I am finishing my first academic year as faculty in a business school after twelve years in a political science department. As the only political scientists in our school I often have to explain the different political science journals.

Business schools are an exciting mix of faculty with Ph.D.s in management, economics, sociology, history, statistics, psychology, and political science. On top of these differences in training, faculty are housed in departments as different as marketing, finance, accounting, strategy, international business, decision science, and information systems.

These differences often require benchmark “lists” of accepted journals for everything from internal promotion, allocating teaching loads (reduced teaching for “research active” faculty) to the ability to advise Ph.D. students.

There are three broadly used lists. The FT 45, the UT-Dallas list, and the most comprehensive Association of Business Schools (ABS). The 2015 ABS guide just came out.  ABS ranks over 1,400 journals from 4-1 with 4 being the top ranking. Ok, they also give a * to some 4 journals, giving them. Grade inflation.

Just to give you some flavor for this, ABS ranks many economics journals. 23 are ranked 4 and 68 are ranking three.

Psychology also has their own set of rankings . Other fields, like sociology are ranked within the catch-all “Social Sciences” lists.

Without editorializing, here is the full list of all of the political science journals I could find.

Political Science Journals Ranked “4”

None

Political Science Journals Ranked “3”

Quarterly Journal of Political Science (added in 2014)

Electoral Studies (added in 2014)

Public Choice

New Political Economy

Public Opinion Quarterly (added in 2014)

Review of International Political Economy

West European Politics (added in 2014)

Political Science Journals Ranked “2”

Economics and Politics

Political Studies

Political Science Journals Ranked “1”

None