In a recent paper (Pippa Norris and Ivor Crewe, ``The Reputation of Political Science Journals: Pluralist and Consensus Views'', Political Studies Association Annual Conference, April 1991), all 1,051 political scientists registered in the (UK) PSA Staff Directory, 1989, were asked to evaluate a total of 135 international political science journals on four criteria: ``Originality'', ``Value for Teaching'', ``Type of Readership'', and ``General Quality''. A summary indicator, ``Journal Evaluation'', was derived from the journal's mean scores for all the four original criteria. When combined with a ``Familiarity'' index (the percentage of all respondents who evaluated it) this gave rise to a final indicator ``Journal Impact'':
Table 3: Ranking by Journal Impact [detail] Rank Journal Familiarity (%) 1 Political Studies 75 2 British J. of Political Science 66 3 American Political Science Review 60 4 Government and Opposition 68 5 Parliamentary Affairs 52 6 West European Politics 39 7 Public Administration 39 8 World Politics 29 9 Comparative Politics 39 10 American J. of Political Science 38 11 History of Political Thought 19 12 International Affairs 36 13 Political Theory 21 14 Ethics 13 15 International Organisation 19
Given that scholars in other specialities would not be expected to be familiar with HPT (the ``Familiarity %'' column in this table indicates how strongly this influences the ranking), a rank of 11th out of 135 is very acceptable. Moreover, when the familiarity index is removed, so that the journal is judged purely on its own merits by its readers, the result is even more impressive:
Table 4: Journal Rank by Evaluation [detail] Rank Journal Score (%) 1 Ethics 80 2 History of Political Thought 78 3 Social Philosophy and Policy 77 4 Historical Journal 77 5 Soviet Studies 76