Abstract
Armed Forces & Society (AF&S) was founded in 1974 with the overall intention of creating an international arena for interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the military institution and the intersection of armed forces and their society. The present study is both a follow-up and an update of Morten Enders’s article “Authorship and Affiliation in Armed Forces & Society” covering 1,139 articles in the 41 volumes published from 1974 until 2015. The scope has been to look for the evolving trends on Authorship and Affiliation (A&A) within AF&S so as to say something about what AF&S has become over these years, as a consequence of whom the authors are and where they come from. Our findings suggest a developmental narrative of A&A in AF&S of a continuously higher author–article ratio, an increased female authorship ratio, and a wider range of disciplines from more continents, countries, and institutions, plus a trend of increased cross-national coauthorship.
Keywords
In 2001, Ender published the article “Authorship and Affiliation in Armed Forces & Society: Volumes 1–25” covering the years of 1974 through 1999. The present study is both a follow-up and an update of that endeavor covering the 41 volumes published from 1974 until 2015.
The idea for this follow-up and update was born during a debate on the identity and future of the Armed Forces & Society (AF&S) journal at the editorial board meeting in Chicago, IL, in 2015. As important, the 15-year, post-911 so-called Global War on Terror and resulting significant expansion of scholarship on military issues heartens a reexamination of the journal. As such, it is the intention of the authors to contribute here by fielding a descriptive analysis of whom are the AF&S authors, their institutional connection, and their collective fit into the overall intention of the journal as an international arena for interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the military institution and the intersection of armed forces and their society.
Ender’s Authorship and Affiliation (A&A) article published at the turn of the millennium mainly focused on the first 25 volumes as one entity. In this update, we take a more developmental approach, curious as to how AF&S has evolved as a journal in concert with the overall ideas of establishing a major publication outlet for scholars interested in military issues based on an interdisciplinary and international focus. Regarding the latter, there is a common understanding within the AF&S and its sponsoring association—the Inter-University Seminar (IUS) on AF&S community—that both the journal and society are developing toward this goal. For over 20 years at the IUS biennial conference meeting banquet held in Baltimore and Chicago, there is a traditional call for specific groups to raise their hands if (1) they are first-time attendees, (2) they traveled from abroad, (3) they attended the conference more than once, and (4) they have published in the journal. This symbolic call reinforces both the ambition and underlying valued assumptions of both the association and journal.
Accordingly, the scope of this study makes use of open accessible information about authors and their institutional affiliation from Volumes 1 through 41, applying a developmental focus by scrutinizing evolving trends on A&A within AF&S from 1974 and up through 2015. The intention is a data-driven story about what AF&S has become over these years, as a consequence of whom the authors are and where they come from.
AF&S—Roots and Scope
The sponsors of this journal, the Executive Council of the Inter-University Seminar, believe that there is need for a scholarly medium which focuses on (a) an interdisciplinary and (b) international approach to the topics of armed forces and society, war, revolution, arms control, and peace-keeping. The journal will seek to reflect the emerging focus on military institutions as objects of research and in their relation with other sociopolitical phenomena. (Janowitz, 1974, p. 3)
This is how Morris Janowitz, the first editor of AF&S (and likely other founding parents), envisaged the scope of the journal in an introductory comment to the inaugural issue back in 1974.
For those who are not familiar with the origin of the AF&S journal and IUS community, Janowitz was an American sociologist who in the second half of the 20th century was able to spearhead the study of the military as a subfield in sociology and bring together scholars within this field so as to “…support development of sociological analyses of military organization; to prepare a series of specific research papers on internal military organization; and to serve as a focal point for long-term training in and for the development of a relationship between sociology and the military establishment” (Burk, 1991, p. 17). More so, Janowitz as a sociologist found inspiration outside of the classical understanding prevailing within sociology, which led him to look for and encourage “…new theoretical outlooks and alternative methodological approaches…” from different disciplines and scholarly communities around the world (Burk, 1991, p. 18). Hence, the key point to be made is that even though Janowitz was academically rooted in sociology and his work and life was situated in a U.S. context, both the IUS association and later AF&S journal are founded on an idea of interdisciplinary and international outreach. Subsequent presidents of the IUS 1 and editors of the journal 2 appear to have embraced and charted this vision.
A visit to the journal’s webpage tells us that the aim and scope remain true to the legacy of being “…an interdisciplinary journal publishing articles on military institutions, civil–military relations, arms control and peacemaking, and conflict management…” besides being “…international in scope with a focus on historical, comparative, and interdisciplinary discourse…” What is more, a closer description of the journal portrays it as publishing “…empirical, theoretically informed articles, research notes, book reviews, and review essays…” and that “…[i]ts articles may adopt an interdisciplinary, comparative, or historical perspective, use qualitative or quantitative methods, and range from policy-relevant to theoretical themes.” This is manifested in the diverse background of the editors, editorial board, and other contributors to the journal, which “…include political scientists, sociologists, historians, psychologists, scholars, and economists, as well as specialists in military organization and strategy, arms control, and peacekeeping…” from all around the world (AF&S Homepage, 2016).
Given the Janowitz heritage and U.S. rooting of AF&S in relation to the stated intention of an interdisciplinary and international approach, our overarching working assumption is that we expect that overtime, there would be a significant increase in interdisciplinary and international authorship and institutional affiliation in AF&S.
In essence, the article will be structured in coherence to a classic introduction, method, result, and discussion setup. The findings will be presented into an authorship and an affiliation section, where the authorship section will address author–article ratio, male–female first authorship, and discipline/field range, while the affiliation section will look at global reach, national distribution, and institutional connection.
Method
As emphasized in the Introduction, the present study is both a follow-up and an update of Ender’s (2001) article on A&A in AF&S Volumes 1–25 covering the time period of 1974–1999 (N = 669 articles). As such, methodologically, the starting point for this follow-up/update optimized the original SPSS file compiled for the 2001 article. We then updated with information for Volumes 26–41 (2000–2015 and N = 470 articles) on the nine variables identified for each article in the process of writing the first article: (1) editor, (2) full citation, (3) number of authors, (4) sex of the authors, (5) sex distribution of collaborating authors, (6) institutional affiliation of the first author, (7) state and country affiliation of the first author’s institution, (8) institutional type, and (9) academic discipline of the authors. We refer the reader to the original article for further details on the descriptions of variables (Ender, 2001).
After adding information for Volumes 26–41, the SPSS file was cross-checked for inconsistencies in categorization ensuring that each institution consistently matched their organizational type, country, and so on (i.e., that an institution with more than one article was registered within the same organizational category, the same country, etc., with all of its articles). Furthermore, in the 2001 article, 14 articles (2.1%) were coded as “unknown” and four articles (0.6%) were coded as “other” with respect to organizational type (Table 6 in Ender, 2001). These 18 articles were reexamined, and 4 unknown and 3 other articles were recoded to one of the seven other categories. In addition, the unknown category was renamed “no institution.” A similar process was conducted with respect to the 80 (12%) articles with unknown academic discipline of first author (Table 7 in Ender, 2001), and an appropriate category was found for 63 of these articles.
The Division of the First 41 Volumes of Armed Forces & Society Into Four Periods (and the Total) Based on the Most Balanced Number of Articles Between the Four Periods.
Number of Authors per Article by Armed Forces & Society Volumes 1–41.
Male and Female First Authorships by Armed Forces & Society Volumes 1–41.
Male and Female Coauthorships by Armed Forces & Society Volumes 1–41.
Discipline of First Authors by Armed Forces & Society Volumes 1–41.
Distribution of First Authors Across Continents by Armed Forces & Society Volumes 1–41.
Distribution of First-Authorships across Countries by Armed Forces & Society Volumes 1–41.
To identify the developmental trends within AF&S from 1974 and up through 2015, it was decided to divide the 41 volumes into four periods: Volumes 1–10, Volumes 11–21, Volumes 22–32, and Volumes 33–41 with a total of 1,139 articles. The rationale for the division is simply a balanced number of articles between the four periods. Further details can be found in Table 1.
Finally, as with the original study, this update does not include “…published articles such as policy papers; symposium papers; book reviews, review essays; commentaries; rejoinders; and archives” (Ender, 2001, p. 624).
Authorship
An important part of Janowitz’s initiating the gathering of scholars on the field of military studies was to encourage collaboration in making advances in the field (Burk, 1991). Hence, in the early days of the journal—the early- and mid-1970s—scholars interested in military studies publishing in AF&S were relatively few and seldom in the same institutions. As many social science journals were publishing single-authored articles, this further contributed to AF&S authors more likely to publish as individuals rather than in coauthored groups. However, with time, growth, and specialization, academic acquaintanceship and relationships, even friendships, across institutional and cultural boarders emerge. The likelihood of doing research together becomes more plausible, thus the probability of publishing together increases. The relevance of IUS and subsequently AF&S is in many senses one of familiarity. As one participates in the biennial conferences and work is published in the flagship journal, gradually awareness of who is who and who does what spreads (which this article in itself is proof of). For this reason, insofar as the journal jives with the legacy of Janowitz—interdisciplinary and international in scope—we would expect an increase in number of authors per article (author–article ratio) over the history of the journal.
A similar issue is the male–female authorship ratio. The field of military studies has somewhat historically been a male-dominated field of contributors. However, as we have seen in field after field—especially in the social sciences and humanities, women have become more and more visible and productive. This is no less the case with issues related to the military, where women’s roles and participation has become much more substantial both in the military and in counterparts dealing with the military (Fasting & Sand, 2010; United Nations Security Council, 2000). Therefore, we anticipate that there should be a substantial increase in female-author ratios.
Finally, as shown and highlighted in the Introduction, an essential part of the AF&S scope is to bring different scholarly disciplines together. Ender showed with his A&A article in 2001 that several disciplines were represented although political science, sociology, and history amounted to more than half of the academic discipline of first authors (Ender, 2001, p. 634). With a clear statement of being interdisciplinary, one can anticipate that the journal over time will try to recruit and field contributions from a wide and even wider range of disciplines. However, with time, there is equally likely that a journal as specialized as AF&S will find a voice and become more adapted to a core/prevailing audience within a more confined community. As such, we predict that the academic discipline of the first author will both show clustering toward some main disciplines such as political science, sociology, and history, but concomitantly a gathering from disciplines not seen before. In other words, the overall number of disciplines should fan out over time.
Author–Article Ratio
The author–article ratio for all the 41 volumes is 1.47 (SD = 0.88). Distributed across the four periods, there is a marginal difference between Volumes 1–10 (ratio = 1.32, SD = 0.64) and Volumes 11–21 (ratio = 1.30, SD = 0.65), whereas there is a distinct increase from Volumes 11–21 to Volumes 22–32 (ratio = 1.51, SD = 0.88) and from Volumes 22–32 to Volumes 33–41 (ratio = 1.74, SD = 1.16).
The increase in author–article ratio is illustrated in Table 2. While more than three of the four articles had only one author in the two first periods, the amount of single authorships in Volumes 22–32 had dropped to two of the three. A further decrease can be observed for Volumes 33–41 where less than three of the five (57%) articles were single authored. Accordingly, slightly above 1 of the 20 articles had three authors or more in the two first periods while looking at the last 9 volumes, authorships with three or more authors increased to more than every sixth article. Furthermore, in Volumes 1–10, only 5 articles (1.8%) had four authors and no article had five authors or more, whereas 40 articles (13.5%) in Volumes 33–41 had four authors or more with 1 article with nine authors at the most.
Male and Female First Authorships
The data presented in Table 3 show that males are extremely overrepresented among the first authorships in AF&S with an overall male/female authorship ratio of 4.55 (934:205). In 1,139 articles published in AF&S from Volumes 1–41, more than 8 of the 10 (82%) first authorships are male. However, female first authors throughout the 41 volumes have a distinct increase. While less than 1 of the 10 first authors in Volumes 1–10 (9.3%) are women, the female representation for Volumes 33–41 are more than one in four (27.0%), with a just over 5% increase between each period (9.3% in Volumes 1–10, 14.8% in Volumes 11–21, 20.6% in Volumes 22–32, and 27.0% in Volumes 33–41).
The increase in female first authors is reflected in a similar although steeper increase in female coauthorships. However, the representation of female coauthors is higher for all four periods compared to the proportions of female first authors. The data in Table 4 show females make up less than one seventh of the coauthors in Volumes 1–10 whereas more than one third of the coauthors are women in Volumes 33–41.
Discipline/Field Range
The distribution of articles across the first authors’ discipline/field is presented in Table 5. The largest field/discipline is political science followed by sociology/social sciences, which together make up more than half of the articles of AF&S Volumes 1–41 and three of the five in the last period. In the three first periods, political science was considerably larger than sociology/social sciences; however, the latter is slightly larger than political science for Volumes 33–41. The third largest discipline/field for the entire period is history, yet with a distinct decline throughout the four periods. Hence, history even though it amounts to almost the same number of articles as international studies/relations for the total period of Volumes 1–41, it represents less than half the share of both international studies/relations and psychology/psychiatry in Volumes 33–41. In addition to the five disciplines/fields already mentioned, there has been a relatively constant proportion (20–25%) of articles spread across 24 different disciplines/fields: Defense/Strategic/War Studies, Management, Economics, Public Policy/Administration, National Security Affairs, Anthropology, Law, Health/Medicine, Philosophy, Social Work, Communication, Library Science, Educational Sciences/Pedagogy, English, Journalism, Mathematics, American Studies, Geography, Criminology, Engineering, Computer Science, Spanish, Religious Studies, and Literature. However, they represent relatively small proportions when looked upon separately and therefore grouped as other.
Affiliation
As discussed in the Introduction, establishing an international arena for interdisciplinary approaches within the field of military studies is one of the founding pillars of AF&S. Internationalization of scholarship, however, can be identified on several arenas and levels. In this article, for analytical purposes, we have chosen to focus at the global, national, and institutional levels.
On the global level, internationalization as a scope in relation to authorship–affiliation implies a desire within the AF&S community to reach out to different parts of the world. Consequently, this broadens the perspectives of the ongoing discourses as well as opens the stage for other thematic issues originating in relevant research on AF&S around the world. Considering that the IUS as the sponsor of AF&S is primarily a North American institution with biennial meetings in the United States and Canada, it is to be expected that it (North America) provides a substantial portion of the contributions relative to the rest of the world. Yet, with the aspiration of being an international arena for scholars on military studies, adding the fact that almost every armed conflict in the world resides outside of North America, there should be scholarly forces in other parts of the world with valuable insight on military issues driving the development of authorship–affiliation toward a greater global outreach.
A policy of internationalization and global outreach implies there is an ambition of reaching out to a significant range of contributors in a noteworthy mass of nations. However, bearing in mind the strong U.S. roots of the journal and the founding parents, we expect a high U.S. representation in the early years that gradually matures into a significantly higher proportion of non-U.S. contributors. More so, acknowledging the general fact that the U.S. scores relatively high in almost any era of academic publishing, and that the U.S. by far is the largest military power in the world, suggests that their influence on military studies still will be substantial in AF&S. Nevertheless, in essence, we anticipate a significant development toward a more proportionate level of authorship from other nations than the United States.
This leaves us with the institutional connection of the first authors in AF&S, which in this article is to be understood as the kind of institutional affiliation. Overall, we stay in tune with the typology laid out by Ender in his 2001 article. In general, we refer to academic versus nonacademic, public versus private sector, profit versus nonprofit, and U.S. versus non-U.S. institutions. More specifically, there is a bias in the categorization toward the U.S.-context based on it making up more than two thirds of the total articles published in the first 41 volumes. However, as we have pointed out in regard to both the global and national level of affiliation, we do believe that on the institutional level, there will be a tide-shift away from the United States toward the rest of the world presumably with European higher educational institutions at the forefront. That said, acknowledging the fact that presumably many of the non-U.S. authors in AF&S have participated in IUS events and as such have become acquainted with the IUS/AF&S community, there is an interesting issue of how this has stimulated institutional collaboration across nations, and if it can be witnessed through author and coauthorship in AF&S as a developmental trend. We do believe it can, and we anticipate that it is growing, but still limited.
Global Outreach
The data in Table 6 show a strong North American domination during the total period with 7 of the 10 (71.9%) first authorships. However, from a developmental perspective, it should be noticed that the proportion of this group only makes up just over every second article in Volumes 33–41. The reduction in North American authorships (77.9–52.7%) over the four identified time periods can first and foremost be explained by an increase in European (17.5–25.3%) and Asian (2.1–16.2%) first authorships. With respect to Oceania, Africa, and particularly Latin America, the representation of first authors is limited throughout the 41 volumes of AF&S.
National Distribution
The total number of countries represented with a first author is 45, but the U.S. dominates tremendously as expected, with 13 times as many contributions. Israel is second and no more than 11 countries have 10 or more articles thereafter (Table 7). The non-U.S. countries make up only small proportions when examined separately and are, as mentioned, led by Israel (5.3%), closely followed by the UK (4.6%) and Canada (3.0%). Although the numbers are small for other countries compared to the U.S., there are notable results and trends to highlight.
First, the total countries represented throughout the 41 volumes are as mentioned 45. Broken down into the four periods, the national distribution is 19, 20, 25, and 34 countries, respectively. The large increase in the last period is mainly due to the huge expansion in the number of European countries represented (see comment below).
Second, Israel and Turkey represent the second and eighth largest national contributions and comprise three of the four (76%) of the Asian articles in Table 6. Both countries also have had a distinct increase throughout the four periods. Israel had only 3 (1.1%) articles in Volumes 1–10, while they had 27 (9.1%) in Volumes 33–41, whereas Turkey had no articles in the two first periods compared to eight in both of the two last periods (2.9% in Volumes 22–32 and 2.7% in Volumes 33–41).
Third, no African country has more than seven first authorships in AF&S. Thus, no African nation is shown in Table 7. That said, South Africa (n = 7, 0.6%) and Nigeria (n = 6, 0.5%) account for more than 3 of the 4 (n = 13, 76%) African-affiliated articles in total and 9 of 10 (South Africa n = 7, Nigeria n = 6) in Volumes 33–41.
Fourth, based on the increase in European representation found in Table 6, it is surprising that Germany (n = 12; 4.3% in Volumes 1–10:n = 7; 2.4% in Volumes 33–41) and France (n = 11; 3.9% in Volumes 1–10:n = 3; 1.0% in Volumes 33–41), two of the largest European countries, both have had a relatively decrease in their representation from the first to the last period.
We see two trends for the European increase found in Table 6: First, Norway and Sweden in particular, and partly the Netherlands, are hardly represented in the first three periods but have had a noticeable increase in the number of articles in Volumes 33–41, which if we exclude the 17 articles from the UK, comprise 26 of the 55 (47.3%) European first-authored contributions in that period. And second, while there was a relatively stable number of European countries represented in the three first periods (11, 8, and 11, respectively), the number of European countries nearly doubled to 19 for Volumes 33–41.
The increased number for Europe can also be observed for other non-North American continents. Volumes 1–10 had seven contributions from countries outside of North America and Europe and were followed by 12 (Volumes 11–21), 13 (Volumes 22–32), and 15 (Volumes 33–41), respectively.
The increase in the number of authors per article (Table 2) and the number of contributing countries (Table 7) is also reflected in a notable trend: a growing number of multiauthored articles with authors from more than one country (Table 8). The first example of such an article is found in Volume 4 (Cotton, Crook, & Pinch, 1978, pp. 365–390). In Volumes 1–10, only 4.4% (3 of the 68) of the articles with two authors or more had authors from two countries or more compared to 18.9% (24 of the 127) in Volumes 33–41—pointing toward increased international cross-national collaboration via the IUS.
Multiauthorship With Contribution From More Than One Country by Armed Forces & Society Volumes 1–41.
Institutional Connection
The data in Table 9 show the type of institution the first authors are affiliated with and reflect the anticipation of an American domination in that three of the four largest categories are connected to the United States. Furthermore, the numbers show that among those three types of U.S. institutions, the private universities (21.8–8.1%) and the governmental agencies (16.4–9.1%) have had a relatively larger decrease in first authorship compared to the public universities (33.2–28.4%). With regard to the increase in first authorship outside of the United States, presented in Tables 6 and 7, from an institutional perspective, they are predominantly to be explained by an increase in the foreign university category (15.0–40.2%). In fact, seen from a developmental perspective, this category has become the largest institutional contributor to AF&S in Volumes 33–41 (n = 119, 40.2%), thus, surpassing U.S. public and private universities combined (n = 108, 36%).
Type of Institutional Affiliation by Armed Forces & Society Volumes 1–41.
Through Volumes 1–41, we have identified 479 different institutions among the 1,139 first authorships. As many as four of the five institutions (n = 379, 79.1%) are represented with only one or two first authorships. Correspondingly, as displayed in Table 10, no more than 1 of the 20 institutions (n = 20, 4.2%) have 10 or more first authorships and only the U.S. Military Academy (n = 37) and University of Maryland (n = 26) having more than 20 each during the time period of the 41 volumes. Five of the 20 are situated outside of the U.S. Developmentally, the numbers are overall small. For this reason, one need to be careful of reading too much into the evolutionary path other than recognizing the factual situation. That said, there are some trends and issues that should be commented in relation to reading the list as a sort of institutional affiliation impact factor on the development of AF&S.
First Authorships Across Volumes 1–41 Among the Institutions With ≥10 First Authorships.
First, even though an institution may be among the top contributors throughout the 41 volumes, their first-authorship distribution across the four periods may be uneven. Thus, the numbers display institutions that have had significant declines such as the universities of both Maryland and Chicago along with Naval Postgraduate School. 3 Reading this, we need to consider not having registered institutional affiliation of coauthors to the first author. We know Maryland, among others, have had some. We do not know their numbers or relative contribution to the article. On the other hand, there is the opposite case of institutions that have had substantial increase during the four periods such as the Netherlands Defense Academy, King’s College (UK), and Bar-Ilan University (Israel).
Second, one should bear in mind that the impact of institutions such as the University of Maryland on AF&S authorship is probably larger than registered authorship affiliations since many authors outside of Maryland have a close collegial relationship or have even been students at Maryland but were not officially affiliated to the university at the time of publishing. This of course goes for other institutions as well. The relative absence of Chicago-based authors in the three latest periods is an example to this fact. 4
Third, despite an institution scoring high on first authorship, the relatively low numbers in some cases camouflage the impact of a single author. For instance, all 10 contributions affiliated with the Maryland Army National Guard are in fact one person—James Griffith. Which of course is praiseworthy in and of itself. But it speaks little of the impact on the institutional level. And then there is the opposite case—a person represented as a coauthor on several papers from the same institution.
Discussion and Conclusion
The scope of this study has been to identify developmental trends of A&A for the official journal of the IUS on AF&S, covering 1,139 articles in Volumes 1–41, from 1974 up through 2015. The intention has been to use these data to ascertain what AF&S has become over the four decades, as a consequence of whom the authors are and where they come from in relation to the stated ambition of being interdisciplinary and international in scope.
Based on the developmental trend of acceptance/rejection versus submission ratio (Table 11), there is sound evidence for arguing that the overall evolutionary trend of the journal is that its value as a well-regarded venue for academic publishing in the broader field of military studies is steadily increasing among authors. Emphasized by a significant drop in the acceptance rate from 1 of the 2 (48.35%) articles submitted in 2006 to slightly over 1 of the 10 (12.68%) in 2015 (Shields & Kunsman, 2015). Further, the submissions doubled in that period, while the number of accepted articles had a significant decline. That said, it should be noted that this trend underscores a general trend within academic publishing of growth: More academics, in more countries, submit more papers to more journals, which in sum lead to more publications (Ware & Mabe, 2015, pp. 27–30). Add to this, two significant wars involving a coalition of nations beginning in 2001 and 2003, respectfully, on the heels of Ender’s (2001) initial study of AF&S. 5
Manuscript Submission–Acceptance Rate as Presented by the Journal’s Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Assistant During the Armed Forces & Society Editorial Board Meeting at the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces & Society Meetings in 2015 in Chicago, IL (Shields & Kunsman, 2015).
aAs of October 1, 2015.
Authorship
A closer look at the authorship descriptors presented in this study (author–article ratio, male–female ratio, and authors field or discipline) shows that there are definitive developmental changes to be identified.
First, in regard to the author–article ratio, Ender (2001) predicted in his first A&A article in 2001 that “…multiple authorship will probably become the norm rather than exception in AF&S because this is the direction in scholarship in general” (p. 634). This update suggests we should support Ender’s prediction, even though there still is a majority of 7 of the 10 articles published for the entire period that is single authored. Nevertheless, the growth trend is clear toward a substantial increase in multiple authorships with close to every second paper published in Volumes 33–41 being multiauthored.
Second, in relation to the male–female authorship ratio, Ender (2001) found in his study of the first 25 volumes that the “…sex configuration of authorship across the 25-volume history of the journal is fairly consistent” (p. 628). In the conclusion, nuance is provided, where he anticipates AF&S holding promise for female authors by stating “While a gap between male and female authors persists and multiple authorship is low, both show some movement in recent years—more women, an increase in co-authorship, and solo women authors” (Ender, 2001, p. 634). Our developmental follow-up confirms such a promise. We find that there is a clearly visible increase in female authorship, which includes both first and coauthorships. There is 3 times as many female first authors in the last versus first defined period (n = 26 vs. n = 80) and 5 times as many female coauthors (n = 14 vs. n = 75).
Third, concerning the discipline or field range of first author Ender showed that “[a]uthors identifying themselves as political scientists or political economists and sociologists or social scientists account for almost one-half of the first authors (29.7% and 16.4% respectively)” (Ender, 2001, p. 633). In this update, we find that the developmental trend is somewhat more nuanced. We see that first authors associated with political science during the four identified time periods have had a rather stable contribution of approximately 30% (with a peek in Volumes 11–21 with 35%). On the other hand, articles with a connection to sociology/social sciences display a U-curve development during the four periods (22.9%, 16.5%, 23.2%, and 30.4%, respectively). In fact, sociology/social science associated articles have had a substantial and steady increase over the last three periods and have in fact grown to an acceptance rate that it surpassed political science for the first time in the last quarter. Another interesting and noteworthy development is the significant decline in the last two periods concerning history-related articles published. From a steady 10% plus in the two first periods, it is now reduced to merely 3.7% (1.4 article per volume on average). Where did the military historians go?
Affiliation
When investigating first authors affiliation, Ender (2001) published findings in the following three categories: distribution of country affiliation, distribution of U.S. state affiliation, and type of institutional affiliation. He reveals that during the first 25 volumes of AF&S, U.S. first-authored articles made up 8 of the 10 articles, which in effect showed that U.S. affiliation was highly dominant within all categories.
Considering our developmental approach and the journals scope of internationalization, we have slightly altered Ender’s original categorization so as to better facilitate for the description of possible trends of internationalization on different levels. Thus, the U.S. hegemony remains, but it is now displayed as an origin for tracking a more global representation. Hence, we trace this international outreach on three levels: the global, national, and institutional level.
First, in relation to the global level, we did find a momentous trend of internationalization that was especially strong in the latest two periods of the journal. So the data show that the journal has reached a strong representation from both Europe and Asia, while Oceania, Africa, and especially Latin America are scarce.
Second, regarding internationalization on the national level, we found as Ender did 15 years ago that contributions with a first author with U.S. affiliation is still the dominant force of the journal. However, when we take a closer look at the developmental path of national distribution of first authorship, it clearly displays a considerable movement toward a substantial international outreach (every second article in Volumes 33–41 had a first author with a national affiliation outside of the United States). So the increase in non-U.S. contributions is due both to the fact that there is a continuous flow of manuscripts from nations previously not published in the AF&S and that there are some nations (i.e., Israel, UK, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Turkey) where contributions have had a substantial increase over the four periods. Multiauthorship should also be mentioned here as an important contributor to an internationalization of authorship affiliation, as we see a substantial increase in international multiauthorship on the article level with almost every fifth article in the fourth period being coauthored by authors from more than one country—showing rich cross-national fertilization.
Finally, with respect to first authors institutional affiliation, Ender found in his 2001 study that the three largest categories, which were all U.S.-based public universities (n = 251, 37.5%), private universities (n = 125, 18.7%), and government organizations (n = 120, 17.9%), comprised almost three quarters of every first authorship in the first 25 volumes combined (n = 496, 74%). Foreign universities were the fourth largest category (n = 102, 15.2) in the same period (Ender, 2001, p. 632). Our study shows that it is the same four institutional categories that top the list. Yet, we also find a dramatic change in representation among these four groups when we apply a developmental perspective: this is particularly visible in the fourth period. Here, the three mentioned U.S. categories have declined to less than half of the total first authorships (n = 135, 45%), with the U.S. public and private universities together amounting to just over one third (n = 108, 36%), actually leaving the non-U.S. universities as the top type of institutional contributor with 4 of 10 first authorships in Volumes 33–41 (n = 119, 40.2%).
A closer look at which organizational institutions are the top contributors, we found that only 20 of the 479 different institutions identified had more than 10 first authorship, and only the U.S. Military Academy (n = 37) and the University of Maryland (n = 26) had more than 20 each during the total period of Volumes 1–41. The numbers broken down by periods are too small and require caution before reading too much into them. Still, on a general level, we see that only the University of Chicago has had more than 12 first authorships in any of the four periods (this was in the first period). Additionally, Chicago had only three articles published in the latter three periods underscoring the main finding that the distribution of institutional first authorship is unevenly distributed over the course of the four periods. In fact, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is the only institution with more than three published first-authored articles in all four periods (7, 10, 11, and 9, respectively).
Suggestions for Further Research
This study aimed at providing a follow-up and update to Ender’s A&A article from 2001 by fielding a developmental approach to the evolution of AF&S as an interdisciplinary and international venue for publishing military studies. As with Ender’s single-authored article, our contribution is primarily quantitative in scope, elaboration, and value. Our contribution to the further development of the journal is foremost one of descriptive value. The overall design of descriptors and emphasize on a developmental approach over four time periods is better suited for a broader rather than an in-depth analyses. For example, where do studies go not published in AF&S? As such, we believe there is more to be done on the issue of A&A in AF&S. We would especially encourage and endorse initiatives providing a more qualitative analysis to gain greater depth on these topics. To date, only a few studies exist, the majority being unpublished master theses (Bartlett, 2015; Bowman, 2005; Brady, 2010; P. Camacho, 2010; P. R. Camacho & Atwood, 2007; Olldashi, 2002; Sexton, 2003). One particular issue that we believe to be valuable for the further development of AF&S is an analysis with the aim of thematically categorizing the articles published in AF&S so as to identify its most common or central discourses. Such a study would help authors to better grasp and recognize the forefronts and efforts already laid down within a certain (sub)field. More so, we believe it would provide a clearer view of the journals core issues and as such better facilitate for more ongoing debates.
Another relevant study would be to examine the distribution of articles in relation to the stated scope that “[i]ts articles may adopt an interdisciplinary, comparative, or historical perspective, use qualitative or quantitative methods, and range from policy-relevant to theoretical themes” (AF&S Homepage, 2016). And finally, we would encourage a study that took a closer look into the demographics of the submission versus rejection rate (what are the numbers, who are they, and where do they come from), with the aim of identifying if there are academic environments that are not able to break through into the international arena.
In sum, our study provides a developmental narrative of A&A in AF&S from the beginning in 1974 and up through 2015 of continuously higher author–article ratio, an increased female authorship ratio, and a wider range of disciplines from more continents, countries, and institutions. Plus, there is evidence of a trend of cross-national coauthorship. The overall findings convey the foundational statement and envisage put forward by Morris Janowitz and others regarding the establishment of an interdisciplinary and international approach for AF&S.
Footnotes
Authors’ Note
All statements expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion or policies of any of their affiliated institutions, civilian, military, governmental or other. Hence, the views of the authors are their own and do not purport to represent the views of neither the Norwegian Defence University College nor the U.S. Military Academy, the Royal Norwegian Armed Forces nor the U.S. Department of the Army, the Norwegian Ministry of Defence nor the U.S. Department of Defense, nor the Norwegian and U.S. Government.
Acknowledgment
The authors wish to thank David Segal and Jay Williams for their insights on an earlier version of the article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.