From Reader to Editor: Some Conclusions after Three Decades of Experiences with Political Science and International Relations Journals in Romania

Political Science (PS) and International Relations (IR) are relatively new disciplines in Romania, institutionalized in academia only during the first years of the 1990s. Naturally, academic journals were created in response to the demand for publishing outlets. The paper we are proposing is the first attempt to systematically analyze three decades of PS and IR journal publications in Romania. We focus the core of our analysis on three main issues: (1) Who and what gets published in Romanian journals? What are the national and international co-authorship networks represented in the literature? What are the main topics being analyzed in the published papers and how have these topics changed over time? (2) Can we talk about a Romanian approach or perspective on PS and IR? Is it visible in the set of articles published in Romanian journals? Did these journals contribute to the development of Romanian PS and IR? (3) What is the road forward for Romanian PS and IR journals, especially within the regional and global context? Is there a need and a place for national PS and IR journals in a world that is on the one hand focused on indexing and impact factors and, on the other, on the verge of a shift to open-access publications with new forms of peer-reviewing? These questions will address directly the questions in the CfP for the Politics of Publishing panel.