Political Scientists' Evaluations of Sixty-three Journals

Abstract

Professional journals are central in our professional lives. They are a primary means of communicating new ideas and research findings to other political scientists, and hence help record, however haltingly, our collective progress in understanding the political world. In a business where one's academic contribution is frequently taken as a tally of publications, the journals also function as an important instrument of professional advancement. Counts of vitae entries, however, seem to be generally weighted by judgements of quality; but the quality assessed quite often appears to be of the journal in which an article appears rather than the quality of the specific article. It is interesting therefore, and perhaps prudent to consider how the community of political scientists evaluate the journals in which we publish. This short note presents some data on this question.Our data were gathered from questionnaires mailed in April 1974 to a sample of 515 political scientists affiliated with Ph.D. granting institutions. The number of usable returned questionnaires is 255 for a response rate of 50 percent. Respondents were asked to rate 63 journals presented alphabetically with additional space provided for the rating of journals not included on the list. The respondents were instructed to rate each journal in terms of the general quality of its articles. The rating scale ranged from 0 to 10 with 0 = poor, 2 = fair, 4 = adequate, 6 = good, 8 = very good, and 10 = outstanding. Respondents were asked only to rate those journals with which they were familiar. In addition to the ratings, information was also gathered on the age, academic rank, academic affiliation, graduate school, recent journal publication information, and areas of professional interest of the respondents.