats to democracy which these present. We have been rather silent on Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, for example, as we believe further discussion on such shifts and their ramifications is required. In 2024, we want to develop a new social media strategy in-line with our journal’s democratic and progressive values, and we invite your comments on such an endeavor.

• Finally, after the pandemic and with submissions on the rise, the routine workload of the editorial team has increased significantly, leaving little time to assiduously attend to special projects and broader strategic priorities. We have discussed this situation with our publisher and are happy to announce that TANDF approved a new position of editorial assistant for CPS, starting in January 2024. In this new position, Gareth Wall will assist us in effectively managing routine and strategic journal tasks. Welcome, Gareth! Procedures for authors and reviewers will not change, as we continue working with a team of executive officers for peer review and production in our backend.

We appreciate that building a vibrant and expanding CPS community requires effort from all members. Promoting a scholarly enterprise reflecting quality, coherence, and reflexivity that both consolidates and expands the journal’s identity and ambition is bound to create tensions. We appreciate the opportunity to work and learn with you on this continuous journey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).