American Politics Research

American Politics Research is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by SAGE Publications that covers empirical and theoretical studies of government, elections, and political institutions in the United States. Established in 1973 as American Politics Quarterly, it is indexed in Web of Science and Scopus.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 8 Nov 2026

Scope and Editorial Focus

American Politics Research publishes quantitative and qualitative scholarly articles advancing theoretical understanding across all subfields of American politics. Core subject areas represented in the journal include:

Electoral politics and voting behavior: Empirical analyses of voter turnout, public opinion shifts, campaign strategy, and partisan realignment.
Institutions and governance: Studies of the United States Congress, presidential executive actions, federal administrative agencies, and state legislatures.
Judicial processes and legal institutions: Empirical research on federal and state court decisions, judicial appointments, and statutory interpretation.
Subnational and local politics: Comparative analysis of state policy innovation, municipal governance, and intergovernmental relations.

Methodologically, the publication emphasizes reproducible empirical designs, including observational regression modeling, survey experiments, field trials, and longitudinal roll-call analysis. Researchers in the discipline often cross-reference institutional methodologies with foundational frameworks in political science and systemic policy analysis in public policy.

Indexing and Bibliographic Metrics

Bibliographic tracking for American Politics Research spans major international scholarly indexes and citation registries:

Indexing collections: Active inclusion in Clarivate’s Web of Science Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) under the Political Science discipline category, as well as indexing in Scopus.
Digital persistent identifiers: Content registration through Crossref with over 1,100 indexed Crossref DOI records under publisher prefix designations.
Citation aggregations: Open bibliographic registries, including OpenAlex (Source ID S72844074), record cumulative scholarly citation metrics exceeding 52,000 career citations and an institutional 2-year mean citation rate of approximately 1.84.
Catalog identity: Cataloged in the National Library of Medicine (NLM ID 9918383976706676) with serial continuation documentation tracing from its historical run as American Politics Quarterly.

Evaluating Journal Metrics in Responsible Assessment

When evaluating articles in American Politics Research, research administrators, tenure committees, and bibliometricians distinguish between aggregate serial indicators and individual article quality:

Aggregate citation distribution: A journal-level metric such as the Journal Impact Factor reflects an arithmetic mean of citations across all published citable items over a fixed window. In political science journals, citation counts are heavily skewed; a small fraction of highly cited papers accounts for a large percentage of total citations.
Disciplinary citation velocity: Political science and public policy disciplines feature longer citation half-lives than laboratory sciences. An empirical paper examining constitutional precedent or electoral cycles frequently achieves peak citation volume 4 to 8 years following initial publication.
DORA principles: Under the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Leiden Manifesto, institutional evaluators must assess candidate scholarship on the direct intellectual contribution, methodological rigor, and data reproducibility of the specific work rather than relying on the container journal’s commercial metric ranking.

Sources

OpenAlex Bibliographic Registry. Source Record: American Politics Research (S72844074). https://api.openalex.org/sources/S72844074 (2026-11-07).
National Library of Medicine. NLM Catalog: American politics research (NLM ID 9918383976706676). https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esummary.fcgi?db=nlmcatalog&id=383998&retmode=json (2026-11-07).
Crossref. Journal Metadata Query: ISSN 1532-673X. https://api.crossref.org/journals/1532-673X (2026-11-07).
Clarivate. Web of Science Master Journal List: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). https://mjl.clarivate.com/ (2026-11-07).

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