Making an Impact

Thomson Reuters released its most recent Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and impact factor rankings in late June. Many of the journals from the MIT Press did well this year, with several of them seeing a notable increase in impact factor. The title to steal the show was the quarterly Global Environmental Politics (GEP). The journal’s impact factor jumped nearly a full point from 1.382 to 2.231 in 2010. The JCR ranks GEP ninth in environmental studies and fifth out of 139 journals in political science.

GEP was founded in 2000 and explores the relationship between global political forces and environmental change. The MIT Press has watched this nascent journal grow its subscriber base continuously over the years and come to be a cornerstone for the burgeoning field of environmental science. It has quickly distinguished itself as an important home for seminal work and its influence both within and outside of academia has grown. Its authors hail from a variety of disciplines: political science, international relations, sociology, history, human geography, public policy, science and technology studies, environmental ethics, law economics, and environmental science. GEP editors, Jennifer Clapp and Matthew Paterson, attribute much of the success of the journal to this interdisciplinary authorship, stating that the “strong community of top-rate scholars both follow and contribute to the growing global conversation” on international environmental issues. Rather than simply gleaning select pieces from the field, Clapp and Paterson, along with GEP’s associate editors, consistently provide thorough and thoughtful feedback to authors, a process they believe creates high-quality articles that are both conceptually profound and topically relevant.

As scholars delve further into the complexities of environmental issues, it becomes clear that these stresses touch aspects of our lives previously unacknowledged. Say Clapp and Paterson, "the journal's success reflects the increasing recognition that environmental problems cannot be understood just as economic or technical questions, but raise profound questions about politics - of authority, power, justice". The MIT Press looks forward to watching GEP gather more questions, research and reflections within its pages, and we hope readers (both casual and professional) continue to find the substantive discourse they’ve come to expect from the journal.