Serbian Studies

About Serbian Studies

Serbian Studies — Journal Profile

Serbian Studies is the interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies (NASSS), published biannually in the United States by Slavica Publishers at Indiana University. In circulation since 1980, it publishes scholarly articles on all aspects of the Serbian cultural heritage, archival documents, and source material related to the Serbian immigration to North America. The journal carries the print ISSN 0742-3330 and the electronic ISSN 1941-9511. Its full citation title is Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies, and its volume 36, numbers 1–2, appeared in 2025 through Project MUSE. For scholars of Serbian literature, history, art, music, politics and diaspora culture working in English, it has been the field's North American home journal for more than four decades.

The journal's identity is inseparable from its society. The North American Society for Serbian Studies was established in 1978, and the first issue of its journal followed in 1980. NASSS is an organisational member of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (now ASEEES), and its membership consists of individuals dedicated to the multidisciplinary study and advancement of knowledge of Serbia and the Serbian diaspora. The journal is therefore not a commercial title chasing a market; it is the scholarly organ of a learned society, distributed to its members as part of their membership and to roughly one hundred eighty to two hundred libraries in North America and abroad. That structure explains both its strengths — a loyal specialist readership, an international editorial board of recognised experts, and continuity across four decades — and its character: a biannual rhythm, a focus on depth within one cultural field rather than breadth across many, and an openness to archival documents and source materials alongside analytical articles.

At a Glance

• Full title: Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies
• Owner: North American Society for Serbian Studies (NASSS), founded 1978
• Publisher: Slavica Publishers, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
• ISSN: 0742-3330 (print); 1941-9511 (electronic)
• Frequency: Biannual — one volume of two issues per year
• First issue: 1980; volume 36 appeared in 2025
• Peer review: Yes — interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed; manuscripts are sent for peer review to scholars in the appropriate fields after initial editorial evaluation
• Editor-in-Chief: Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, Monash University, Australia (per the NASSS journal page)
• Publication fees: None — the society's policies state there are no publishing fees or remuneration for authors
• Language of submission: English
• Article length: Articles should not exceed 15,000 words including footnotes, per the current NASSS guidelines for authors
• Style: Chicago Manual of Style (notes and bibliography)
• Content types: Research articles, archival documents, source materials and book reviews

Who Publishes It, and Why That Shapes the Journal

Serbian Studies is governed by its society. The NASSS policies describe the journal's governing body as the Executive of NASSS together with the Editor-in-Chief and the Associate Editors, with the President and Treasurer of NASSS sitting ex officio on the Editorial Board. The journal is published with institutional support from the endowment fund of NASSS and from NASSS membership fees, and it is available to members in hard copy and to members and the public on the NASSS website. Production and distribution are handled by Slavica Publishers, the well-known Slavic studies imprint at Indiana University, which has published the journal for many years and handles institutional subscriptions; libraries and institutions order from Slavica, while individuals receive the journal through NASSS membership rather than by subscribing directly — an arrangement already described in the journal's own front matter in the 2010s and still reflected in the publisher's subscription page.

The current editorial leadership, as listed on the NASSS journal page, is headed by Editor-in-Chief Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover of Monash University, Australia — a detail that itself signals the journal's genuinely international span, since its society is North American, its editor is based in Australia, and its contributors and board members are spread across North America, Serbia and the wider Serbian diaspora. The Associate Editors listed are Milica Bakić-Hayden (University of Pittsburgh), Emily Joan Greble (Vanderbilt University), Sibelan Forrester (Swarthmore College), Danilo Mandić (Harvard University), Dijana Mitrović Longinović (University of Maryland) and Adam Sofronijević (University of Belgrade). The wider Editorial Board includes, among others, Aleksandar Bošković (Columbia University), Dubravka Đurić (Singidunum University, Belgrade), Lilien Filipovich-Robinson (George Washington University), Radmila Gorup (Columbia University), Milan Gromović (University of Novi Sad), Robert M. Hayden (University of Pittsburgh) and Filip Ivanović (University of Donja Gorica, Podgorica). Earlier volumes were edited for many years by co-editors Ljubica D. Popovich (Vanderbilt University) and Lilien F. Robinson (George Washington University), whose long tenure shaped the journal's modern form.

Scope: Serbian Culture and Society, Past and Present

The society describes the journal's remit plainly: it invites scholarly articles on subjects pertaining to Serbian culture and society, past and present, across fields and disciplines, and it welcomes archival documents, source materials and book reviews alongside research articles. The editors state that they welcome innovative approaches and new methodologies in the study of Serbian cultural texts which offer new readings relevant to the contemporary context of global culture. In practice that remit covers Serbian literature and literary history; history from the medieval period to the present; art history and visual culture; music; linguistics and language politics; political and social history; religious studies; and the history and culture of the Serbian immigration to North America, for which the journal is a recognised documentary venue — it publishes archival documents and source material related to that immigration that might struggle to find a home in a generalist journal.

Recent and representative contents show the range. Volume 36 (2025) continues the journal's mix of literary, historical and cultural analysis. Across earlier volumes, readers will find Radmila J. Gorup's work on boundaries and crossings in the works of Ivo Andrić; a study of Đilas's perspectives on Njegoš; an account of the literary disputes of the 1950s and the demise of socialist realism; Vladislav Sotirović's much-cited article on Albanian ethnogenesis and Illyrian anthroponomy; Ljubomir Milanović on picturing the new middle class in nineteenth-century portraits of Serbian women; and Ranko Bugarski's "A War of Letters: The Case of Serbian" (volume 32, 2021), on language and script politics. The pattern is consistent: deeply sourced, field-specific scholarship, often on topics — Serbian portraiture, language legislation, diaspora archives — where Serbian Studies is not merely one possible outlet but the natural one.

Writing for Serbian Studies: The Official Guidelines in Detail

The NASSS guidelines for authors are specific, and meeting them exactly is part of a successful submission. Manuscripts should be in English, written in the style prescribed in the guidelines, prepared as a Word .doc or .docx file — explicitly not in PDF — and sent as an attachment to the Editor-in-Chief's email address given on the NASSS journal page. Articles should not exceed 15,000 words including footnotes. (An older publisher page described an 8,000-word ceiling and submission to the then co-editors; the current society guidelines, which name the present Editor-in-Chief, are the ones to follow.) At the top of the manuscript, flush right, authors insert their full name, institutional affiliation and email, without academic titles or departmental addresses, giving the full name of the university or institution. Below the centred, bold, title-case article title, authors place an abstract of 100–150 words and six relevant keywords.

Formatting follows the journal's house presentation of the Chicago Manual of Style: double spacing in Times New Roman 12 pt for the text, 10 pt single spacing for footnotes, no formatting beyond paragraph indentation, and bold reserved for the article title and sub-headings. Quotations longer than one sentence are set as separate indented paragraphs rather than placed in quotation marks; double inverted commas are used for shorter quotations inside the text and to emphasise terms; foreign words are italicised. Graphic and photographic images are accepted in high resolution in jpeg format only. Slavica Publishers uses the Chicago Manual of Style, and the society points authors to the Chicago notes-and-bibliography citation guide for detailed reference formatting. After initial evaluation by the editors, articles are sent for peer review to scholars in the appropriate fields. The journal's code of ethics is published by the society, and its policies confirm there are no publishing fees and no remuneration for authors: the journal is funded by the society's endowment and membership fees, which is precisely why it can operate without author charges.

Practical advice follows from the journal's structure. Because Serbian Studies appears twice a year and is produced through a society office rather than a large commercial workflow, authors should expect a considered rather than rapid timetable, and should submit with the issue cycle in mind; the society has in recent cycles announced a submission deadline in mid-March for the year's issue, so checking the journal page for the current call is worthwhile before sending a manuscript. Book reviews and archival documents follow the editors' commissioning patterns more than open submission, so a short enquiry email is sensible for those categories. Digital availability continues to improve: the journal states that it is in the process of digitalisation, current and previous issues are available in digital form from the NASSS website, and recent volumes are distributed through Project MUSE, which puts the journal in front of the large institutional readership that platform serves.

Metrics, Indexing and How to Read Them

The society lists the journal's indexing and abstracting as: Scopus, Project MUSE, the American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies, ERIH (the European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences), IBZ (Internationale Bibliographie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur), Historical Abstracts, the MLA International Bibliography and OCLC ArticleFirst. That is a strong, field-appropriate indexing portfolio: Scopus provides the general citation record, Project MUSE provides full-text distribution to subscribing libraries, and the MLA, Historical Abstracts and ABSEES services put the journal in front of exactly the literature and history scholars who form its core audience.

OpenAlex, resolved through its ISSN endpoints for both 0742-3330 and 1941-9511 — both resolve to the same source, S4210190525 — recorded at checking time 366 works for Serbian Studies with 137 citations, an H-index of 5, an i10-index of 0 and a two-year mean citedness of 0.0, with OpenAlex's coverage of the title beginning in 1983 even though the journal itself began in 1980. Its most associated topics were Balkans history, politics and society; Central European literary studies; and poetry analysis and criticism. SCImago-derived data recorded on this Journals World record gives an H-index of 2 and a best quartile of Q4. The gap between the OpenAlex H-index of 5 and the SCImago-derived figure of 2 is typical for small humanities journals with long back runs: the two databases index different year windows and count different citing sources. Neither figure should be read as a quality verdict. Serbian studies is a small linguistic-cultural field; its scholarship cites monographs, editions and archival publications heavily, and journal citation averages across Slavic studies are uniformly modest. The meaningful quality signals here are the ones an author can inspect directly: four decades of continuous publication, a named international editorial board, peer review by field specialists, Scopus indexing, and distribution through Project MUSE.

A listing in the Directory of Open Access Journals could not be verified for either ISSN from the DOAJ search API at checking time, and no DOAJ claim is made. The journal is not an open access title in the DOAJ sense: it is a society journal available to members, to subscribing libraries, and in digital form through the society's website and Project MUSE, with the society noting that digitalisation of the back run is in progress.

History and Continuity

The society behind the journal was founded in 1978, in a period when Serbian studies in North America was asserting an identity of its own alongside the broader Yugoslav and Slavic studies frameworks, and the journal followed two years later, in 1980. Its past presidents and editors read as a roll of the field's North American founders — scholars such as Alex N. Dragnich, Vasa D. Mihailovich, Dimitrije Djordjevic and Radmila Jovanović-Gorup all led the society in its first two decades. The journal weathered the 1990s, when the breakup of Yugoslavia transformed the political context of everything it published, and continued on its biannual rhythm into the digital era: hard copies from the publisher, digital issues from the society, and recent volumes on Project MUSE, where volume 36 (2025) is the current issue recorded for this profile. Few area-studies journals anywhere can show an unbroken run from 1980 to the present under the same society ownership; that continuity is itself a form of quality evidence, because it reflects a membership that keeps subscribing, a board that keeps serving, and editors who keep delivering issues.

Reading the Journal Today

For a new reader, the fastest way into Serbian Studies is through its book reviews and archival documents as well as its articles. The reviews map what the field is publishing year by year, in English and in Serbian, and the documents sections periodically print primary material — correspondence, records and testimony connected with Serbian immigration to North America — with scholarly framing. Together with the research articles, they make each issue function as a small state-of-the-field report for Serbian studies in the Anglophone world, which is exactly what a society journal should provide.

Similar Journals

Authors weighing Serbian Studies against neighbouring outlets usually consider the broad Slavic studies flagships — Slavic Review and The Slavic and East European Journal — for work whose claims extend across the whole region; East European Politics and Societies for political and social analysis; and, for the South Slavic and Balkan frame, journals such as Südosteuropa or the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. None of these replaces Serbian Studies for work centred on Serbian cultural heritage, Serbian literary and art history, or the Serbian diaspora in North America, where this journal's board expertise, archival-documents tradition and society readership are unmatched. The realistic choice is usually sequential rather than exclusive: region-wide arguments go to the generalist titles first, while Serbia-centred studies, editions of documents and diaspora source publications belong here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Serbian Studies peer-reviewed? Yes. The society describes it as an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal; manuscripts are evaluated by the editors and then sent for peer review to scholars in the appropriate fields.

Does Serbian Studies charge publication fees? No. The NASSS policies state that there are no publishing fees or remuneration for authors; the journal is supported by the society's endowment fund and membership fees.

What are the journal's ISSNs? Print ISSN 0742-3330 and electronic ISSN 1941-9511, as given on the publisher's journal page; both identifiers resolve to the same OpenAlex source record.

How long can an article be? Articles should not exceed 15,000 words including footnotes, per the current NASSS guidelines for authors, and should be submitted in English as a Word document with a 100–150 word abstract and six keywords.

Where is Serbian Studies indexed? Per the society: Scopus, Project MUSE, the American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies, ERIH, IBZ, Historical Abstracts, the MLA International Bibliography and OCLC ArticleFirst.

How do I get the journal? Individuals receive it through NASSS membership; libraries and institutions order from Slavica Publishers at Indiana University. Digital issues are available through the NASSS website and recent volumes through Project MUSE.

Who edits Serbian Studies? The Editor-in-Chief is Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover (Monash University), supported by six associate editors and an international editorial board listed in full on the NASSS journal page. Editorial teams change over time, so verify the current masthead before submitting.

Sources and Verification Notes

This profile is built from the North American Society for Serbian Studies journal and policies pages (scope, governance, editorial leadership, indexing list, author guidelines, fee policy), the Slavica Publishers subscription page at Indiana University (ISSN and eISSN, frequency, subscription arrangements, submission history), the Project MUSE journal description and its volume 36 (2025) issue listing, and OpenAlex source S4210190525 resolved via the ISSN endpoints for 0742-3330 and 1941-9511 (works, citations, H-index and topic figures as at checking time). SCImago-derived figures recorded on this site (H-index 2, Q4) are attributed to that data and differ from OpenAlex's, as explained in the metrics section. A DOAJ listing could not be verified and none is claimed. Fields that could not be verified from a fetched source are not asserted.