Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Brian J. Phillips, of the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics.
What are the best International Relations journals? How do we know if one journal is better than another? And how should this affect your decision about where to send a manuscript?
I recently worked on a ranking of IR journals at the behest of an institution, and this blog post shares some of the information I learned in the process. This might be helpful for graduate students and junior faculty still getting a feel for where to send manuscripts. A number of questions came up during the process, and while they perhaps can never be fully resolved, I’ll leave them here for your consideration.
Scholars publish in journals for a variety of reasons. Most fundamentally, it is done to communicate with the community for the purpose of advancing scientific knowledge.
Academic publishing is also a way, to a large degree the way, that a scholar shows her or his value – to the department, the university, and the discipline. For those of us hoping to keep our jobs, or move on to better jobs, where we publish is essential.
This post focuses on article publications, as opposed to books or chapters. How do our peers evaluate our articles? The content of an article might have certain intrinsic value – a genuine contribution independently of where it is published – but it is much easier for committees to evaluate an article based on the prestige of the journal in which it was published.
Surveys and citation indexes
There are two primary ways to order journals: surveys and citation indexes. Regarding surveys, the Teaching, Research, and International Policy project surveys IR scholars regularly to get their opinions on a host of issues, including journal prestige.
Below are the results of the 2011 survey, the most recent. Scholars were asked to list the four journals that publish articles with the greatest influence in IR (page 52 of the report). Other surveys rank Political Science journals generally, which often include IR journals, and some examples include McLean et al. 2009 and Giles and Garand 2007.
| TRIPS rank | Journal |
| 1 | International Organization |
| 2 | International Studies Quarterly |
| 3 | International Security |
| 4 | Foreign Affairs |
| 5 | APSR |
| 6 | World Politics |
| 7 | European Journal of International Relations |
| 8 | Journal of Conflict Resolution |
| 9 | Foreign Policy |
| 10 | Review of International Studies |
| 11 | Millennium: Journal of International Studies |
| 12 | AJPS |
| 13 | International Affairs |
| 14 | Security Studies |
| 15 | Review of International Political Economy |
| 16 | Journal of Peace Research |
| 17 | International Studies Review |
| 18 | International Relations |
| 19 | Comparative Politics |
| 20 | Global Governance |
One issue that might jump out at readers is the inclusion of non-peer-reviewed publications: Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. It’s not clear that FA and FP are directly comparable to double blind peer-reviewed journals because the publication process is so different.
An additional issue with this list is that because it is a global survey, some scholars might not be familiar with journals published in different regions. For example, some U.S. scholars might not be familiar with all of the European journals. This speaks to regional differences, and that scholars often communicate regionally more than globally.
(All of the journals discussed in this blog post are in English, and come from the developed world – important issues, but perhaps beyond the scope of this humble post.)
Regarding citation indexes, one of the most commonly used is the Thomson-Reuters Journal Citation Reports. There are various metrics, and the table below uses the two-year Impact Factor, which is basically the number of times the average article in the journal is cited in the following two years. (For a helpful Duck post on Thomson-Reuters rankings, see here.)
| Impact Factor | Journal | |
| 1 | 3.916 | American Political Science Review |
| 2 | 3.025 | World Politics |
| 3 | 2.98 | International Organization |
| 4 | 2.756 | American Journal of Political Science |
| 5 | 2.333 | International Security |
| 6 | 2.237 | Journal of Conflict Resolution |
| 7 | 1.98 | Journal of Peace Research |
| 8 | 1.537 | World Development |
| 9 | 1.536 | British Journal of Political Science |
| 10 | 1.478 | Journal of Politics |
| 11 | 1.381 | International Political Sociology |
| 12 | 1.352 | European Journal of International Relations |
| 13 | 1.308 | Journal of Common Market Studies |
| 14 | 1.265 | International Studies Quarterly |
| 15 | 1.118 | Review of International Organizations |
| 16 | 1.11 | Review of International Studies |
| 17 | 1.097 | Human Rights Quarterly |
| 18 | 1.039 | Review of International Political Economy |
| 19 | 0.915 | Terrorism and Political Violence |
| 20 | 0.902 | Cooperation and Conflict |
| 21 | 0.864 | Security Studies |
| 22 | 0.826 | Conflict Management and Peace Science |
| 23 | 0.74 | International Studies Review |
| 24 | 0.7 | International Interactions |
| 25 | 0.691 | Millennium: Journal of International Studies |
| 26 | 0.65 | Studies in Comp. and Intl. Development |
| 27 | 0.613 | Survival |
| 28 | 0.533 | International Relations |
| 29 | 0.487 | Studies in Conflict and Terrorism |
| 30 | 0.435 | Global Governance |
The list above is ordered according to Impact Factors, but the decision of which journals to include was my decision for the purposes of this blog post. The list is probably incomplete, but it represents an effort to include many of the well-known IR journals. Some might argue that general journals (APSR, AJPS, BJPS, JOP) should not be on an IR list, but of course these journals contain important IR articles.
This indicates a central challenge of rankings with citation indexes: Which journals should be on a list of IR journals? Impact factors can help order journals, but not decided the contents of the list. Thomson-Reuters has a somewhat odd idea of IR, so individuals or institutions using their rankings might need to add or remove journals. This is discussed more in the Duck post mentioned above.
For an alternate take on citation metrics, see Google Scholar’s ranking of IR journals. This is their list of journals filed under “Diplomacy and International Relations” and one notices some overlaps with the lists above, but also some perhaps odd journals, and some absences. As with Thomson-Reuters and other databases, one can search for a journal to find its score, and create a new ranking of journals based upon one’s own criteria for inclusion.
The problems with citation indexes are many (for example, see this), but they are one way to attempt to sort journals. We can mitigate problems with these rankings by creating a hybrid ranking also using survey data, and inevitably some qualitative criteria.
Questions
Whether using surveys or citation indexes, a number of important questions arise. The answers to these questions are basically qualitative, and will depend highly on departmental norms, regional norms, and so forth.
How are general journals valued relative to IR journals?
For example, most of us would probably agree that it is better seen by our departments and the discipline to publish in APSR instead of a mid-tier IR journal. However, it gets muddier as we talk about other general journals vs. highly-ranked IR journals. Is it better to publish in JOP or ISQ? PRQ or JPR? PRQ or CMPS?
How are comparative journals valued relative to IR journals?
The line between CP and IR is blurry, especially for those doing research on political economy or subnational violence. CPS and CP have lower impact factors (1.186 and .711 respectively) than some IR journals like JCR and JPR. Of course it’s important for comparativists to have publications in top Comparative journals. It is less clear how an IR scholar will be evaluated for publishing in Comparative journals.
How do we compare (no pun intended) an article in CP with an article in ISQ, JCR, or other valued IR journals? For this question, the answer might depend on if the scholar is worried about being viewed as “not IR enough,” and in that case she or he might not want to submit to a comparative journal.
How are policy journals valued relative to more theoretical journals?
This question likely depends greatly on one’s department – policy school or political science? If a department values more policy-oriented research, it will likely give more influence to a publication in Security Studies or Survival than impact factor alone might dictate. Independently of department preferences, hopefully you know the fit of your manuscript, and this will help in deciding between International Security and JCR, for example.
This gets at a wider point: the value of an article in a journal depends greatly on what a department expects of its faculty, and how an individual scholar is trying to shape her or his profile. Overall, the rankings help identify important journals, but the final ordering likely hinges on many qualitative criteria.
Are there other important questions raised by these rankings? How else can we determine the value of article publications in a systematic, transparent, and fair manner?
Interesting post. One question.
Why do you have Security Studies listed as a policy journal? It tends to be more theory-heavy than other journals, such as International Security.
The current issue for example has two interesting papers on the influence of race, a forum on Rosato’s book, and a couple of other theory heavy papers doesn’t quite track that assessment.
Thanks. You’re right, Security Studies of course has theoretical content. I was thinking about “more policy-oriented” vs. “more theoretical” journals, and wrote “policy journals” as shorthand. I would suggest that Security Studies publishes more articles about particular policies and/or current events than JCR or JPR do, so I’d put it in the more policy-oriented camp.
Regardless, it’s a difference of degree. Maybe the Journal of Strategic Studies would have been a better example.
This is completely inane. The important thing is to publish interesting, original, high-quality work in journals which your intended audience is likely to read.
“but the final ordering likely hinges on many qualitative criteria: –> ALL the truly important factors in “the final ordering” are qualitative!
I share some of the sentiments of EJG, but perhaps more forgivingly. Let me see if I can say something helpful:
1) The first 3 questions that open the post. Are these from the university? I can see the first two, but not the third. I’d be interested to hear what the institution in question told you to find out specifically. Ranking journals can fulfill a variety of institutional purposes.
2) The questions at the end need context. When we are talking about values, I think we need to identify the entity that perceives this value (university, department, individual) and the purpose (say tenure). The answers to the questions you raise really depend on these parameters (as you note).
BTW, when you say the “answers to these questions are basically qualitative”, do you just mean context dependent? Qualitative is the word I’m asking about.
3) Let’s be even more frank: journals that publish your work are infinitely more valuable than journals that don’t. Part of picking and choosing is to get over the publication bar itself.
4) It seems to me that you assume value to be defined in terms of “typical US political science departments… for tenure”. Once this is assumed, I think the post then makes a lot of obvious sense. Of course, APSR is valued. Of course, you don’t want too many CP pubs if the department has a significant IR presence. Etc. I think you should just state this at the outset for clarity.
5) It would be far more interesting, IMHO, to put together a few stylized profiles, and then rank journals from these perspectives. If you feel like sharing, I’d like to hear your own “qualitative” ranking.
Thanks for these comments. Regarding the questions opening the post, the first two are very basic, and I thought it would be helpful to address them by discussing the TRIP data (which not enough people know about), and impact factors, which some people misunderstand. That part was mostly aimed at younger scholars. The third question perhaps took the post too far in a different direction, pondering how a researcher should take the rankings with a grain of salt at least. The questions at the end of the post draw from that idea. Relating to that, I could have used the word qualitative differently. Because the answers are context dependent (as you say), one should incorporate qualitative criteria in addition to quantitative.
It would be helpful to see some examples of rankings adjusted for particular types of departments or subfields. Perhaps a future blog post. I basically agree with the rest of your points. Thanks again.
Come up with a reasonable definition of “best”, “prestige”, “value”, or even the word the TRIP survey used, “influence”, and then you can start ranking. Or maybe you should also think about the point of ranking from the perspective of science/knowledge production. If you can’t do this, start thinking about how this is all a waste of time. Compare it to the imperial examination system in pre-revolution China, Keju, in which much effort was put into evaluating use of poetic forms and calligraphy as a qualification for being a bureaucrat.
My problem with these kind of lists is that they really miss some things of practical importance. For example, International Studies Review is pretty far down on all the lists, but in my graduate seminars I probably read more articles from that journal than any other (the same issue could also apply to a journal like Millenium). Journals which aren’t heavily cited may be very influential in other ways. Another problem is the quality of citations – the metrics measuring the number of citations are very susceptible to citation cartels. Finally, I find such rankings tend to marginalize that which is already marginalized, sustaining the pre-eminance of certain journals for no other reason than that they were cited most in the past. I’m thinking of journals where women may publish more, for instance, like IFJP. We already know that women are less likely to be cited by other work, so basing our criteria for “good journals” on number of citations might mean that we are excluding those journals that publish more work by women.
ISP is .787
Thank you for your helpful review. One question: you don’t like the journal New Political Economy, but it’s website states it is currently ranked 8/83 in international relations: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cnpe20#.Ux-ry1zzdjM Can you clarify?
That should have said “rank” rather than “like.”
Absolutely. NPE is more highly ranked than RIPE on the Reuters index at the moment. It’s at least equal to RIPE in the minds of most people who do (critical) IPE. As such, if you did a similar activity to this, asking people who do IPE in the UK or Canada, they would rank these two journals much higher and they would probably also mention a number of development journals like JDS or TWQ.
This, it seems to me, points towards another problem with these kinds of rankings: they nearly always reflect the agendas and viewpoints of US-based mainstream ‘IR’ scholars working who do positivist (and often quantitative) work. Partly, of course, this is because numerically there are a lot more of these people (just go to ISA and they’re there, in their thousands).
We obviously need rankings; and we should all try to publish in the best journals we can. But, as students of politics, we should all know that the relative eminence of journals, and the papers that are published in them, are reflective of political and ideological factors as much as they are abstract notions of quality. You can find poor (and, even more critically, uninteresting) work in highly regarded journals; just as you can find excellent work in niche and less well-known journals.
International Studies Perspectives should be ranked here. It’s current ranking is .787 and therefore it should be ranked somewhat higher than Millennium.
International Studies Perspectives should be ranked here. Its current ISI score is .787, and should be somewhat higher than Millennium.
Can someone please help me with my query? I am presently doing a Masters in Political Science from India, while I have published one article in law magazine ‘Managing Intellectual Property'( I am professionally a lawyer) and several research papers for my past employers but I have not published any work relating to Political Science and International Relations. Could some one please tell me which Journals would be willing to publish my work? Journals that don’t mind publishing students and previously unpublished authors?