Editor's report.

From January 1, 2004 through December 31, 2004, the Editorial Office received 242 new manuscript submissions. The table below shows the time between submission and the journal's first response, whether to reject, ask for a revision, or accept a manuscript for the 242 manuscripts submitted during 2004. About 75 percent of the submitting authors receive a response within six months and almost 90 percent receive a response within nine months from the original submission.

Table 2 shows the number of submitted and accepted manuscripts from 1997 to 2004. Alter an initial decline in 1997, mostly due to the change in editorship, submissions and acceptances have been steady.

With the help of John Rust and his associates, the Southern Economic Journal is initiating the process of switching to an online editorial and reviewing system, by which submission and reviews will be transmitted electronically, thus speeding up the editorial process and reducing costs.

The editorial process at the Journal will, however, remain the same. After papers are submitted to the VCU office, they are then assigned by the Editor to the appropriate Co-Editor (at this stage, the Editor functions as one of the four Co-Editors). Papers are distributed among Co-Editors according to the paper's topic and the Co-Editor's expertise. Each Co-Editor handles the papers assigned to him or her in a decentralized manner and communicates to the VCU office his or her final decision. The VCU office handles the final editing and typesetting process of all accepted papers.

I am deeply indebted to the Journal's' three Co-Editors--Julie Hotchkiss (Georgia State University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta), Kent Kimbrough (Duke University), and Dek Terrell (Louisiana State University) for their hard work, and dedication. With their effort, each continues to make a great contribution to the Journal and to the economic profession. We also rely heavily on the Board of Associate Editors their advice in evaluating manuscripts. 1 wish to thank all the Associate Editors and the referees for their service.

Laura Razzolini

Editor, Southern Economic Journal

Table 1. Distribution of Editorial Decision Lags between Submission
and First Response to Author. January 1, 2004-March 31, 2005.

Months    Percentage of Submissions

0-3                33.47%
3-1                19.83%
4-5                10.74%
5-6                10.74%
6-9                14.60%
9+                  6.61%

Table 2. Manuscripts Submitted and Published. 1997-2004.

Year   Submitted    Published     %

1997      333         104        31.2
1998      279          68        24.4
1999      288          58        20.1
2000      251          56        22.3
2001      259          49        18.9
2002      244          50        20.4
2003      248          56        22.5
2004      242          36        14.8