Policy Sciences

Aims & Scope

With an interdisciplinary and international focus, Policy Sciences encourages a diversity of perspectives. The editors especially welcome conceptual and empirical innovation, together with the potential richness and insight of comparative orientation. The journal offers articles that examine the normative aspects of policy sciences; conceptual articles addressing concrete policy issues; articles on particularly controversial pieces of analysis; opposing perspectives, including critiques and rejoinders on articles already published, which open the journal to an exchange of views rather than restricting it to pure presentation; and special issues that analyze specific topics in depth. Policy Sciences favors, but does not publish exclusively, works that either explicitly or implicitly utilize the policy sciences framework. The policy sciences are a distinctive subset within the policy movement in that they embrace the traditions of innovated and elaborated by Harold D. Lasswell and Myers S. McDougal. The policy sciences can be applied to articles with greater or lesser intensity to accommodate the focus of an author’s work. At the minimum, this means taking a problem oriented, multi-method or contextual approach.

A twelfth criterion — whether APC fees are clearly disclosed — is not scored here; it is left out of the total rather than counted as a failure. Publication charges appear in the metrics card above.

Based on the Think.Check.Submit framework by DOAJ, COPE & OASPA. All data from verified open sources.

Source: OpenAlex · Each year’s green bar = citations earned by that year’s papers, counted to date — so recent years look lower simply because their papers haven’t had time to be cited yet.

SJR Quartile by Discipline

Scimago ranks this journal separately in each subject category — its quartile can differ by discipline.

Subject Classification