Better than CPS?
Is World Politics still a good journal?
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Why do these lists indicate otherwise
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=soc_politicalscience
https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=3320 -
WP is a weird journal. I submitted there on a whim once. The reviews were fine. But the editor was some rando who, as far as I could tell, wasn't a scholar or faculty member, and didn't even have a PhD. They wrote up a bunch of gibberish that was apparently a decision letter, but it all seemed like a pretext to reject a paper that didn't meet whatever invisible criteria they were looking for.
Granted, this was for an IR submission. Maybe the CP crowd has it better. I don't know anyone in IR who thinks of WP as a "first submission" type of place. Nearly everyone would submit to IO first -- if not one of the Top 3 -- and then maybe even ISQ or IS, or a subfield journal lie RIO, RIPE, JCR, or JPR, before submitting to WP. Can't remember the last time I read a good IR article in WP...
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It’s harder to publish in WP because they take forever with decisions, publish so few articles per year, and still meet in that weird group editorial format that is not conducive to quick clean decisions.
I’d be curious which CP subjects still look to WP. In my corners of CP it was much more common to find good work in WP in the 00s and early 10s, but now it’s not part of the conversation for top papers.
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I’d be curious which CP subjects still look to WP. In my corners of CP it was much more common to find good work in WP in the 00s and early 10s, but now it’s not part of the conversation for top papers.
It's still my favorite journal. It's also still the most likely place to find really high quality big think and qualitative work.
But it is definitely insular and a majority of its articles don't get cited that much.
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I submitted an article there and waited over two months for it to be desk rejected with a vague comment from the editors about "fit." This was not only a frustratingly long time for this initial decision, but that same article had already made it out for peer review at the APSR and IO. Not clear why it was deemed not up to WP's standards/not a good fit other than their very idiosyncratic decision-making process.
TLDR, it might be a good journal, but it is risky if you're on a tight timeline to get something published.