Frank Fabozzi, editor, The Journal of Portfolio Management Peter Bernstein has described the history of the journal

elsewhere on this website. As editor, I will restrict my remarks to my view of the journals contributions to the investment management process and to the criteria that I use for deciding which of the more than 375 papers submitted to the journal each year we should publish. The criteria by which journals are evaluated differ from one circumstance to another. The most common way to evaluate a journals contribution is to see how it ranks relative to other journals. The problem with evaluating specialized journals such as JPM is that, in studies that rank journals, they are lumped in with all finance journals (and often with economics journals that do not have finance as their specialty). Thus, there is no clear measure of JPMs ranking with respect to journals specializing in asset management. Despite this limitation, there is enough evidence to assess, based on studies that rank finance journals in general, the unique contribution of JPM. Researchers use three methods to rank journals: (1) the frequency with which articles in the journal are cited, (2) an index of the prestige of the authors institutional affiliation, and (3) reader surveys. There is a considerable body of literature describing each of these methodologies and their limitations. Here is a summary of JPMs ranking among finance journals using these three methodologies. A study by Chen and Huang (Ranking Finance Journals Using Author Affiliation Index), presented at the Financial Management Association (FMA) 2006 Annual Conference, reported that when academic contributors from the top 60 universities are considered, JPM ranks 24th. (Practitioner contributions do not count toward this measure, and JPM draws heavily on practitioner authors. See my further comments below.) A 2005 study by Oltheten, Theoharakis, and Travlos (Faculty Perceptions and Readership Patterns of Finance Journals: A Global View), published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, ranked JPM 13th. A study published in Financial Practice and Education in 2000 by Chan, Kok, and Pan, using citations as the ranking criteria (Citation-Based Finance Journal Ranking: An Update), ranked JPM 14th. In a study published in 1999 in the Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting entitled A Note on Perceptions of Finance Journal Quality by Borde and Cheney, JPM was ranked 11th. JPM was ranked 9th in a study by Borokhovioch, Bricker, Brunarski, and Simkins, published in the Journal of Finance in 1995.

 The Zivney-Reichenstein 1994 study (The Pecking Order in Finance Journals), published in Financial Practice and Education, ranked JPM 9th. Top academicians have published in JPM, including four recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences: Robert Engle, Harry Markowitz, Franco Modigliani, and William Sharpe, as well as several others who are on the short list of future Nobel Prize candidates. In addition to the contributions by academicians, an important feature of JPM is that leading practitioners contribute. Below is a summary of the contributions for the issues from Winter 2008 to Fall 2010 by academicians and practitioners:
Fall 2010 Summer 2010 Spring 2010 Winter 2010 Fall 2009 Summer 2009 Spring 2009 Winter 2009 Fall 2008 Summer 2008 Winter 2008 Academicians 2 4 4 2 4 3 4 1 4 5 5 Practitioners 7 7 5 8 6 6 6 8 5 5 5 Coauthored by Both 1 2 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 1 1

I indicated earlier that one method used to rank journals is by author affiliation. In those studies, the affiliation is by university. This perspective gives no credit to practitioner authors, no matter how good they are. Given the large percentage of JPM contributors who are not affiliated with a university, it is no surprise that JPM was ranked 24th when the author-affiliation index is used, but ranked far better based both on a citation index and on surveys. This difference in ranking reflects the importance of practitioner contributions by practitioners (noting that the majority of our practitioner authors hold doctorates from the major universities of the world). Thus, if someone comes up with a doctoral degree index for ranking journals, we expect JPM to rank highly. Let me turn to the types of papers we publish. The aim and objective identified by most journals is to publish papers that will make an important contribution to the finance literature. JPM is no different in this regard. However, JPM does not seek to publish the best papers in finance, per se. Instead, it seeks to publish those that will have the greatest positive impact on the practice of finance. Our focus is on important contributions that will help chief investment officers, portfolio managers and analysts, trustees, and consultants make the best decisions. We receive some outstanding submissions that could be candidates for leading journals in financial economic theory or mathematical finance or financial econometrics, but they are simply not interesting for JPM readers. Also, we tend not to publish papers that are oriented to the retail investor. For example, we receive a large number of submissions dealing with the evaluation of mutual funds or that would otherwise be of interest to

mutual fund investors. Our readers are managers of mutual funds, not investors in those funds. So, we rarely publish papers on mutual funds except to the extent that they deal with managing those funds. For example, trustees of mutual funds spend a good deal of time grappling with performance evaluation issues, such as the relative merits of using benchmarks versus peer groups. Mutual fund services push for evaluation based on peer groups, which can easily be understood by retail investors. In the Winter 2008 issue, we published an article on how peer group benchmarks can be constructed. In the Spring 2008 issue, we published an article on the performance characteristics of individually-managed versus team-managed mutual funds, a topic that is helpful in looking at broader problem of team versus individual approaches for asset management in general, not just mutual funds. Likewise, we receive the greatest number of papers on hedge funds. Although we have published a good number of hedge fund papers over the past five years, we are no longer interested in such papers. A sister publication, The Journal of Alternative Investments, is the leading authoritative journal for hedge fund research and has established itself as a highly respected journal in academia. Roughly 10% of the papers submitted each year are on highly quantitative papers, typically involving a wide range of asset allocation models. Such papers are more suitable for a theoretical finance journal or an applied operations research journal. The submission process for a paper is as follows. First, I screen a paper for relevance as mentioned above. Second, papers that are relevant are sent to Editorial Advisory Board members for review. I target three months for this stage in the review process. Papers that are rejected within a shorter period are often not accompanied by a detailed review. For papers that receive favorable consideration, the referees provide detailed reports suggesting how to improve the paper to make it acceptable for publication. For a paper that is ultimately published, the typical time between submission and acceptance is less than seven months. The time between acceptance and publication depends on (1) the backlog of accepted papers and (2) the topic. The topic is a factor because I try to cover a wide range of topics in every issue. So, if there are a good number of papers on asset allocation accepted, I try not to schedule more than two for any one issue. I hope I have provided clear answers to some of the questions that have been posed by authors and readers regarding The Journal of Portfolio Management policies, procedures, and quality rankings.