The Reputation of Political Science Journals: Pluralist and Consensus Views

Abstract

Individual scholars and their departments are increasingly judged according to the alleged ‘quality’ of the academic journals in which they publish. This article is the first systematic attempt to measure the reputation of political science journals and is designed for comparison with American academics' evaluations. It explores academics' criteria for judging journals, the consensus of judgement on any one journal across different criteria, and the range of evaluations between different journals. A relatively strong consensus is found among academic political scientists about the relative quality of political science journals. Nevertheless the order of the ranking depends, in part, on the measure adopted. Ranking by impact scores supports the consensus theory, while the rankings by quality lend some weight to the pluralist argument that specialist journals can be highly rated by small groups of experts while having little impact in the profession as a whole. Striking contrasts between the British and American political science communities are revealed.

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