This report presents a broad summary pertaining to submissions, review board composition and publication process of the Journal of Quantitative Methods since its inception in August 2017.

JQM aims to share scientific knowledge by publishing basic and applied research on data innovations in the fields of statistics, business and economics through exploring new horizons of thoughts, ideas, research techniques, tools and methods. Special attention is paid to statistical modeling and analytical techniques employed in each of the manuscript received for publication. We believe that a sound theory also needs empirical evidences, and for this, our focus is to accept only those articles where statistical models are stated with clear assumptions and parameters of the models are estimated with a proper justification of the estimation method.

As the editor of JQM, I am mainly responsible for screening the submitted manuscripts, assigning relevant reviewers and making acceptance or rejection decision based upon the double-blind peer reviews. Our main concern is to always maintain the quality of the material submitted for possible publication in the JQM. Our team ensures integrity and maintains high quality by selecting the best of the best articles. It is worth mentioning that the editorial team bears no liability for statements of fact or opinion/s made by the authors.

Figure 1 and figure 2 below depict the distribution of issue-wise manuscript submissions and acceptance rate since the launch of the first issue of the Journal.

Figure 1: Issue-wise Manuscript Submissions

Figure 1 indicates a substantial increase from 34 submissions for Vol 1(1) to 87 submissions for Vol 3(1) which amounts to a 362% increase over the period. It is to be noted that JQM receives submissions from many countries including Algeria, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Germany, India, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Tanzania, Turkey, UK, USA and Zimbabwe.

Figure 2: Acceptance Rate for JQM Submissions

The acceptance rate of manuscripts submitted to JQM is shown in figure 2. As can be seen, the acceptance rate of publication has shown a continuous decline over the time which is mainly due to a gradual increase in submissions over time. Based on the submissions data for the past four issues, it is worth mentioning that the average acceptance rate of the JQM was around 10% while the average desk rejection rate was 53%.

The manuscripts which are shortlisted in the desk review are sent for evaluation by three experts (one local and two foreign) and their comments/suggestions are communicated to authors for possible revisions. Based on the review cycle of the manuscript submitted for the past four issues, table 1 shows the average number of days it takes at various stages of the review. The summary of the review cycle (in days) is presented in table 1. As shown in table 1, on average, it takes around 193 days for a manuscript to pass through the complete publication process.

We have a team of highly qualified reviewers belonging to various fields of specialization and are affiliated with prestigious institutions across the globe. Given below is the chart regarding the composition of JQM review board by different regions.

Figure 3: Distribution of JQM Review Board by Region

As illustrated in figure 3, JQM review board includes 146 members; out of which 62 are from Pakistan and the remaining 84 are from around 40 developed as well as developing economics of the world.  We are thankful to our advisory, editorial and review board members for their continuous support to meet the deadlines and to achieve this milestone.

Profound Regards,

Sajid Ali (2017-2018)
Editor JQM
Department of Statistics
Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.