International Studies Quarterly

About International Studies Quarterly

About International Studies Quarterly

International Studies Quarterly (ISQ) is the flagship peer-reviewed journal of the International Studies Association (ISA), published by Oxford University Press. Appearing four times a year, it is one of the principal outlets for scholarship on international relations and the wider field of international studies, with a readership that spans political science, sociology, and neighboring disciplines.

The journal describes its mission as publishing leading scholarship that engages significant theoretical, empirical, and normative subjects in international studies. In practice, that means ISQ welcomes work from across the field's intellectual traditions — from quantitative causal inference and formal modeling to qualitative case research, interpretive work, and normative theory. The editors give first preference to articles that address and contribute to important disciplinary and interdisciplinary questions and controversies, so the journal functions as a venue where the field's major debates are staged and advanced.

Because it is an association journal, ISQ answers to ISA's leadership and carries a responsibility to the association's large, intellectually and geographically diverse membership. Its pages are expected to reflect different methods, theoretical frameworks, and substantive areas rather than a single school of thought. Although its citation metrics are middling in some indices, the journal scores strongly on subjective rankings of prestige and enjoys wide visibility — full-text usage reached 541,265 in 2025, according to Oxford Academic.

Key facts at a glance: the journal is published quarterly by Oxford University Press on behalf of the ISA; its print ISSN is 0020-8833 and its online ISSN is 1468-2478; and it is indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index and Scopus, where it holds a Q1 ranking in Political Science and International Relations.

History and Development

International Studies Quarterly has a longer lineage than its current title suggests. The International Studies Association was founded in 1959, and its journal grew out of an earlier publication, Background on World Politics (1957–1961), which became Background (1962–1966). The journal first appeared under the name International Studies Quarterly with the March 1967 issue — volume 11, number 1 — carrying the volume numbering forward from its predecessor. JSTOR's archive of ISA titles preserves this lineage, listing Background on World Politics (1957–1961), Background (1962–1966), and International Studies Quarterly (1967–2020) as a continuous publication history.

The journal's development tracks the evolution of the international relations discipline itself. In the late 1960s and 1970s, as the behavioral and quantitative turn reshaped political science, ISQ became a home for the new empirical research on conflict, foreign policy, and international institutions — the 1970 article by Kalevi Holsti on national role conceptions, for example, appeared in the journal's pages and helped launch a durable research program on the role of decision-makers' beliefs in foreign policy. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the journal published agenda-setting contributions on both sides of the field's great theoretical divides: Robert Keohane's 1988 treatment of rationalist and reflectivist approaches to international institutions, Yosef Lapid's 1989 intervention on the "third debate" between positivism and post-positivism, and Stephen Walt's 1991 survey of the renaissance of security studies all appeared in ISQ.

The 1990s and 2000s saw the journal consolidate its position as a venue for rigorous empirical work. Articles on the democratic peace, the liberal relationship between interdependence and conflict, gender mainstreaming in international organizations, and the causes of political violence drew on increasingly sophisticated quantitative methods, while the journal also remained open to constructivist and critical scholarship — Michael C. Williams's 2003 examination of the Copenhagen School's securitization framework is among its most cited articles. More recently, Amitav Acharya's 2014 call for a "Global IR" that takes regional worlds seriously signaled the journal's engagement with the field's geographic and epistemological diversification.

Editorially, the journal has been steered by rotating teams answerable to the ISA. Former editor Will Moore, reflecting publicly on his 2014–2018 tenure, described leading a team that at its peak included fourteen academic editors and two managing editors — an indication of the journal's scale and of the oversight burden that comes with a flagship association journal. The journal publishes annual reports (2014 through 2022 are listed on its Oxford Academic about page), a practice that gives the membership unusual transparency into submission volumes, decision times, and acceptance patterns.

Today the journal is published by Oxford University Press as part of its partnership with the ISA, which also covers International Studies Review and International Studies Perspectives. With a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 3.3 and a five-year impact factor of 3.9, ISQ remains one of the most cited general journals in the discipline.

Aims and Scope

International Studies Quarterly seeks to acquaint a broad audience of readers with the best work being done across the intellectual traditions gathered under the rubric of international studies. The editors welcome submissions addressing the community's theoretical, empirical, and normative concerns, with first preference continuing to go to articles that speak to important disciplinary and interdisciplinary questions and controversies.

Methodologically, the journal is pluralist but demanding. The dominant register of published work is rigorous empirical analysis — much of it quantitative causal inference — alongside formal models, qualitative research, and theory-driven argument. The journal publishes three main article types:

• Research Articles — full-length contributions combining a well-developed theoretical argument with rigorous empirical analysis. The maximum length is 12,000 words, counting tables, figures, footnotes, and the bibliography; the abstract and up to ten pages of appendices are excluded from this count.
• Research Notes (4,000–8,000 words) — novel, focused empirical contributions; new data are permissible and both quantitative and qualitative approaches are welcome.
• Theory Notes (4,000–8,000 words) — pieces addressing theoretical or conceptual controversies; formal models are permitted and no empirical component is required.

Substantively, the journal's pages cover the full range of international studies: international conflict and cooperation, foreign policy, international political economy, international organizations and law, security, development, gender and world politics, and political violence. OpenAlex's topic classification of the journal's published output highlights political conflict and governance, international relations and foreign policy, international development and aid, peacebuilding and international security, global peace and security dynamics, and terrorism and counterterrorism — a fair reflection of where the journal's empirical weight lies, though the classification is algorithmic rather than the publisher's official scope statement.

For prospective authors, the practical implication of the aims and scope is straightforward: ISQ wants work that moves a debate. Purely descriptive studies, single-case narratives without broader theoretical payoff, and manuscripts that do not engage an identifiable disciplinary controversy face long odds. The journal's breadth is real, but it is a breadth in service of argument.

Editorial Leadership

ISQ is led by a team of lead editors rather than a single editor-in-chief, a structure common to large association journals. Recent records citing the journal's Oxford Academic editorial team page list Sam R. Bell, Elena McLean, and Jeffrey Pickering as the lead editors. Readers should confirm the current editorial team on the journal's official Oxford Academic pages before citing names, since editorial teams rotate on fixed terms.

The governance of an association journal shapes how it is edited. As a former editor has explained, editors of journals like ISQ depend on the support of the association's leadership for journal policy, some of which is mandated by the association itself; they also carry a duty to represent the association's diverse constituencies across methods, theories, and substantive areas. This accountability is visible in the journal's practice of publishing annual reports detailing submissions, decisions, and turnaround times.

Manuscripts are handled through a large team of associate editors with area expertise, and all submissions go through double-anonymous peer review. The journal's general instructions, published on Oxford Academic, set out formatting, reference, and article-type requirements that authors are expected to follow exactly.

Journal Metrics

Oxford Academic publishes the following 2025 citation metrics for International Studies Quarterly (Clarivate Journal Citation Reports and Scopus):

• 2025 Journal Impact Factor: 3.3
• 2025 five-year Impact Factor: 3.9
• International Relations rank by Impact Factor: 21 of 173
• Political Science rank by Impact Factor: 54 of 332
• 2025 CiteScore (Scopus): 4.6
• CiteScore rank, Political Science and International Relations: 105 of 745
• CiteScore rank, Sociology and Political Science: 248 of 1530
• 2025 SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper): 1.89
• 2025 Article Influence Score: 1.985
• 2025 Eigenfactor Score: 0.00809
• 2025 Cited Half-Life: 10.5 years
• 2025 Immediacy Index: 0.7
• 2025 full-text usage: 541,265

Additional indicators reported from other sources: an H-index of 133 with an SJR of 1.643 for 2025 (SCImago, as reflected in current directory records), placing the journal in Q1 for both Political Science and International Relations and Sociology and Political Science. OpenAlex records 2,857 works and 155,598 citations for the journal, with an OpenAlex H-index of 182. Metrics from different providers are computed differently and should not be compared directly; authors and evaluators should use the measure their institution recognizes.

The long cited half-life (10.5 years) is characteristic of a theory-oriented general journal: articles in ISQ continue to be cited for well over a decade, reflecting the journal's role in hosting foundational debates rather than only fast-moving empirical findings.

Open Access and APCs

International Studies Quarterly is a hybrid journal: the subscription model remains the default, and authors may choose to make individual articles open access on payment of an article processing charge. OpenAlex's metadata, which draws its APC figures from the Directory of Open Access Journals feed, reports a list price of 4,320.00 USD. This is a reported list price, not a fee quotation — authors should confirm current charges, applicable taxes, waiver eligibility, and funder-compliance terms with Oxford University Press before submitting, as prices and policies change.

The journal is not classified as fully open access. Authors subject to open-access mandates (for example, from national funders or Plan S-aligned agencies) should check whether the journal's hybrid option and self-archiving policy satisfy their specific requirements; Oxford University Press publishes detailed guidance on licensing, embargoes, and repository deposit for its journals.

Abstracting and Indexing

International Studies Quarterly is indexed in the major citation databases, including the Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science) — the basis for its Journal Impact Factor — and Scopus — the basis for its CiteScore. The journal's backfile is archived in JSTOR, which carries the title from 1967 through 2020 along with its predecessors. Standard identifiers: print ISSN 0020-8833, online ISSN 1468-2478, ISSN-L 0020-8833, ISO 4 abbreviation Int. Stud. Q.

Landmark Papers

The following articles, all published in International Studies Quarterly and all with verified DOIs, are among the journal's most cited and most field-shaping contributions. Citation counts are from OpenAlex as of October 2026.

Kalevi J. Holsti (1970), "National Role Conceptions in the Study of Foreign Policy." doi:10.2307/3013584 — Cited about 999 times. Holsti introduced the concept of national role conceptions — policymakers' images of their state's appropriate functions in world politics — and surveyed them across more than seventy states. The article founded role theory in foreign policy analysis, a research program that remains active more than five decades later.

Robert O. Keohane (1988), "International Institutions: Two Approaches." doi:10.2307/2600589 — Cited about 924 times. Keohane distinguished rationalistic from reflectivist approaches to the study of international institutions and challenged rationalists to take seriously the sociological insight that institutions shape identities and interests, not just strategies. The article became a touchstone of the rationalism–constructivism debate.

Yosef Lapid (1989), "The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory in a Post-Positivist Era." doi:10.2307/2600457 — Cited about 782 times. Lapid's survey of the emerging post-positivist challenge gave the field its enduring label for the meta-theoretical disputes of the late 1980s and 1990s and remains the standard reference for the "third debate" framing.

Stephen M. Walt (1991), "The Renaissance of Security Studies." doi:10.2307/2600471 — Cited about 1,076 times. Walt's review essay took stock of security studies at the Cold War's end, assessing the state of strategic theory and the field's relationship to the broader discipline. It is one of the most assigned field-survey articles in graduate training.

John R. Oneal and Bruce M. Russett (1997), "The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict, 1950–1985." doi:10.1111/1468-2478.00042 — Cited about 958 times. A landmark quantitative test of the Kantian proposition that democracy, economic interdependence, and international organizations jointly reduce the incidence of militarized conflict — a cornerstone of the democratic-peace literature.

Jeffrey T. Checkel (1999), "Norms, Institutions, and National Identity in Contemporary Europe." doi:10.1111/0020-8833.00112 — Cited about 795 times. Checkel theorized the domestic mechanisms — social learning and socialization — through which international norms reshape national identities, using European integration as his empirical setting. The article is a core reference in constructivist work on norm diffusion.

Alastair Iain Johnston (2001), "Treating International Institutions as Social Environments." doi:10.1111/0020-8833.00212 — Cited about 1,136 times. Johnston argued that institutions socialize states through mechanisms of mimicking, social influence, and persuasion, and proposed a research agenda for testing socialization effects empirically. It is among the most cited constructivist articles of its generation.

Jacqui True and Michael Mintrom (2001), "Transnational Networks and Policy Diffusion: The Case of Gender Mainstreaming." doi:10.1111/0020-8833.00181 — Cited about 808 times. True and Mintrom tested competing explanations of why states adopted gender-mainstreaming policies, finding that transnational networks mattered more than domestic economic or political conditions — a widely cited contribution to both diffusion studies and gender and international relations.

Michael C. Williams (2003), "Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics." doi:10.1046/j.0020-8833.2003.00277.x — Cited about 1,151 times. Williams brought the Copenhagen School's securitization framework into sustained critical engagement with realist and constructivist IR, clarifying how security threats are discursively constructed. It is the journal's most cited article of the 2000s in this set.

Henrik Urdal (2006), "A Clash of Generations? Youth Bulges and Political Violence." doi:10.1111/j.1468-2478.2006.00416.x — Cited about 931 times. Urdal's cross-national statistical analysis found that large youth cohorts increase the risk of political violence, particularly where economic opportunities are scarce — a finding that reshaped demographic-security research and policy discussion.

Amitav Acharya (2014), "Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds." doi:10.1111/isqu.12171 — Cited about 839 times. Acharya's presidential-style agenda piece called for a Global IR that recognizes regional diversity, decenters Western experience, and builds theory from the histories and practices of the non-Western world. It is the programmatic statement of one of the field's most important recent movements.

Publishing in International Studies Quarterly: Tips for Authors

ISQ is a competitive, high-visibility general journal, and manuscripts succeed when they are built for its particular audience and standards. The following guidance follows from the journal's stated policies and its published record:

• Lead with the controversy. The editors give first preference to work that addresses important disciplinary and interdisciplinary questions and controversies. Frame the manuscript around a debate the field recognizes, and state the contribution to that debate explicitly and early.
• Pair theory with evidence. Full research articles are expected to combine a well-developed theoretical argument with rigorous empirical analysis. Purely descriptive work, however competent, rarely clears the bar; neither does theory wholly detached from observable implications.
• Respect the word limits as hard constraints. Research articles may not exceed 12,000 words including tables, figures, footnotes, and bibliography (the abstract and up to ten pages of appendices are excluded). Research Notes and Theory Notes must fall between 4,000 and 8,000 words. Over-length manuscripts risk being returned without review.
• Choose the right article type. A focused empirical finding with new data often works better as a Research Note than as a stretched full article; a conceptual intervention without new evidence belongs as a Theory Note. Editors appreciate authors who self-select correctly.
• Write for a broad field audience. ISQ's readers span methods and subfields. Explain technical choices, define field-specific terms, and make the stakes of the argument legible to scholars outside the immediate specialty.
• Follow the author guidelines exactly. Formatting, citation style, anonymization for double-anonymous review, and supplementary-materials rules are enforced; non-compliant manuscripts may be returned before peer review.
• Expect rigorous review and plan the timeline accordingly. As a top general journal with a large submission volume handled by a sizable editorial team, review takes time. The journal's published annual reports give the most reliable picture of current turnaround times.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who publishes International Studies Quarterly?
Oxford University Press, on behalf of the International Studies Association. It is the association's flagship journal.

What are the journal's ISSNs?
Print ISSN 0020-8833; online ISSN 1468-2478.

When was the journal founded?
The title International Studies Quarterly dates to March 1967 (volume 11, number 1), continuing the volume numbering of its predecessors Background (1962–1966) and Background on World Politics (1957–1961).

How often is it published?
Quarterly — four issues per year.

What is the journal's Impact Factor?
Oxford Academic reports a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 3.3 and a five-year Impact Factor of 3.9, ranking 21st of 173 journals in International Relations.

Is International Studies Quarterly open access?
It is a hybrid journal: articles are subscription-access by default, with an open-access option on payment of an APC (list price reported at $4,320 USD; confirm current charges with the publisher).

What article types does it accept?
Research Articles (up to 12,000 words), Research Notes (4,000–8,000 words), and Theory Notes (4,000–8,000 words).

Who are the editors?
The journal is led by a team of lead editors; recent records list Sam R. Bell, Elena McLean, and Jeffrey Pickering. Confirm the current team on the journal's official Oxford Academic page.

Where is the journal indexed?
Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science), Scopus, and JSTOR (backfile), among other services.

How do I submit a manuscript?
Through the journal's online submission system linked from its Oxford Academic homepage (academic.oup.com/isq), following the General Instructions for authors.

This depth profile was researched from the publisher's official journal pages in October 2026.