REPORT (APRIL, 2021, ONLINE)
Savas Patsalidis, Editor-in-chief
Great news from SCOPUS:
The moment I started writing this report an email has landed in my inbox saying that our journal has been accepted by Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. It was not easy. We had to meet a number of criteria, to get here:
use of abstracts
keywords
detailed publication ethics and publication malpractice statement
content relevant for and readable by an international audience
regularly published (no delays or interruption),
readability of articles
academic contribution to the field
quality of Journal home page, among many others.
In the next three months the Source Collection Management department will initiate the indexing process for Scopus.
That said, back to business: In the last two years the volume of contributions has been steadily increasing. A telling example is the last two issues of CS/Sc which carried 130! contributions from 50 countries, an amount that looks all the more impressive if one considers the situation created by the pandemic.
We are now mid-way towards our next, equally bulky, summer issue (#23, 2021) with a special topic (Theatre Criticism in the Age of Self-Isolation and Social Distancing) that explores operations of performance during unstable conditions marked by socio-political, environmental, economic and further challenges.
The second special topic for 2021, Oral/Aural Dramaturgies, scheduled for publication in December 2021, focuses on the increased interest of theatre-makers in speech and sound as a starting point for making theatre and performance.
READERSHIP/VISITS
The journal’s readershipcontinues to increase, especially among young scholars and researchers. That was one of our major targets from the beginning. We think the effort is paying off. Each new issue is opening up new markets for us.
The journal averages about21.000-24.000 visits per month. In terms of readership, the special topics enjoy the lion’s share.
Our largest readership comes from the US. Second comes UK.
The people who have thus far visited our site in the last two years come from 226 countries (Northern Mariana Islands, Tonga, Marshall Islands, Sao Tome & Principe, Vanuatu and Micronesia, among many others).
A page that is constantly among the top choices of our readers is the Festival Guide, which is renewed, enriched, and updated in every new issue in order to keep pace with what is going on in the festival circuit around the world.
ECONOMICS
2000 euros for two proofreaders
1000 euros for my assistant
3000 euros for the webmaster.
Total: 6000 euros (annual)
As of 2019 Ian Herbert is helping us with the proofreading for free. That means, Critical Stages spends 1000 euro less.
For a good number of issues the upper part of the journal’s front page hosted the banner of Illinois University (its Theatre Department). 35.000 dollars was the total amount allocated to our journal!! We owe many thanks to our colleague Jeffrey Eric Jenkins and his department for being so generous. We also owe thanks to JIN XING Dance Theatre (and Peng Tao who had the idea) for their significant financial support of 10.000 euro.
CS/Sc and conferences
CS/Sc successfully hosted the first two online conferences of IATC/AITC moderated by Ivan Medenica in June and September, 2020, respectively. It will now be hosting its third conference, this time on Tadashi Suzuki scheduled for April the 16th, 2021.
Acknowledgements
I would like to extend special thanks to Jeffrey Eric Jenkins (Executive Editor), Don Rubin (Managing Director and Book Review Editor), Yana Meerzon (Essay Section Editor), Matti Linnavuori (Performance Review Editor), Ivan Medenica (Conference Section Editor), contributors and people who help bring CS/Sc to life.