Submitted by Elizabeth Radcliffe and Kenneth Winkler

July 2004

This is the annual report of the editors of Hume Studies to the journal’s Editorial Board, to the Executive Committee of the Hume Society, and to its subscribers.

 Subscriptions 

According to Pamela Swope of the Philosophy Documentation Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, which maintains our institutional database, there are 257 paid institutional subscribers for the volume now in production.  Our remaining subscribers are individual members of the Hume Society.  Membership figures are available from the Secretary/Treasurer. 

Production 

We continue to use the Philosophy Documentation Center as our typesetter and Malloy Incorporated of Ann Arbor, Michigan as our printer.  Production continues to lag behind our cover dates, but we are hopeful that issues will be appearing about on time as of the November 2004 issue. 

November 2003 is now in press; the final "book proofs" have been returned to Malloy and the scheduled press date is August 3.  April 2004 is fully assembled and in-house copy-editing (by Baylee Suskin, a Wellesley College graduate working under Kenneth P. Winkler's supervision) is nearly complete.  (Baylee's wages are being paid by a grant from Wellesley College.)  April 2004  should be in typesetting before the end of August and appear in the early fall.  Most of the material for November 2004 (including a symposium on Louis Loeb's new book, featuring Michael Williams, Frederick Schmitt, and Erin Kelly, with a reply by Loeb) is now on hand.  That issue should appear before the end of the year. 

Finances 

Last year’s report predicted that the institutional subscription hike of $10 per library subscriber and the extra $2500 of support annually from the Hume Society would generate an income of up to $18,525, which would be more than adequate for regular yearly expenses. This prediction was correct. We have enough money on hand now to cover production expenses for the Nov. 2003 issue, currently in press, and the April 2004 issue. If Hume Studies catches up to its regular production schedule, which requires us to cover the production costs of three issues in one fiscal year, we would have to watch expenses carefully, but the fund is gaining gradually. As we have mentioned in other reports, Kenneth Winkler covers our typesetting expenses with a grant from Wellesley College. This same grant has recently allowed him to hire a student to help with typescript editing. 

Our income and expenses for 2003-2004 are summarized in the following table: 

 Submissions and Acceptances

 Since last July, Hume Studies has reached decisions on thirty-three submissions.  Of these, seven were accepted, for an acceptance rate of 21%.  (This acceptance rate is lower than usual, but last year's rate, because of an unusually large number of successful resubmissions, was unusually high at 63%.  Since we began receiving papers in the summer of 1999, our acceptance rate has been 29%.)  We are expecting that at least two of the rejected papers will be revised and resubmitted. 

Of the thirty-three submissions processed since last year, six were by women (of which two were accepted) and ten were by scholars outside North America (of which one was accepted).  Of the nineteen papers still at various points in the evaluation process, three are by women and five are by scholars outside North America.  

 Editors and Editorial Board

 Donald L. M. Baxter began work as our new Book Review Editor as of August 1, 2003.  We are in the process of updating our Editorial Board, in consultation with the Executive Committee.