Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A political science faculty member reviewing pedagogical research in PS: Political Science & Politics to implement evidence-based instructional strategies in an undergraduate research methods seminar.
- Is an instance
A department chair consulting PS: Political Science & Politics demographic survey data to assess discipline-wide faculty hiring and retention trends.
Editorial commentary
Quick answer: PS: Political Science & Politics is an official quarterly peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association (APSA), published by Cambridge University Press. It features research on contemporary politics, political science pedagogy, and the state of the academic profession. In recent bibliometric reporting, the journal holds a 2-year Journal Impact Factor of 2.9, a 5-year Impact Factor of 3.1, and a Scopus CiteScore of 2.9. It operates under print ISSN 1049-0965 and online ISSN 1537-5935.
PS: Political Science & Politics provides critical analyses of contemporary political phenomena and scholarly assessments of the political science discipline. Unlike traditional subfield-specific outlets that focus primarily on narrow empirical sub-disciplines, PS serves as a integrative forum addressing teaching, institutional trends, professional development, and timely public commentary.
Journal scope and editorial focus
Published on behalf of the American Political Science Association, the journal organizes contributions across distinct thematic dimensions:
- Contemporary politics: Timely scholarly assessments of elections, policymaking, and international crises.
- The profession: Empirical studies evaluating hiring trends, faculty demographics, graduate training, and survey research on political scientists.
- Pedagogy and teaching: Curriculum development, active learning methodologies, and evidence-based instructional strategies across political science classrooms.
- Public scholarship and civic engagement: Translation of academic political science research into actionable insights for public policy design (see also what is public policy).
The journal actively solicits symposia and special issue proposals that address cross-cutting disciplinary challenges. Submissions undergo peer review managed through Editorial Manager, with four issues published per year in print and online via Cambridge Core.
Bibliometric profile and Journal Impact Factor
Bibliometric performance indicators for PS: Political Science & Politics reflect its hybrid mission of empirical analysis and professional inquiry:
- 2-Year Journal Impact Factor: 2.9 (Clarivate Journal Citation Reports)
- 5-Year Journal Impact Factor: 3.1
- Scopus CiteScore: 2.9
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association
- Identifiers: Print ISSN 1049-0965; Online ISSN 1537-5935
The Clarivate Journal Citation Reports (JCR) computes the 2-year Journal Impact Factor as the ratio of current-year citations to citable articles and reviews published during the two preceding years. By comparison, Scopus calculates CiteScore using a four-year citation accumulation window, capturing longer citation life cycles across social science pedagogy and professional literature.
Responsible research assessment in professional evaluation
Under the principles established by the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), journal-level metrics such as JIF or CiteScore should not be used as evaluative shortcuts to judge the merit of individual scholars. Research published in PS: Political Science & Politics often influences curricular standards and administrative governance across higher education—outcomes that cannot be captured solely by citation counts.
Sources
- American Political Science Association. PS: Political Science & Politics journal portal. https://www.apsanet.org/ps (read 2026-11-07).
- Cambridge University Press. About PS: Political Science & Politics on Cambridge Core. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/information/about-this-journal (read 2026-11-07).
- Crossref. Journal metadata for PS Political Science & Politics (ISSN 1537-5935). https://api.crossref.org/journals/1537-5935 (read 2026-11-07).
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="PS: Political Science & Politics"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ps-political-science-and-politics" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ps-political-science-and-politics",
"name": "PS: Political Science & Politics",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ps-political-science-and-politics",
"description": "PS: Political Science & Politics is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association (APSA). Established as an essential disciplinary forum, it publishes critical analyses of contemporary political issues, political science pedagogy, and the academic profession, holding a 2-year Journal Impact Factor of 2.9.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/publishing#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ps-political-science-and-politics",
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-11-08T01:05:44",
"dateModified": "2026-11-08T01:05:44",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
