Leading Journals in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies

What journals would we recommend for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies (or SEEES), for specific regions or countries within the SEEES purview, or for particular disciplines or topics pertaining to it, for example, anthropology, the Cold War, post-Communist transition, etc? This exhibit, presenting around 100 journals, most from the journals that American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (or ABSEES), SEEES’s premier bibliography, uses for indexing, is aimed to answer such questions. True, it may sound somewhat anachronous or out of touch to mention journal titles themselves today instead of journal articles, let alone how to find them on the Web or in comprehensive journal archives. In the course of working in this field, regardless in what capacity–be that a researcher, student, or subject librarian–, however, one is at some point very likely to run into such questions. Answering them should certainly still remain an imporant matter for all who work in the SEEES field.

To decide upon the following lineup, we consulted, as mentioned above, though only in passing, ABSEES’s core journals list. We examined, de visu, each of the titles included in the list in the Indiana University Library’s (or IUL’s) own collection of them or online, to double check on their fitness for this exhibit. Besides, two additional titles were brought into it from outside the ABSEES list for their widely recognized high standards: Acta Slavica Iaponica and Slavonic and East European Review, the premier Slavic and East European studies journals of Japan and UK respectively.

Incidentally, the IUL is home to thousands of scholarly journals pertaining to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies. One internal survey done in 2011 indicated that the IUL housed over 12,500 periodical titles—inclusive both of newspapers and journals—published in 23 Slavic and East European countries, Russia accounting for the largest number and Kosovo the smallest. We estimate that currently the IUL provides access to around 3,000 SEEES-specific scholarly journals through title-by-title subscriptions, or journals aggregators such as Central and East European Online Library or Universal Database of Social Sciences and Humanities.