Ranking economic history journals

The aim of this chapter is to provide an assessment of the state of the art of economic history by looking at its main journals. The two initial sections sketch out the history of main journals and rank them according to the most popular databases. This exercise shows that five journals (Cliometrica, the Economic History Review, the European Review of Economic History, Explorations in Economic History, and the Journal of Economic History) stand out on all metrics and are classified well ahead of other field journals in all rankings. Thus, the chapter focuses on them. It outlines the process of convergence in content and authorship, but also reminds us of the remaining differences among them. Finally, the chapter explores the reasons for the success of economic history articles as measured by the number of citations received by year and the relationship with other fields (mostly history and economics). All this information is not only interesting per se but can be useful as a general guide for authors while looking for the most suitable journal for their submission.