Whenever you write an acacemic paper – no matter whether it is for school, for a journal or as part of your thesis – you are in need of literature. You need to find other papers or books to read and to cite to show that you know what you and others are talking about. But where do you look for this literature? No matter whether you start your search at Google Scholar, your local university library or the Web of Knowledge (WoK), you often end up following a beaten track. And that track most oftenly leads through US publishing houses, authors, and journals.
If your are interested in some alternative views, here are some links to journals that might help you leave that path at least once in a while:
- International Relations of the Asia-Pacific; published by the Japanese Association of International Relaions (JAIR), but regional and global focus, in English
- Chinese Journal of International Politics; from China, in English, offers a lot of translations from other Chinese journals
- World Economics and Politics ; published by the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS), in Chinese, few European universities will have access to this journal, but you can aquire it through, for example, the CrossAsia project of Staatsbibiothek Berlin
- Issues and Studies; from Taiwan, in English
- Pacific Focus; from Korea, but with a regional focus
- Revista Brasileira de Politica Internacional; Brazil and Latin America, it is originally published in Portuguese, but the SciELO database offers translations
- Revista de Relaciones Internacionales de UNAM; Mexico and Latin America, in Spanish with English abstracts and titles
- Colombia Internacional; Colombia and Latin America, most articles are in Spanish, but some in English too, provides abtracts and titles in English
- Revista Contexto Internacional; Brazil and Latin America, some articles are in Spanish, some in English, most are in Portuguese, provides abtracts and titles in English
- Iranian Review of International Affairs; Iran (http://www.isrjournals.ir/en/archive.html)
- International Studies; from India, in English
- South African Journal of International Affairs; from South Africa, in English
- Politikon – South African Journal of Political Science, in English
- Uluslararasi Iliskiler – International Relations; from Turkey, the majority of articles is written in Turkish, but some articles get translated into English, provides English abstracts and titles for all articles
- Alternatives: Global, local, political; often non-Western scholars and run by a 2/3 non-Western editorial team (http://alt.sagepub.com/)
Some of these journals are actually listed in the Social Science Citation Index and you might want (or have) to access it through the Web of Knowledge (given that your institution has access to the WoK).
This list is probably not exaustive and it ignores non-US journals from Europe and Canada. But it introduces publications of IR communuties that are probably farest off the beaten track and it represents what I have collected over the years as part of my own research on post-Western IR. If you know of other journals or good alternative databases, please share these with us!