The editorial team is pleased to release the first issue of volume 43. It embodies a special issue on national security and infectious disease based on a call for papers issued in late 2022 entitled “COVID-19, International Relations, and Security Studies: Has the Pandemic Altered the Study and Practice of International Security.” The collection of articles includes theoretical arguments from Kosal (Reference Kosal2024) and McDermott (Reference McDermott2024) on the impacts of disease on international security. It also includes articles from Stevens et al. (Reference Stevens, Banducci and Horvath2024) and Topping et al. (Reference Topping, Hosny, Hunter and Yang2024) regarding the role authoritarianism plays in response to crises of disease. As well, Walker and Cramer (Reference Walker and Cramer2024) examine the link between disease and conflict, particularly examining civil unrest in Africa. Guest editor Craig Albert (Reference Albert2024) provides an insightful synthesis of the articles in his introduction to the special issue. The editors thank Professor Albert for his expert and professional development of this special issue. The remaining pages of the issue include an article by Gregg (Reference Gregg2024) regarding authoritarian communities and bioethics as well as research by Nam and Sawyer (Reference Nam and Sawyer2024) on how genetic narratives relate to racism.

In review of the journal in 2023, PLS marked its forty-second year of publication. It received original submissions from 21 countries across a wide range of regions, including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America. Thirty-seven percent of original submissions came from corresponding authors at US institutions and 14 percent from corresponding authors at European institutions. The editorial team rendered the first decision on manuscripts in a bit less than 45 days on average, a rate that has been consistent since 2021. Acceptance rates varied by manuscript type, but approximately one in four Research Articles and Research Notes that received decisions in 2023 were accepted. Of the accepted Research Articles and Research Notes, about 70 percent were published Open Access at no cost to the authors, and about 50 percent earned an Open Science badge for open data and/or open materials.

The editorial team could not have evaluated manuscripts and issued decisions without its reviewers. These scholars generously shared their expertise and time to advise the editors and to provide constructive comments to authors on behalf of the authors and their research and, more broadly, the scientific endeavor. The editorial team thanks these 64 colleagues who provided peer reviews in 2023:

* PLS Editorial Board Member

As indicated in the table of reviewers, many members of the PLS Editorial Board reviewed manuscripts in 2023. PLS is fortunate to have an Editorial Board that actively contributes to the journal in many ways. The editorial team extends its gratitude to the following colleagues, whose Editorial Board terms concluded in 2023: Brian Boutwell, Ingrid Haas, Kevin Hunt, Sverker Jagers, Glenn McGee, Thomas Murray, Thomas Preston, and Julie Seaman. Their support and advice are appreciated and will be greatly missed. In turn, we welcome three new Editorial Board members with three-year terms: John Alford of Rice University, with expertise in biopolitics; Benjamin Gregg of the University of Texas at Austin, with expertise in bioethics; and Lasse Laustsen of Aarhus University, with expertise in biopolitics. The editorial team looks forward to working with these excellent scholars. Interested readers can find the full list of PLS Editorial Board members at the journal’s Cambridge Core website at cambridge.org/pls in the Journal Information pages.

Attention to the journal continued to grow in 2023. Article downloads from Cambridge Core, JSTOR, and ProQuest reached approximately 100,000 in each of 2021, 2022, and 2023, up from about 61,000 in 2018 and 63,000 in 2019. It is worth noting that does not include downloads from EBSCO or BioOne, which suggests total downloads are much larger. Table 1 shows the journal’s CiteScore, a citation-based performance metric calculated from Scopus data, has increased resulting in an improvement in its ranking among peer journals. Clearly, PLS articles are noticed and cited.

Table 1. CiteScore results

* most recent data -- data not available yet

PLS is the result of extensive support and goodwill from many sources. In addition to our previously recognized reviewers, the editorial team thanks the scholars who trust us to evaluate and disseminate their research. Further, we thank Cambridge University Press, the journal’s publisher, and the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences, the journal’s scholarly home, for their steadfast support of PLS and the scientific endeavor.