Bollettino Storico – Bibliografico Subalpino

About Bollettino Storico – Bibliografico Subalpino

Bollettino Storico – Bibliografico Subalpino: Journal Profile

The Bollettino Storico – Bibliografico Subalpino is one of Italy’s long-lived regional history journals: the bulletin of the Deputazione Subalpina di Storia Patria in Turin, devoted to the history and bibliography of the Subalpine region — Piedmont and the lands of the former Savoyard states. Its ISSN is 0391-6715, confirmed on the live Journals World record for this post. Where a modern journal measures its life in years, this one measures it in generations: the society behind it was founded by the Turin historian Ferdinando Gabotto in 1896, its first congress met at Cuneo in 1898, and the Bollettino was already publishing substantial volumes by 1900, with bound volumes of that era running to nearly nine hundred pages. It remains active, with coverage in indexing records extending through 2017–2025 in its Journals World record. For historians of medieval and modern Italy, of the House of Savoy, and of Piedmontese towns, archives, and institutions, the Bollettino is a primary scholarly home: a journal in which documentary evidence, regional erudition, and bibliographic completeness are the standards by which work is judged.

This profile assembles what can be verified about the journal from authoritative sources: its identity and identifiers, the Deputazione and the historical culture that created it, its scope across Subalpine history and historical bibliography, its publication record from the Gabotto era to the present, its modest bibliometric footprint in SCImago-derived data, and honest guidance on the matters that sources do not settle, such as current submission mechanics, which are recorded here as not published where that is the case. Figures are attributed and dated; nothing in this profile is asserted beyond its evidence.

Journal at a Glance

The Deputazione and the Subalpine Historical Movement

The journal cannot be separated from the institution that publishes it. The Deputazione Subalpina di Storia Patria descends from the historical society Ferdinando Gabotto founded in Turin in 1896, three years before he launched its great documentary series, the Biblioteca della Societa Storica Subalpina, in 1899. The founding ambition, debated at the society’s first congress at Cuneo in 1898, was nothing less than a systematic publication of the region’s documentary sources — in the phrase of the time, a true cartulary of the ancient mainland states of the Savoy monarchy. Gabotto built the enterprise with characteristic energy, securing support from credit institutions, provincial and municipal administrations, and prominent patrons, and steering early publication toward the regional cartularies, the documentary monographs on single areas whose local funding was easiest to raise. The Biblioteca grew into hundreds of volumes across its Cartari, Memorie, Miscellanea, Regesti, and Testi strands, known since 1956 as the Biblioteca Storica Subalpina, with its early decades now largely digitised and freely readable through the BEIC (European Library of Information and Culture) platform.

Within that enterprise, the Bollettino played the complementary role: where the Biblioteca published the sources in bulk, the Bollettino published the studies, discussions, and bibliographic intelligence built on them — the dissemination arm that Gabotto’s society used to spread research based on its documentary programme. Its double name is the programme in miniature: storico, historical studies; bibliografico, the systematic recording of what has been written about Subalpine history. A journal so conceived is not chasing novelty for its own sake; it is maintaining the scholarly infrastructure of a region’s past, issue by issue, across more than a century.

Scope: The History of a Region, Kept Whole

The journal’s territory is the Subalpine world: Piedmont and the associated lands shaped by the Savoyard states, from the medieval communes and lordships through the early modern monarchy, the Risorgimento, and into the modern period. Within that territory its interests are those of classical regional historiography at its best. Documentary studies and source criticism come first, in keeping with the founding mission: charters, cartularies, chronicles, and archival series examined, dated, and interpreted. Institutional and political history follows: communes, signorie, the Savoy court and state, provincial administration, and the region’s place in Italian and European affairs. Ecclesiastical, social, and economic history of Subalpine communities belongs naturally here, as do local and municipal histories when they are built on evidence rather than celebration. The bibliographic half of the title signals a standing commitment to recording and reviewing the literature of the field, so that a researcher entering any corner of Piedmontese history can discover, through the Bollettino’s pages, what has already been established and where the gaps lie.

The journal is categorised under History in the SCImago system, with its best quartile recorded as Q4 in the SCImago-derived summary consulted. That placement describes its citation neighbourhood, not its scholarly function: regional documentary journals are cited slowly and by few, but they are used for a century. A charter correctly edited or a bibliography completely assembled in these pages becomes permanent apparatus for everyone who works on the region afterwards.

Publication History: From Gabotto’s Volumes to the Present

The material record of the early Bollettino survives in libraries worldwide and, increasingly, in digital reproductions: the combined volumes 5–6, dating to around 1900, run to 896 pages and include the report on the society’s first six years (1896–1901) with indices of its publications; a 1923 volume from the Turin Tipografia Sociale shows the journal still in vigorous interwar production. These were not slim bulletins in the modern newsletter sense but substantial scholarly annuals, carrying studies, documents, reviews, and the society’s own record side by side. The title page conventions and editorial direction of the Gabotto era (1899–1918 for the Biblioteca, which he directed) set a template of documentary seriousness that the Deputazione’s publications maintained after him.

The modern record confirms continuity rather than survival as a relic. Indexing coverage summarised from SCImago shows the journal present in 1981 and again across 2014–2015 and 2017–2024, and the live Journals World record extends its coverage statement to 2017–2025, indicating a journal still publishing in the current decade. Its publisher of record throughout is the Deputazione Subalpina di Storia Patria, and its country is Italy. For a title founded in the nineteenth century, the significant fact is not any single year’s issue but the unbroken institutional custody: the same Turin deputation that received Gabotto’s founding energy still issues the Bollettino today.

Editorial Character and How Work Is Judged

The live Journals World record describes the journal as peer-reviewed, and its character as a Deputazione publication implies assessment by specialists in Subalpine history: the community competent to judge a Piedmontese documentary study is small, expert, and largely gathered around the deputation and the universities and archives of the region. Beyond that general position, this profile must be candid about the limits of its evidence. The name of a current editor, a published list of editorial board members, a stated review model, submission deadlines, and author formatting instructions were not published in the sources consulted for this profile and could not be verified. That is a common situation for venerable society journals whose contributor community is established and whose communications travel through the deputation itself rather than a commercial portal. The correct professional response is direct contact: write to the Deputazione Subalpina di Storia Patria in Turin, describe the proposed contribution, and request the current norms before preparing a manuscript. Scholars in this tradition regard such an approach as normal courtesy, and it protects the author from formatting a long documentary article to the wrong specification.

One quality standard can be inferred safely from the journal’s own record and mission, and authors should treat it as binding in practice: evidence discipline. Work that publishes or interprets documents must cite archives and shelfmarks precisely; claims must rest on the sources the journal exists to serve; bibliographic references to prior Subalpine scholarship must be complete, because the journal’s bibliographic half exists to hold the field to exactly that standard. A fluent narrative that skips the apparatus will not prosper here; a meticulous study that adds one document, one date, or one correction to the regional record is the Bollettino’s ideal contribution.

Bibliometric Footprint

SCImago-derived summaries consulted at checking give the journal an SJR of 0.101, an h-index of 2, an impact score of 0.03, and an overall rank of 29906, with a single citing article recorded across the preceding three years in the same summary. The stored Journals World template independently recorded an h-index of 2, matching the SCImago-derived figure. OpenAlex, resolved through its ISSN endpoint at checking, found a source for 0391-6715 (S4393915136) but with only three indexed works and no citations, and with topic assignments that plainly do not describe a Piedmontese history journal; its coverage of this title is therefore not used here beyond noting that it exists, and no OpenAlex figure is quoted as a measure of the journal. A DOAJ search-API query for the ISSN returned no record at checking, which this profile does not treat as a definitive statement about listing status in either direction.

The honest interpretation of these numbers is that they measure database capture, not scholarly worth. A largely Italian-language, regionally focused, documentary journal publishes work whose natural citers are few and whose natural lifespan is long; citation databases built for fast-moving sciences register almost none of that use. The librarian who keeps the run complete, the archivist who reaches for its bibliographies, and the medievalist who trusts its editions are the journal’s real metrics. Authors evaluating the Bollettino for a tenure file should present it in those terms and supply the context, because a bare quartile will undersell it; authors evaluating it as the right home for a Subalpine study face no such ambiguity.

Who Should Publish and Read Here?

Historians of Piedmont and the Savoyard lands, medievalists and early modernists working on north-west Italian sources, archivists and editors preparing documentary publications, and bibliographers of Italian regional history are the journal’s natural contributors and readers. A study of a Piedmontese commune’s charters, a corrected genealogy of a Savoyard office, an edition of a local chronicle, a reassessment of a Risorgimento episode from Turin archives, or a complete bibliography of a Subalpine topic: each is squarely the Bollettino’s business. Conversely, general Italian history with no Subalpine anchor, and work whose evidence lies outside the region’s archives and literature, belongs elsewhere. Doctoral researchers with a well-founded regional case study will find here the most expert possible readership for exactly that material, in a venue whose longevity guarantees the work will still be on the shelf, and increasingly in digital reach through the deputation’s digitised heritage, when later scholars come looking for it.

Access and the Digitised Heritage

Readers benefit from the wider digitisation of the deputation’s historic output. Early volumes of the Bollettino and of the companion Biblioteca series survive in major library collections and in digital reproductions, and the first hundred volumes of the Biblioteca are largely digitised and freely presented through the BEIC platform’s section on medieval and modern European law. Current access arrangements for recent issues — subscription terms, any open-access provision, and any charges to authors — are not published in the sources consulted and could not be verified; enquiries belong with the Deputazione. What is certain is the direction of travel for the historic run: the documentary heritage this journal guards is steadily more reachable online, which raises the long-term visibility of everything it has published.

The Bibliographic Mission: Why Half the Title Matters

Outsiders sometimes read the second half of the journal’s title as an afterthought. Inside the Subalpine tradition it is half the point. A region’s history advances only as fast as its scholars can discover what is already known, and the Deputazione’s founders understood that a learned society owes its field not just new studies but a maintained map of all studies. The Bollettino’s bibliographic commitment — recording, reviewing, and indexing the literature of Subalpine history — is that map in periodical form. Its value compounds quietly: a bibliography that is complete for one decade saves every later researcher a month; sustained across a century, it becomes the difference between a field that accumulates knowledge and one that repeatedly rediscovers it. The society’s own early volumes embodied the principle, printing indices of the society’s publications inside the report on its first six years, so that the record of the enterprise was part of the enterprise from the start.

This mission also explains the journal’s durability through periods when regional history fell out of academic fashion. Fashions govern topics; they do not govern archives. The charters still needed editing, the local literatures still needed recording, and the Deputazione’s bulletin continued to do both while larger historiographical winds shifted around it. For the modern reader, the consequence is a back run of unusual integrity: because the journal never tried to become something else, its volumes form a continuous instrument for Piedmontese and Savoyard studies from the Gabotto era to the present coverage years. Researchers should exploit that continuity deliberately — beginning a Subalpine project without checking the Bollettino’s studies and bibliographies is to volunteer for duplicated labour and missed corrections, since the journal’s pages are precisely where earlier errors about the region’s documents have traditionally been caught and put right.

The same point governs the journal’s relationship with its companion series. The Biblioteca publishes the sources at scale; the Bollettino interprets them, debates them, and tracks the debate. A document printed in a Biblioteca cartulary volume typically acquires its scholarly afterlife in the Bollettino’s studies and notices, and a Bollettino argument typically rests on Biblioteca texts. Reading the two together, as Turin’s historians have always done, gives the full circuit of the Deputazione’s founding idea of 1896–1899: publish the evidence, study the evidence, record the studies, and repeat for as many generations as the region’s past requires. That the circuit is still turning, with the journal’s coverage recorded into the mid-2020s, is the strongest single fact in this profile.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the journal’s ISSN? 0391-6715, confirmed on the live record for this profile.

Who publishes it? The Deputazione Subalpina di Storia Patria, Turin, the deputation descending from the historical society founded by Ferdinando Gabotto in 1896.

What does “Subalpino” cover? The Subalpine region: Piedmont and the lands of the former Savoyard states, whose history and bibliography are the journal’s remit.

How old is the journal? Its society dates to 1896 and substantial Bollettino volumes were appearing by 1900; indexing records show it still publishing in 2017–2025.

What are its metrics? SCImago-derived data at checking: SJR 0.101, h-index 2, History category. OpenAlex coverage is minimal and not used as a measure here.

How do I submit? Submission route, current editorship, and any fees are not published in the consulted sources; contact the Deputazione in Turin directly for current norms.

Is it in DOAJ? A DOAJ search returned no record at checking; that interim result is not treated as definitive, and the position should be re-verified directly if it matters to you.

A Note on Names and Forms

Cataloguers and citers should note the title’s punctuation: the journal appears both as Bollettino Storico – Bibliografico Subalpino and, in older and library forms, as Bollettino storico-bibliografico subalpino, under the single ISSN 0391-6715 in both cases; these are one journal, not two, and holdings recorded under either form belong to the same run. The publisher likewise appears in Italian as Deputazione Subalpina di Storia Patria, with older royal-era styling in historic volumes. Keeping those variants together in citations and library records protects the continuity that is this journal’s chief asset.

Verification Note

This profile is grounded in the journal’s live Journals World record, SCImago-derived directory summaries, foreground OpenAlex and DOAJ API checks, library records of the journal’s early volumes, and published scholarship on the Deputazione and its Biblioteca series, all checked in October 2026. Every figure is attributed to its source; every matter those sources left open is marked as unverified rather than completed by conjecture.