Photo: Martin Tegnander / PRIO
Photo: Martin Tegnander / PRIO

PRIOs two leading international scientific journals, the Journal of Peace Research (JPR) and Security Dialogue, are now ranked among the world’s Top 10 most influential journals in international relations. The two most prestigious journal citation rankings, the Web of Science/Thompson Reuter’s Journal Citation Report and the Scopus SCImago Journal Rank, both released their annual lists recently, placing the PRIO journals in the very top.

While both journals regularly rank high in their discipline, this is the first time they both make the Top 10 of the list at the same time. JPR is ranked as number five, and Security Dialogue as number seven out of 82 major journals in international relations according to the two-year impact factor. The impact factor is provided by the Web of Science, and is the world’s most used citation index. The journals are also ranked number five and eight respectively on the more stable five-year impact factor. On the general political science list containing 156 major journals, JPR is ranked as number six. Security Dialogue is not listed in political science.

While the impact factor simply measures average citations, the Scopus SJ R index also takes into account the quality of the citing journal. Citations in the most prestigious journals are given more weight. Based on Google Scholar data, the list also includes more journals than the more exclusive Web of Science list.

For the very first time, JPR is now ranked number one out of 380 journals in political science and international relations. This places the PRIO journal ahead of the traditional flagship journals in international relations, like International Organization, World Politics, International Security, and International Studies Quarterly. Security Dialogue increased its SJR score by 67% compared to last year to place number 10 on the Scopus list.

For any one institution to edit two internationally leading journals in any field of research is a rarity. For a relatively small Norwegian research institute to own and run two leading international journals is exceptional. We are grateful to our international editorial boards and networks, and our global pool of authors and reviewers for making this achievement possible.