American Journal of Political Science (AJPS)

The American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) is a general-interest peer-reviewed academic journal published quarterly by Wiley on behalf of the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA). It reports empirical and theoretical research across political science and holds a 2025 Clarivate Journal Citation Reports Impact Factor of 4.7, ranking 16th out of 322 journals in the Political Science category.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 8 Nov 2026

Journal scope and editorial governance

AJPS publishes research spanning all major subfields of the discipline, including:

American politics and electoral behavior
Comparative politics and regime dynamics
International relations and transnational policy
Public policy processes and administration (see also what is public policy)
Political methodology and empirical research design
Formal political theory and normative inquiry

The journal is published four times per year—in January, April, July, and October. Editorial operations are led by Editors-in-Chief Dan Reiter and Adam Berinsky, with administrative support from the Michigan State University Department of Political Science and the MSU College of Social Science. Submissions undergo double-anonymous peer review. As part of its discipline-wide scope in political science, AJPS maintains strict replication standards, requiring authors of accepted empirical manuscripts to archive replication datasets and analysis code prior to final publication.

Bibliometric profile and Journal Impact Factor

According to official metrics from Clarivate Analytics published in the 2025 Journal Citation Reports (JCR), AJPS exhibits the following evaluation indicators:

Journal Impact Factor (2-Year): 4.7
Category Ranking: 16 out of 322 indexed journals in Political Science (Q1 quartile)
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Midwest Political Science Association
Indexing Identifiers: Print ISSN 0092-5853; Online ISSN 1540-5907

The Journal Impact Factor measures the ratio of citations received in a given calendar year to citable items (articles and reviews) published during the preceding two years. While JIF reflects aggregate journal citation volume, researchers should distinguish it from alternative metrics such as Scopus CiteScore, which utilizes a four-year citation window.

Responsible assessment and evaluation standards

In accordance with the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), journal-level metrics such as the Journal Impact Factor should not serve as surrogate measures for the scientific merit, methodological validity, or societal impact of individual research articles. Academic departments, hiring panels, and tenure committees evaluate candidates based on the direct contributions of their scholarship rather than the impact factor of the venue in which their papers appear.

Sources

AJPS Editorial Office. American Journal of Political Science official portal. https://ajps.org/ (read 2026-11-07).
Midwest Political Science Association. American Journal of Political Science Overview. https://www.mpsanet.org/ajps/ (read 2026-11-07).
Crossref. Journal metadata for American Journal of Political Science (ISSN 1540-5907). https://api.crossref.org/journals/1540-5907 (read 2026-11-07).

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