Journal rankings · indicator year 2017
Choose a field to open its ranking, or a journal to find its row in its subfield’s list.
Subfield ranking · 2017
Anthropology journal rankings 2017
41 ranked journals · Subfield in Social Sciences
Anthropology has 41 ranked journals in 2017. The median OJR fell 0.31 on 2016 to 1.05, above the world average of 1.00; Q1 starts at OJR 2.24. The top three are American Ethnologist, Current Anthropology, and Journal of Human Evolution.
Ranks and citation indicators: 2017. Journal access status and listed APC: source snapshot September 23, 2026.
Journals whose main subfield sits in this category and that published at least 30 citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) in 2014–2016, the window the 2017 score is computed on.
The OpenJournalRank Indicator (OJR) is a free, publicly available metric of a journal’s field-normalized citation impact, computed from open OpenAlex citation data. It compares citations to a journal’s papers from the previous three years with the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so 1.00 is the world average and values can be compared across fields. It is computed with the NCI3 method.
The middle OJR among ranked journals in this category: half score higher, half lower. 1.00 is the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type.
The dot is this category, the solid tick is the median of all ranked journals and the dashed line is the world average.
Share of ranked journals in this category that are fully open access, so every paper is free to read. Hybrid journals, which sell subscriptions and open single papers for a fee, are not counted.
Median list price of the article processing charge, in US dollars, among ranked journals in this category that list a price above zero. Journals with a listed APC of $0 and journals with no known price are left out of this median. The At a glance table below gives a second median that includes the $0 prices.
Subfields of Social Sciences (22)
41 ranked journals
Filters
Rank is the position by OJR within the list on screen; 1 is the highest. | OJR is field-normalized 3-year citation impact: 1.00 is the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so values compare across fields. The badge is the journal’s quartile in this list. | Citations per paper over a two-year window, counted from OpenAlex. It is not field-normalized, so compare it only between journals of the same field. ▲ or ▼ is the change from 2016. This is OpenJournalRank’s own count, not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor. | Citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) published in 2014–2016, the window the 2017 OJR is computed on. A journal needs at least 30 to be ranked. | Share of the journal’s 2014–2016 papers that are free to read in any open-access form. The green OA tag next to a title marks a fully open-access journal. | List price of the article processing charge in US dollars. “$0 listed” means the listed price is zero; a dash means no price is listed. | The line is the journal’s OJR from 2008 to 2017. | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1American EthnologistWiley · United States | 7.84Q1 | 3.96 0.78 up from 2016 | 144 | 7% | $3,400 | ||
2Current AnthropologyUniversity of Chicago Press · United States | 3.88Q1 | 2.58 0.17 up from 2016 | 276 | 24% | — | ||
3Journal of Human EvolutionElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 3.85Q1 | 4.14 0.08 down from 2016 | 413 | 58% | $3,990 | ||
4Journal of Archaeological Method and TheorySpringer Science+Business Media · Netherlands | 3.76Q1 | 3.42 0.34 up from 2016 | 102 | 30% | $3,190 | ||
5Journal of Social ArchaeologySAGE Publishing · United Kingdom | 3.70Q1 | 2.17 0.14 up from 2016 | 53 | 27% | $3,650 | ||
6Journal of African Cultural StudiesTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 3.43Q1 | 1.25 0.48 up from 2016 | 99 | 27% | — | ||
7African Archaeological ReviewSpringer Science+Business Media · United Kingdom | 3.02Q1 | 1.90 0.13 down from 2016 | 87 | 24% | $3,390 | ||
8World ArchaeologyRoutledge · United Kingdom | 2.97Q1 | 2.13 0.30 down from 2016 | 156 | 29% | — | ||
9Social AnalysisOABerghahn Books · United States | 2.93Q1 | 1.13 0.19 up from 2016 | 85 | 14% | — | ||
10Azania Archaeological Research in AfricaRoutledge · United Kingdom | 2.63Q1 | 0.98 0.29 down from 2016 | 137 | 17% | — | ||
11Evolutionary Anthropology Issues News and ReviewsWiley · United States | 2.24Q1 | 3.64 1.46 up from 2016 | 115 | 6% | $5,000 | ||
12PaleoAmericaTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 1.96Q2 | 1.97 0.08 up from 2016 | 76 | 3% | — | ||
13The Journal of African HistoryCambridge University Press · United Kingdom | 1.80Q2 | 0.60 0.20 down from 2016 | 88 | 13% | $3,550 | ||
14Archaeological DialoguesCambridge University Press · United Kingdom | 1.76Q2 | 1.24 0.37 up from 2016 | 73 | 35% | $3,550 | ||
15Lithic TechnologyTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 1.63Q2 | 1.13 0.51 down from 2016 | 66 | 6% | — | ||
16Journal of Anthropological ResearchUniversity of Chicago Press · United States | 1.51Q2 | 0.89 0.16 up from 2016 | 64 | 6% | — | ||
17Post-Medieval ArchaeologyTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 1.48Q2 | 0.46 0.90 down from 2016 | 79 | 15% | — | ||
18American AnthropologistWiley · United States | 1.39Q2 | 0.78no change | 541 | 14% | $3,400 | ||
19International Journal of Historical ArchaeologySpringer Science+Business Media · Netherlands | 1.39Q2 | 0.76 0.36 down from 2016 | 133 | 32% | $3,290 | ||
20Annual Review of AnthropologyAnnual Reviews · United States | 1.20Q2 | 4.89 1.20 up from 2016 | 98 | 54% | — | ||
21L AnthropologieElsevier BV · France | 1.05Q2 | 0.48 0.25 down from 2016 | 97 | 10% | $3,000 | ||
22Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africainesTaylor & Francis · Canada | 0.98Q3 | 0.48 0.01 up from 2016 | 165 | 6% | — | ||
23Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological AssociationWiley · United States | 0.95Q3 | 0.79 0.14 down from 2016 | 54 | 29% | $3,090 | ||
24Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and HeritageTaylor & Francis · United States | 0.90Q3 | 0.36 0.42 down from 2016 | 33 | 7% | — | ||
25ArchaeologiesSpringer Science+Business Media · United States | 0.90Q3 | 0.62 0.05 down from 2016 | 47 | 17% | $3,290 | ||
26General AnthropologyWiley · United States | 0.76Q3 | 0.14 0.41 down from 2016 | 31 | 7% | $3,090 | ||
27PaléoFrance | 0.73Q3 | 0.30 0.25 down from 2016 | 73 | 100% | — | ||
28KIVATaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 0.62Q3 | 0.59 0.32 up from 2016 | 75 | 11% | — | ||
29Journal of Lithic StudiesOAUniversity of Edinburgh · United Kingdom | 0.61Q3 | 0.41 0.28 down from 2016 | 144 | 100% | — | ||
30AfriquesOAInstitut des Mondes Africains · France | 0.57Q3 | 0.05 0.13 down from 2016 | 36 | 100% | — | ||
31Journal of world historyWorld History Association · United States | 0.52Q3 | 0.16 0.03 up from 2016 | 195 | 5% | — | ||
32Historical ArchaeologySpringer Science+Business Media · United States | 0.46Q4 | 0.35 0.09 up from 2016 | 117 | 4% | $2,190 | ||
33Acta Anthropologica SinicaPublisher not listed | 0.44Q4 | 0.15 0.09 down from 2016 | 35 | — | — | ||
34Rock Art ResearchOAAustralia | 0.38Q4 | 0.17 0.67 down from 2016 | 40 | 100% | — | ||
35Wicazo Sa ReviewUniversity of Minnesota Press · United States | 0.35Q4 | 0.30 0.18 up from 2016 | 78 | 0% | — | ||
36Plains AnthropologistTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 0.33Q4 | 0.21 0.10 down from 2016 | 75 | 9% | — | ||
37BritanniaCambridge University Press · United Kingdom | 0.24Q4 | 0.41 0.10 up from 2016 | 81 | 15% | $3,550 | ||
38Lithics: The Journal of the Lithic Studies SocietyPublisher not listed | 0.22Q4 | 0.15 0.03 down from 2016 | 265 | 0% | — | ||
39eTropic electronic journal of studies in the tropicsOAJames Cook University · Australia | 0.20Q4 | 0.06 0.07 down from 2016 | 95 | 100% | — | ||
40Annales Histoire Sciences Sociales (English edition)Cambridge University Press · France | 0.16Q4 | 0.08 0.11 down from 2016 | 78 | 51% | — | ||
41The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American ArchaeologyPublisher not listed | 0.01Q4 | 0.01no change | 3,404 | — | — |
Subfields of Social Sciences, with Anthropology highlighted.
- Sociology and Political Science1,300
- Education698
- Political Science and International Relations318
- Communication71
- Gender Studies63
- Health53
- Safety Research52
- Public Administration51
- Transportation48
- Linguistics and Language47
- Law46
- Urban Studies45
- Anthropology41
- Library and Information Sciences41
- Demography40
- Geography, Planning and Development28
- Cultural Studies9
- Development4
- General Social Sciences3
- Human Factors and Ergonomics1
- Archeology0
- Life-span and Life-course Studies0
Journals
Citations made in 2017. Corpus-wide, 77.7% of core-journal articles and reviews published that year have at least one matched reference; the share varies by journal and field.
9 additional Anthropology journals with metrics are unranked under this release’s eligibility rules: a journal needs at least 30 citable documents in 2014–2016, at least 80% of them with a subfield, and a positive world-average expectation. Ranks are within the whole category; filters hide rows without re-ranking. OJR excludes self-citations.
At a glance
Indicator year: 2017. Publication window: 2014–2016. How these summaries are calculated
- Ranked journals
- 41
- Window papers (baseline)
- 49,734 +16.2% from indicator year 2014
- Median OJR
- 1.05 -11.0% from indicator year 2014
- Rising journals (2025)
- 2
Window papers are the baseline paper population: citable papers (articles, reviews and conference papers) from 2014–2016 in all journals of the world-average baseline, including non-core journals, counted by each paper’s own subfield. They are not the papers of the ranked journals alone.
| Measure | Year series | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ranked journals | 24 | 27 | 26 | 29 | 30 | 29 | 29 | 30 | 33 | 35 | 34 | 34 | 36 | 37 | 36 | 37 | 40 | 41 | 38 | 37 | 37 | 38 | 37 | 38 | 36 | 37 | |
| Window papers (baseline) | 22,731 | 23,854 | 24,889 | 25,805 | 26,822 | 27,939 | 29,189 | 30,667 | 32,410 | 34,308 | 36,950 | 38,915 | 40,591 | 41,376 | 42,782 | 44,295 | 47,379 | 49,734 | 51,045 | 50,925 | 50,830 | 51,203 | 50,651 | 48,994 | 47,124 | 47,101 | |
| Median OJR | 1.32 | 0.80 | 0.935 | 0.92 | 0.9430 | 1.0913 | 0.9426 | 1.182 | 0.84 | 1.04 | 1.13 | 1.29 | 1.123 | 1.0911 | 1.178 | 1.16 | 1.35 | 1.05 | 1.24 | 1.11 | 1.090 | 1.121 | 1.033 | 1.089 | 1.005 | 1.031 |
How to read these rankings
- OJR, the OpenJournalRank Indicator
- A field-normalized 3-year citation impact, computed from OpenAlex with the NCI3 method. It divides the citations a journal’s papers received by the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so 1.00 is the world average and 2.00 means twice as many citations as expected. Because it is normalized, it can be compared across fields. Read the methodology
- Quartiles
- Q1 to Q4 split the ranked journals of the list you are viewing into four equal groups by OJR. A journal’s quartile depends on the list: the same journal can be Q1 in its subfield and Q2 among all journals.
- Impact factor (2-year)
- Citations per paper over a two-year window, counted from OpenAlex. It is easy to compare with familiar impact factors but is not field-normalized, so compare it only within a field. It is not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor. Why it differs from the Journal Impact Factor
- Rank ranges
- Each rank in the latest year carries a likely range from 1,000 resamples of the journal’s papers. Where two journals’ ranges overlap, the data cannot tell them apart, so treat neighbouring ranks as ties.