Editor’s Note

Abstract

This is the first edition since I took over the position as Editor-in-Chief of Statistics, Politics and Policy (SPP) from my dear colleague Joel Middleton (Professor at University of California, Berkeley). I would like to thank Joel for his hard work and endeavours in the past. Several things have changed for SPP. First, a new editorial board was established. The new board now consists of 12 editors from 10 countries and 3 continents. The board members are representatives of a broad range of perspectives: Leading experts on statistics and methodology, as well as on policy analysis and politics. Second, the review process of our journal has improved considerably. We changed from a simple double review process to a double blind peer-review process. Our intention is to fully adopt all established international standards. We also improved the review process in many ways. Reviewers can now use the ScholarOne based platform to efficiently review and evaluate their corresponding articles. Different aspects of a contributed paper can be rated with scores of 1–5 and comments for improvements can be included in a flexible way to make the process of evaluation neat and faster. Assessing the quality of a paper thus has become much clearer and much more efficient. Third, the scope of the journal will also be slightly adjusted. Statistics, Politics and Policy studies the ways that statistical analysis drives public policy decisions, and publishes significant research on the application of statistical ideas to problems that relate to policy implementation. In comparison to the past, when the majority of articles addressed statistical problems and methodology, we are more interested in statistical applications and policy analysis. Fourth, from this year on we will award a prize for the best contribution in the SPP. The editorial board will decide to which author the price is given. With all these changes in place SPP is on course to release two major issues in 2017 regarding the following fields of interest: The upcoming issue 1 (Vol. 2017) of SPP will focus on the quality of polls and surveys. Recently, polls and surveys struggled to predict accurately voter preferences in important elections worldwide. Our next issue will reflect on this