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Oceanography simply follows a different scholarly pace than IR.

However, in these subject areas, journals obtain IF which are many times over the top IR journals – Oceanography’s highest-ranking journal Annual Review of Marine Science has an IF of higher than 15.0, which is more than three times more than the most-cited IR journal in 2017, International Organization (IF: 4.517). These are journals listed in the categories of ‘Oceanography’ or ‘Marine & Freshwater Biography’, among others, but not in ‘International Relations’. The journal’s citation patterns in 2017 reveals that its articles were mainly cited by Ocean & Coastal Management, by ICES Journal of Marine Science, by PLoS ONE and by Fisheries Research. Its most cited paper in the past 5 years was one about global catch statistics of sharks. Marine Policy consistently ranks relatively high with an IF of over 2.0. The list contains outlets such as The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Marine Policy and Space Policy, journals which I seldom encounter in the reference lists of IR papers. Does it not raise the question whether it compares the incomparable? In other words, the ranking is heterogeneous.

Now, have you ever wondered about the composition of this category which allegedly comprises 85 IR journals? At a closer look, one finds a club of scholarly journals from various issue areas – from a multitude of academic disciplines whose cultures follow different publication paces and citation patterns, making them qualitatively distinct entities. The ranking and categorization are based on Web of Science’s Journal Citation Reports. For instance, International Organization ranks “1st out of 85 journals in the category ‘International Relations’”, while Alternatives ranks “76 out of 85 journals in the category ‘International Relations’” (in 2017 rankings). Follow OOIR on Twitter: may have noticed that the Impact Factors of IR journals are sometimes followed by a statement that it ranks “nth out of 85 journals in the category ‘International Relations’”. This is a guest post by Andreas Pacher who initiated the Observatory of International Relations (OOIR), a website which tracks Political Science and IR journals to continually list their latest papers.