The Iranian Studies journal is currently in its fifty-second year of continuous publication. With international distribution and recognition the journal stands as the leading academic periodical in the field of Iranian studies. According to the latest data provided by our publishers, the journal has also received its highest Impact Factor to date. We owe this achievement to the journal’s successive editorial teams whose commitment and dedicated hard work has helped the journal become the premier academic forum in the field, and to a strong and promising pool of scholars worldwide whose contributions have expanded the field of Iranian and Persianate studies in depth and scope.
The journal’s progress also owes much to its publishers for providing an online submission platform which facilitates systematic evaluations, efficient editorial work, and timely publication and distribution. Also thanks to the publishers, all material that have been processed and finalized for publication are initially published online in a timely manner. For all practical purposes, such as referencing or inclusion in the academic file, the online edition is just as valid as the print edition which will subsequently appear in due course.
At this juncture in its operation, the editorial office of the journal welcomes new additions to its core editorial team. These include Cameron Cross of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, as the new Associate Editor for Classical Persian Literature; Hussein Banai of Indiana University, Bloomington, and Norma Clair Morruzzi of the University of Illinois at Chicago, jointly as Associate Editors in the general field of Social Sciences; and Domenico Ingenito of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Aria Fani of the University of California, Berkeley, as the Book Review Editors respectively in Classical and Modern Persian Literature. Ali Akbar Mahdi, the journal’s valued editorial colleague who served for a number of years as the Associate Editor for Social Sciences, has now joined the general Editorial Board of the journal.
Beginning with the current issue, the print edition of the journal will be published as three double issues annually. In the new format the readers will find a better balance between diverse range of material from articles and book reviews to memorial notes and occasional reports on primary research material. As of this issue the journal has also changed its previous use of endnotes and has adopted a more reader-friendly format by incorporating footnotes, which are then followed by a comprehensive bibliography at the end of each article. Beginning with the current issue, the journal has also considerably increased the word limit for accepting submissions of articles.
As of its last issue in 2018, Iranian Studies has added a new section dedicated to occasional contributions in the form of notes on primary source material and reports on archival and fieldwork research. These notes that may vary in length are intended to introduce to the scholarly community hitherto little known or altogether new material relevant to different aspects of Iranian and Persianate studies. The material that is presented in these notes will be supported by a scholarly infrastructure in order to better introduce and contextualize their subject matter. The journal welcomes contributions by scholars to introduce various types of source material or archival reports as well as fieldwork surveys and research findings relating to all aspects of Iranian studies.
I should reiterate a note I made in an earlier occasion that Iranian Studies is fully committed to a rigorous double blind peer review process. Every article that is assessed and later accepted for consideration in the journal is read by at least two, and at times more, anonymous expert referees. Each article goes through two, three, or more rounds of inspections and reviews by the anonymous peer reviewers and the editorial team. The editors and reviewers work together to ensure that the authors incorporate and address various suggestions that they receive through the peer review process. On occasion we have had further recourse to a third or fourth scholar in the field to ascertain the highest quality of inspection by our double blind review process. We continue to seek and publish articles of highest quality in all aspects and periods of Iranian studies such as history, culture, literature, the arts, politics, economics, and the social life of a broad regional context that includes Iran, South and Central Asia, the Caucasus, as well as Iranians in the diaspora.
I close this note by underlining that we welcome both established and new scholars in the above fields to consider Iranian Studies as their primary journal for the publication of their research. As in the past, our success in the years to come will depend on the support from a diverse community of scholars in these fields who could contribute original research to the journal. We also rely on scholars who can serve as anonymous peer reviewers of articles and those who write balanced and critical book reviews. I would thus like to reach out to all scholars in the field to consider submitting to Iranian Studies their original work and to encourage their colleagues and graduate students to do the same.