Security Studies

About Security Studies

About Security Studies

Security Studies is a peer-reviewed quarterly journal covering international relations with a focus on security, strategy, and conflict. It is published by Routledge, the social-science and humanities imprint of Taylor & Francis (United Kingdom). Established in 1991, the journal is, alongside International Security, one of the two most prominent journals dedicated specifically to security studies — a standing confirmed in a 2020 comparative study of the field's journals published in its own pages.

The journal publishes theoretical, empirical, and policy-relevant research on the causes of war and the conditions of peace: deterrence and coercion, military strategy and doctrine, alliances, arms control and proliferation, intelligence, terrorism and counterterrorism, civil conflict, and newer domains such as cyber conflict and space security. Its pages are known for rigorous argument about how states and other actors generate, manage, and resolve insecurity — work that speaks simultaneously to academic debates and to the world of strategy and statecraft.

Security Studies has a distinctive identity within international relations publishing. Where general IR journals range across the whole discipline, this journal concentrates the field's security debates in one venue, and where policy journals privilege accessibility, Security Studies insists on scholarly rigor. The result is a journal that strategists read for ideas and scholars read for argument: its most cited articles include agenda-setting statements on structural realism, neoclassical realism, the offense–defense balance in cyberspace, and the effectiveness of leadership targeting.

Key facts at a glance: published quarterly by Routledge (Taylor & Francis); print ISSN 0963-6412, online ISSN 1556-1852; indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index and Scopus; and reporting a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 3.6 as listed by the publisher.

History and Development

Security Studies was established in 1991, at the hinge moment when the Cold War's end was forcing a wholesale rethinking of what "security" meant. The timing was deliberate and fortunate: the journal arrived just as scholars were debating whether security studies should remain centered on great-power military competition or expand to new threats, new actors, and new conceptions of security itself. Its early volumes captured that ferment, publishing work that both consolidated Cold War-era strategic theory and tested it against the emerging post–Cold War order.

Through the 1990s, the journal became a principal venue for the realist research program's internal debates. Kenneth Waltz's 1996 restatement of the distinction between theories of international politics and theories of foreign policy, and Randall Schweller's 1996 critique of neorealism's status-quo bias, both appeared in Security Studies and defined the terms of realist argument for a generation of graduate students. These were not narrow technical contributions; they were field-defining statements about what structural theory can and cannot explain, and they cemented the journal's reputation as the place where security theory is argued at the highest level.

The 2000s brought the journal into direct engagement with the security agenda of the post-9/11 era. Articles on terrorism, counterterrorism, and political violence sat alongside continued work on alliances, deterrence, and regional security orders. Ron Hassner's 2003 analysis of sacred space and territorial indivisibility, Jenna Jordan's 2009 assessment of leadership decapitation, and Barry Posen's 2006 examination of European defense policy as a response to unipolarity exemplify the journal's blend of theoretical ambition and empirical discipline during this period.

The 2010s saw Security Studies move decisively into new domains. Jon Lindsay's 2013 analysis of Stuxnet and the limits of cyber warfare, and Erik Gartzke and Lindsay's 2015 treatment of offense, defense, and deception in cyberspace, made the journal a leading venue for serious scholarly work on cyber conflict — work that challenged both hype and complacency about digital weapons. James Mahoney's 2015 essay on process tracing and historical explanation, published the same year, became one of the most cited qualitative-methods statements of its decade, reflecting the journal's openness to methodological contributions with broad relevance. Nina Silove's 2017 dissection of the multiple meanings of "grand strategy" and Darren Lim and Zack Cooper's 2015 reassessment of hedging in East Asia continued the tradition of conceptual clarification married to regional expertise.

A notable milestone in the journal's self-understanding came in 2020, when Jack Hoagland, Amy Oakes, Eric Parajon, and Susan Peterson published "The Blind Men and the Elephant: Comparing the Study of International Security Across Journals" in Security Studies itself — a systematic comparison that placed the journal alongside International Security as one of the two most prominent journals dedicated to security studies. The article's appearance in the journal's own pages underscored the venue's centrality to the field it covers.

Throughout its history the journal has been published by Routledge (Taylor & Francis), appearing quarterly without interruption since 1991. Its current editor-in-chief is Ron Hassner of the University of California, Berkeley — himself the author of one of the journal's landmark articles — though readers should confirm current editorial listings on the journal's official Taylor & Francis page, as editorial appointments rotate.

Aims and Scope

Security Studies is a journal of international security in the broad sense: it publishes research on the sources of international conflict and the means of managing it. The substantive core covers interstate war and crisis, deterrence and coercive diplomacy, military strategy and operations, defense policy, alliances and alignment, arms control and nuclear proliferation, intelligence, terrorism and counterterrorism, insurgency and counterinsurgency, and civil war — together with newer agendas including cyber conflict, space security, and the security implications of emerging technology.

The journal's methodological profile is pluralist. Its most influential articles include works of pure theory (Waltz on the logic of structural explanation, Rathbun on neoclassical realism), large-sample quantitative studies (Jordan on leadership decapitation, Urdal-style demographic work in neighboring journals), structured qualitative comparison and process tracing (Mahoney's methodological statement; Hassner on sacred space), and historically grounded strategic analysis (Posen on European defense). What unites them is not method but ambition: the journal favors arguments that clarify a theoretical controversy, adjudicate between competing explanations, or open a new empirical domain to systematic inquiry.

OpenAlex's algorithmic classification of the journal's published output points to the same center of gravity: international relations and foreign policy, global peace and security dynamics, political conflict and governance, nuclear issues and defense, peacebuilding and international security, and terrorism, counterterrorism, and political violence. That classification is descriptive rather than official, but it accurately reflects where the journal's weight falls.

For prospective authors, the scope message is that Security Studies wants work that matters to the study of security — theoretically, empirically, or both. Manuscripts that are purely descriptive, that apply a settled framework to yet another case without new leverage, or that belong more naturally to area-studies or policy outlets tend to fare poorly. The journal's readers expect an argument about security, stated precisely and defended with evidence.

Editorial Leadership

The journal's editor-in-chief is Ron Hassner, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, whose research on religion, territory, and conflict includes the widely cited Security Studies article on sacred space and indivisibility. Editorial listings should be confirmed on the journal's official Taylor & Francis Online page, since editors serve fixed terms and mastheads change.

Like other major Routledge journals, Security Studies operates with an editorial board of leading scholars in security and strategic studies who support peer review and the journal's strategic direction. Manuscripts undergo anonymous peer review by specialists, and the journal maintains the standards of evidence and argument expected of a top field journal: theoretical claims must be stated clearly enough to be evaluated, empirical claims must be supported by appropriate evidence, and normative or policy conclusions must follow from the analysis rather than substitute for it.

Journal Metrics

The journal's verified record lists the following publisher-reported and directory indicators:

• 2025 Journal Impact Factor: 3.6 (as reported by Taylor & Francis in the journal's "About this journal" information; recorded in the journal's verified profile in October 2026)
• H-index: 70 (directory record); OpenAlex records an H-index of 94 across 1,405 works and 34,039 citations
• 2017 Journal Impact Factor: 1.778 (Journal Citation Reports) — a historical benchmark showing the journal's long-standing citation strength
• Frequency: quarterly (4 issues per year)
• Identifiers: print ISSN 0963-6412, online ISSN 1556-1852, ISSN-L 0963-6412, ISO 4 abbreviation Secur. Stud.

The 2025 impact factor of 3.6 places Security Studies among the most cited specialist journals in international relations. Authors and evaluators should note that impact factors move year to year and that different databases compute their metrics differently; the figure to use is the one recognized by the relevant institution, checked against the current Journal Citation Reports.

Open Access and APCs

Security Studies is a hybrid journal published under Taylor & Francis's standard model: articles are published subscription-access by default, and authors may choose open-access publication for an article processing charge under one of the publisher's open-access licenses. No APC list price for this journal appears in the DOAJ-derived feed carried by OpenAlex, so the current charge is not officially published in the sources checked — authors should confirm the applicable APC, available waivers and discounts (including provisions for authors from low-income countries and for unfunded research), and funder-compliance terms directly with Taylor & Francis before submitting.

Taylor & Francis operates read-and-publish and transformative agreements with many institutions and consortia, under which affiliated authors may publish open access at no direct cost to themselves. Authors subject to funder open-access mandates should verify that the journal's hybrid route and self-archiving policy satisfy their specific requirements.

Abstracting and Indexing

Security Studies is indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science) — the basis for its Journal Impact Factor — and in Scopus. Its backfile is carried by JSTOR, and the journal is covered by standard serials services including MIAR. Standard identifiers are print ISSN 0963-6412 and online ISSN 1556-1852.

Landmark Papers

The following articles, all published in Security Studies 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.

Kenneth N. Waltz (1996), "International politics is not foreign policy." doi:10.1080/09636419608429298 — Cited about 291 times. Waltz's crisp restatement of structural-realist logic: theories of international politics explain systemic outcomes and the constraints states face, not the foreign policies of particular states. Written against critics who demanded that structural theory predict state behavior, it remains the canonical defense of the theory's division of labor and is assigned in virtually every graduate IR theory course.

Randall L. Schweller (1996), "Neorealism's status-quo bias: What security dilemma?" doi:10.1080/09636419608429277 — Cited about 441 times, the most cited article in this set. Schweller argued that neorealism's assumption that states value security above all else blinds it to revisionist powers that value expansion more than safety. His balance-of-interest theory, with its famous typology of revisionist "wolves" and "jackals" versus status-quo "lions" and "lambs," launched one of the most productive debates in realist theory.

Ron E. Hassner (2003), "'To Halve and to Hold': Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility." doi:10.1080/09636410390447617 — Cited about 289 times. Hassner showed that disputes over sacred territory resist compromise not because bargaining fails but because the indivisibility is constructed by belief: when land is sacred, dividing it destroys its value. The article bridged the study of religion and the bargaining theory of war, and it foreshadowed its author's later editorship of the journal.

Barry R. Posen (2006), "European Union Security and Defense Policy: Response to Unipolarity?" doi:10.1080/09636410600829356 — Cited about 263 times. Posen assessed the European Security and Defense Policy as a soft-balancing response to American unipolarity, arguing that Europe's military efforts were best understood as hedging against overdependence on the United States. The article became a key reference in debates over unipolarity, balancing, and the transatlantic bargain.

Brian Christopher Rathbun (2008), "A Rose by Any Other Name: Neoclassical Realism as the Logical and Necessary Extension of Structural Realism." doi:10.1080/09636410802098917 — Cited about 327 times. Rathbun argued that neoclassical realism — which incorporates domestic politics and perception as intervening variables between systemic pressures and foreign policy — is not a break with structural realism but its logical completion. The article helped consolidate neoclassical realism as a self-conscious research program.

Jenna Jordan (2009), "When Heads Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation." doi:10.1080/09636410903369068 — Cited about 287 times. Jordan's statistical analysis of more than two hundred cases found that removing terrorist leaders rarely causes organizational collapse — and that decapitation is least effective against bureaucratic and religiously motivated groups. Published as targeted killing became central to counterterrorism, it remains the most cited quantitative assessment of the strategy.

Jon R. Lindsay (2013), "Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare." doi:10.1080/09636412.2013.816122 — Cited about 466 times. Lindsay used the Stuxnet operation against Iran's nuclear program to argue that cyber weapons face severe operational limits: they require exquisite intelligence, are hard to control once released, and rarely produce independent strategic effect. The article became the scholarly anchor for skepticism about cyberwar hype.

Erik Gartzke and Jon R. Lindsay (2015), "Weaving Tangled Webs: Offense, Defense, and Deception in Cyberspace." doi:10.1080/09636412.2015.1038188 — Cited about 291 times. Gartzke and Lindsay argued that claims of offense dominance in cyberspace are overstated: deception, attribution problems, and the difficulty of converting intrusion into coercive leverage favor defenders more than commonly supposed. Together with Lindsay's Stuxnet article, it established Security Studies as a leading venue for cyber-conflict scholarship.

James Mahoney (2015), "Process Tracing and Historical Explanation." doi:10.1080/09636412.2015.1036610 — Cited about 294 times. Mahoney clarified what process tracing can and cannot do: it tests hypothesized causal mechanisms within cases using a Bayesian logic of evidence, but it does not by itself establish general causal claims. The essay is now a standard methods reference far beyond security studies.

Darren J. Lim and Zack Cooper (2015), "Reassessing Hedging: The Logic of Alignment in East Asia." doi:10.1080/09636412.2015.1103130 — Cited about 274 times. Lim and Cooper argued that much of what the literature calls "hedging" in East Asia is better understood as straightforward balancing or bandwagoning once the logic of alignment is specified carefully. The article disciplined a concept that had become analytically loose.

Nina Silove (2017), "Beyond the Buzzword: The Three Meanings of 'Grand Strategy'." doi:10.1080/09636412.2017.1360073 — Cited about 265 times. Silove distinguished three distinct meanings of grand strategy in the literature — as a deliberate plan, as a set of guiding principles, and as a pattern of state behavior — and showed that much confusion in the field comes from running them together. It is the standard conceptual reference on the term.

Jack Hoagland, Amy Oakes, Eric Parajon, and Susan Peterson (2020), "The Blind Men and the Elephant: Comparing the Study of International Security Across Journals." doi:10.1080/09636412.2020.1761439 — A systematic comparison of how international security is studied across journals, notable here because it confirms Security Studies' standing, alongside International Security, as one of the two most prominent journals dedicated to the field.

Publishing in Security Studies: Tips for Authors

Security Studies is a selective field journal whose readers expect theoretical precision and empirical discipline. The following guidance follows from the journal's published record and standard Taylor & Francis practice:

• Make a security argument, not just a case study. The journal's landmark articles adjudicate theoretical controversies or open new empirical domains. Manuscripts should state their theoretical stakes explicitly: which debate does this advance, and what would change minds?
• Match method to claim. The journal publishes formal theory, statistical analysis, structured qualitative work, and historical case studies — but each is judged on its own terms. A process-tracing design should test mechanisms, not merely narrate; a statistical test should address endogeneity and scope conditions, not merely report correlations.
• Engage the journal's own debates. Because Security Studies concentrates the field's arguments, citing and positioning against work the journal has published — on realism's logic, on cyber conflict, on coercion — signals fit and seriousness.
• Write with strategic literacy. The readership includes scholars who advise governments and officers who study strategy. Arguments should be precise enough for theorists and concrete enough for practitioners; jargon that obscures the mechanism helps no one.
• Follow the Instructions for Authors. Formatting, citation style, word limits, figure standards, and anonymization requirements for double-anonymous review are set out on the journal's Taylor & Francis Online page. Non-compliant manuscripts may be returned before review.
• Consider the policy implications honestly. The journal values policy-relevant scholarship, but relevance must be earned: draw implications that follow from the findings, acknowledge uncertainty, and avoid advocacy dressed as analysis.
• Plan for a demanding review. As a top field journal, Security Studies sends manuscripts to expert reviewers who will probe theory, evidence, and alternative explanations. Build time for revision into the publication plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who publishes Security Studies?
Routledge, the social-science and humanities imprint of Taylor & Francis (United Kingdom).

What are the journal's ISSNs?
Print ISSN 0963-6412; online ISSN 1556-1852.

When was the journal founded?
1991; it has published quarterly ever since.

Who is the editor-in-chief?
Ron Hassner (University of California, Berkeley), according to recent listings — confirm the current masthead on the journal's Taylor & Francis page.

What is the journal's Impact Factor?
The publisher-reported 2025 Journal Impact Factor is 3.6; the 2017 figure was 1.778.

Is Security Studies open access?
It is a hybrid journal: subscription-access by default, with an open-access option for an APC. The current APC is not officially published in the sources checked; confirm with Taylor & Francis.

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

How do I submit a manuscript?
Through the journal's Taylor & Francis Online submission system (tandfonline.com), following the Instructions for Authors.

How does Security Studies compare to International Security?
Both are leading journals dedicated to security studies; a 2020 comparative study published in Security Studies itself identifies the two as the field's most prominent specialist journals. Security Studies is the Routledge/Taylor & Francis title; International Security is published by MIT Press.

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