The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies just received its 2020 annual report from Pennsylvania State University Press. This report does not count print subscriptions. But the news is wonderful. As the only scholarly, university-press published, interdisciplinary, double-blind peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of Ayn Rand and her times, last year—our twentieth anniversary year—gave us 17,907 requests for articles from JSTOR alone and 4,302 from Project MUSE for a grand total of 22,209 global article requests!

To put this into perspective, this journal began in 1999 with only a couple of hundred subscribers. The collaboration of JARS with Penn State Press began in 2013. That first year, our total electronic downloads were 7,922. By 2019, that total had increased to 14,515. The majority of the requests had come from the United States. Today, a strong 48% of the 22,209 article requests still come from the United States. But the majority of requests now stretch from North and South America to Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, encompassing nearly 130 countries.

This journal remains a trailblazing periodical, welcoming perspectives from all over the intellectual spectrum. I want to extend my deepest appreciation to everyone who has requested even a single article, let alone over 20,000 to mark last year’s 20th anniversary celebration.

The July 2021 issue will be submitted to Penn State Press in less than a month, to kick off the beginning of our third decade.

The best is yet to come …