Comment on Journals for International Relations
posted by Political Scientists for Scholarly Journal Ethics @ 3:32 PM
46 Comments
Political Science Journal Monitor
Political scientists have designed this site as an outlet for their colleagues to share their experiences--both positive and negative--with submitting to or reading scholarly political science journals. Postings aim to promote more consistent adherence to an ethical code by journals and their contributors, an improved review process experience, and a superior product for readers.
46 Comments:
It's not really a political science journal, but does anyone have any thoughts on Ethics & International Affairs?
I don't really know anything (will be grad student in sociology starting in september), but I would say pretty good, but less seriously academic than some others. Pays $500 for an article I think.
How about a separate topic for ISQ?
This topic has been pretty clearly settled by the survey of IR scholars that appeared in Foreign Policy Magazine a few years ago.
IO, APSR, ISQ, and Internatioanl Security were in the top 5, I believe. This is according to the people who read and write in the discipline. Of course, reputations are slow to change, so if there is some amazing new journal out there, it may take years before it receives the recognition it deserves.
What about Security Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research?
For solely IR journals I would rank them as follows:
1. ISQ
2. IO
After that I think it depends upon ones interests. For security studies scholars I would add IS and Security Studies.
If one is more inclined towards quant. work, then I would rank JCR and JPR in the next tier.
How would you rate the European Journal of International Relations?
I'd rank EJIR as hovering around 5-6 for general IR, which is about where it comes in for impact factor. Probably the top journal, by default anyway, for IR theory. It is one of the few that I pay close attention to, along with ISQ and IS (and sometimes IO).
The current editorship does a good job, and the journal is more diverse than it used to be. Like many European journals, however, the review process is a bit more opaque than ISQ, IO, etc. Reviewers don't, for example, necessarily receive reports on the disposition of articles they review.
Impact Factor for EJIR does not place it in the top ten. See Hix paper on this.
I can't say enough good things about the ISQ editorial team. They are careful, thorough, efficient, and pleasant. In addition, I believe that ISQ under Poe's leadership is committed to diversifying the content in this journal.
Let me echo the comments about ISQ. As for EJIR, take a look at the latest data. In 2005 it was ranked 6 by Thompson Scientific. I expect that ranking, admittedly not reflected in current multi-year data, indicates the current and likely future position of the journal.
Remember that EJIR is a relatively young non-hyper-specialized journal. Many American libraries did not even subscribe to it until relatively recently. For many of us -- and I say this based on informal discussions -- EJIR is now the place to send a piece after APSR, IO, and ISQ. Even JCR-type articles now appear in its pages, many by prominent scholars in American IR. I'd say that, at a mimum, EJIR occupies a similar position in the field that RIS did in the early 1990s.
The Journal of Conflict Resolution is a great outlet if you do quantitative work on international conflict. Their process is prompt, provides generally helpful comments (even when they are negative), and is overseen by an editor who does more than just count up the favorable and unfavorable reviews.
Can anyone point me to a good list (aside from ISI's list of rankings) ranking international relations journals or, alternatively, classifying them into broad groups based on quality?
Are IR folks paying attention to work in the Journal of Politcs? This journal was dismissed as irrelevant for IR for a long time. However, I see more and more IR being published there. Is it a good venue for IR research?
Am I unusual in this? I just don't give a rat's ass about a journal's "quality" -- I'm looking for interesting articles, good-bad-or-indifferent. If the ideas are intriguing but the execution is bad, I'm still generally glad I found Article X, and I'm no more impressed by it if it is in the APSR or the Uzbek Journal of International Stuff.
2:38: It is certainly true that the quality of an article is more important than where it is published. However, you're not equally likely to find good work in every journal. If the frequency with which things are cited is any indication of quality--and I think it is--then journals like the APSR really do publish better stuff on average.
On the 2005 impact rankings at ISI Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Report, IS is #2 in political science, at 2.630; IO is fourth.
To add to the previous poster: IS is number one among IR journals.
A colleague told me that Steven Poe has passed away - if true, this is very sad and a real loss for ISQ.
Do someone know if Millenium: Journal of International Politics is somehow getting an increasing audience?
One way of checking on the status of Millennium, or any other journal, is to look at any information on submissions -- or read any information posted on a website about submissions. Have submissions increased? If they have, that is an immediate signal of an increase in the journal's status. If the journal doesn't post any information on a website -- not a good sign by the way -- then you can ask the editor.
A much slower or sluggish indication of a journal's reputation is its rating in ISI citation indices. I say these are "slow" indicators because they lag actual journal improvement and decline by 2-3 years.
Besides the obvious top few journals, are there any other journals that are strong? I think we should broaden our listing, rather than focus on the top few. This will give everyone more options to consider when deciding where to publish. It will also help if we could list turnaround times of the journals mentioned and by journals, i mean outside the top 5 or 10. (We all know the top 5 or 10, we need to know the next best journals outside the top 10).
To respond quickly to 11:12:
Poe's passing would be a tremendous loss for any group he was involved in, let alone the journal he was heading. However, my recent experience, and others I'm familiar with (May 2008), is that ISQ is doing excellent, perhaps in part due to the structure he imposed there. It's rare for an IR office to be so efficient, and at the same time detail oriented and friendly.
Regarding 5:14's mention of turnaround times, JCR is great about that. The editorial team there is extremely efficient and professional. Of course, that's only relevant to folks who do quantitative work on conflict, but still worth keeping in mind.
what about international affairs, International Politics and International Relations Journal? How would you guys rate them?
Is ISQ tier one?
ISQ is absolutely a tier 1 IR/comparative journal.
What do you guys think of Survival?
Has anybody had any experience with International Interactions?
II is where you send manuscripts that you want to get off of your desk and out of your hair for, say a year or so. Note, this is AFTER you've sent it out and been rejected everywhere else. It's the fall-back of fall-backs for quantitative IR.
I'm not sure if they lose manuscripts, but they definitely sit around for a very, VERY long time.
Thanks, this is really a useful piece of information and a great warning.
If journal editors will not be responsible and forthcoming with information on acceptance rates and turnaround times, this is exactly the place authors' experiences should be shared.
Any thoughts on sending a Reply to an article at a journal that you found really infuriating? Conventions to this? Suggested length?
Anybody had successful/discouraging experiences with doing this?
12:20 is a duplicate post which has replies in the thread "Ask An Editor".
I read this at CP rumor mill. I thought you would be interested:
"One of my senior colleagues was asked to review an article for ISQ. (S)he actually found out that the author of the paper is a junior member of the UNT department; the institution that hosts ISQ. I was wondering how ethical it is to submit an article to a journal hosted in your institution?....The article is actually a CP piece on democracy and public health...but submitted to ISQ..."
What do you think? Does this happen a lot? Is it really ethical?
It does happen a lot and it is a bit of a gray area. Here's where you hope that the editor is conscientious, honest, and aware of the potential for conflict.
From an editor's point of view, the issues are these:
If you edit one of the top 3 or 4 journals in the (sub)field, it doesn't seem reasonable to deny your colleagues the right to submit to the journal you edit as they try to build their careers. There are rather few pathways up, and everyone should have a chance to access them.
On the other hand, the editor must be sure not to give special breaks to colleagues that they would not give to others.
If you see an inordinate number of publications cropping up in a journal all from the home institution of the editor, it does begin to raise questions.
So the potential for bias of this kind is real. And it's one reason why journal editorships should change hands on a regular basis.
10:00: very well said.
How about from the reviewers's point of view? How much should the editor(s)of ISQ or other journals expect from reviewers to give their "fair" assessment? It is, frankly, no longer a double-blind review process.
I can't say enough good things about the ISQ editorial team; very careful and efficient. But this puts too much pressure on reviewers and the editorial team.
10:25 --
Are you claiming the reviewer knows who the author is and would thus feel pressured to give a apositive review? Or just knowing that faculty members submit there and the reviewer should assume it is from one? Maybe I misread (very likely), but I don't see the leverage here unless the reviewer is into googleing manuscript titles before review to find author names. Even then an Editor has no power over the reviewer.
As one who worked a number of years in a large journal office, the submission of a manuscript to a journal housed at one's institution is absolutely not an uncommon occurrence. In fact, it's a virtual impossibility if you're talking about one of the major journals combined with contemporary tenure requirements. You can't block submissions to the Journal of Politics if you're at Vandy, etc.
Journals enact policies specifically to avoid doubts such as these. Off the top of my head, a transparent review process and sharing decision letters and uncensored reviews with reviewers as well as the author is one step implemented widely to do just that.
However, we have to consider that someone at the top (a team perhaps) has to know the identities of both the reviewer and the author. If you can design a system where no one has to look up a reviewer name, or ever see a name on a manuscript, throw it out there. It would be a great service to academics as a whole.
Otherwise, when the editor starts having pubs show up in their journal, then worry.
I have to agree with 10:00 and 6:29. Look to the pages of the journals for answers to these questions.
The onus here rests not only on the office hosting the journal, but the reviewer. Given constraints on offices are already noted (rotation of journals, transparent decision process), reviewers have an obligation to preserve the integrity of the review process as well. If a reviewer is aware of an authors identity they need to stop the review and inform the journal office requesting to be let out of the obligation. We can't expect journals to make fair decisions if we as reviewers are biased in our reviews. I sure hope whoever discovered this didn't perform the review.
Note to all: ISQ began transitioning to a new institution on Oct. 1, 2008. All new manuscripts are being handled by the new editorial team at Indiana University, headed by William Thompson.
Any experiences with the journal International Security? Responsiveness? Time to response? Impressions?
"I read this at CP rumor mill. I thought you would be interested:
"One of my senior colleagues was asked to review an article for ISQ. (S)he actually found out that the author of the paper is a junior member of the UNT department; the institution that hosts ISQ. I was wondering how ethical it is to submit an article to a journal hosted in your institution?....The article is actually a CP piece on democracy and public health...but submitted to ISQ..."
What do you think? Does this happen a lot? Is it really ethical?".......
This is really unacceptable. If you wonder how poorly written papers may sometimes hit big journals, this could be a good example (If you read the paper, you will see what I mean.)
I am sure the new ISQ Editor at Indiana is well aware of this last-minute move by this smart-a**(!) before the journal change hands.
1:36, have you even read the other posts on this topic above? Of course, it would be unethical if editors allowed their connections to authors to influence their decisions to publish an article. But you can't generally prevent people (friends, colleagues, former acquaintances, whatever) from submitting to a journal. Many journals have internal rules and procedures about how to avoid dirty hands in these scenarios. Journals also often have commitments to send a certain proportion of what they receive out for review, regardless of who sent it in. Sending out for review does not equal favoring, much less publishing. Indeed, negative reviews might be a particularly good way of disabusing authors of any mistaken hope that they might get special treatment. At any rate, you can't infer any impropriety from something simply being sent out for review.
For a reviewer to look up someone's identity and letting that influence his/her review is, however, unethical itself (if the journal has blind review). And no, it doesn't matter how many other kids are doing it.
1:36 --
Grow up and stop calling people names when you obviously have never met them, or have any understanding of the journal process.
If you think this doesn't happen everywhere, you haven't been around very long. You cannot block the submission of work by individuals to the top journals simply because they happen to be within the same department as the journal is housed.
ISQ is one of the most professionally operated journals around. If you wish to call names for this process, you've obviously never read the journal. The content is outstanding, and off the top of my head for the last four years I can recall one piece (which was excellent btw) which was authored by faculty at that department.
Go find something better to do besides knock something you are so blatantly unaware of, like perhaps finish your thesis.
I concur. The fact that individuals keep posting this quote with so much information is in and of itself a disservice. Frankly I'm surprised anyone is surprised that this happens at EVERY journal.
So... you're quoting a quote from someone who heard something from another and placed it on a blog, and yet you reviewed/read the paper and are qualified to make this kind of statement? I think that tells us something about 1:36's credibility.
Just FYI, like some other journals their decision letters include non-censored reviews which go to both author, and reviewers. It's a little difficult to sell bs when everyone who had a hand in the review process sees what is going on.
I don't see a problem with people from UNT submitting to ISQ or even being published in ISQ. If an institution's editing a top journal creates a bar to people from the institution publishing there, nobody will want to edit those journals. The only way this would be a problem would be if UNT authors received preferential treatment. This would be hard to pull off at a journal like ISQ, where the review process is almost completely transparent in the sense that the reviews go to the author and the other reviewers. In my experience, the ISQ editors at UNT are very professional and it would take a lot more than an anonymous rumor repeated from a blog to change my mind about this.
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