Journal rankings · indicator year 2023
Choose a field to open its ranking, or a journal to find its row in its subfield’s list.
Subfield ranking · 2023
Anthropology journal rankings 2023
38 ranked journals · Subfield in Social Sciences
Anthropology has 38 ranked journals in 2023. The median OJR rose 0.06 on 2022 to 1.09, above the world average of 1.00; Q1 starts at OJR 1.71. The top three are Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, and Azania Archaeological Research in Africa.
Ranks and citation indicators: 2023. 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 2020–2022, the window the 2023 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)
38 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 2022. This is OpenJournalRank’s own count, not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor. | Citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) published in 2020–2022, the window the 2023 OJR is computed on. A journal needs at least 30 to be ranked. | Share of the journal’s 2020–2022 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 2014 to 2023. | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1Journal of Paleolithic ArchaeologySpringer Science+Business Media · Switzerland | 3.85Q1 | 2.37 0.86 down from 2022 | 77 | 58% | $3,190 | ||
2Journal of Archaeological Method and TheorySpringer Science+Business Media · Netherlands | 3.12Q1 | 4.24 0.85 up from 2022 | 142 | 73% | $3,190 | ||
3Azania Archaeological Research in AfricaRoutledge · United Kingdom | 2.49Q1 | 1.23 0.26 down from 2022 | 97 | 29% | — | ||
4Journal of Human EvolutionElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 2.42Q1 | 3.16 0.24 down from 2022 | 300 | 67% | $3,990 | ||
5American EthnologistWiley · United States | 2.35Q1 | 2.57 0.41 up from 2022 | 122 | 67% | $3,400 | ||
6Evolutionary Anthropology Issues News and ReviewsWiley · United States | 2.00Q1 | 3.72 0.78 up from 2022 | 113 | 60% | $5,000 | ||
7Current AnthropologyUniversity of Chicago Press · United States | 1.94Q1 | 2.74 0.22 up from 2022 | 190 | 17% | — | ||
8American AnthropologistWiley · United States | 1.90Q1 | 2.12 0.17 down from 2022 | 304 | 57% | $3,400 | ||
9Journal of Social ArchaeologySAGE Publishing · United Kingdom | 1.84Q1 | 2.39 0.95 up from 2022 | 43 | 72% | $3,650 | ||
10PaleoAmericaTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 1.71Q1 | 2.39 0.44 up from 2022 | 73 | 16% | — | ||
11World ArchaeologyRoutledge · United Kingdom | 1.57Q2 | 1.85 0.59 up from 2022 | 139 | 60% | — | ||
12Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africainesTaylor & Francis · Canada | 1.55Q2 | 1.42 0.15 up from 2022 | 214 | 7% | — | ||
13The Journal of African HistoryCambridge University Press · United Kingdom | 1.48Q2 | 0.92 0.21 up from 2022 | 85 | 46% | $3,550 | ||
14Journal of Lithic StudiesOAUniversity of Edinburgh · United Kingdom | 1.39Q2 | 1.37 0.28 up from 2022 | 67 | 100% | — | ||
15African Archaeological ReviewSpringer Science+Business Media · United Kingdom | 1.37Q2 | 1.38 0.18 up from 2022 | 143 | 57% | $3,390 | ||
16Lithic TechnologyTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 1.33Q2 | 1.74 0.04 down from 2022 | 94 | 26% | — | ||
17eTropic electronic journal of studies in the tropicsOAJames Cook University · Australia | 1.21Q2 | 1.65 0.14 down from 2022 | 80 | 100% | — | ||
18International Journal of Historical ArchaeologySpringer Science+Business Media · Netherlands | 1.18Q2 | 1.09 0.10 down from 2022 | 147 | 33% | $3,290 | ||
19Historical ArchaeologySpringer Science+Business Media · United States | 1.15Q2 | 0.35 0.41 down from 2022 | 160 | 33% | $2,190 | ||
20ArchaeologiesSpringer Science+Business Media · United States | 1.03Q3 | 0.64 0.22 down from 2022 | 72 | 67% | $3,290 | ||
21Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological AssociationWiley · United States | 1.02Q3 | 0.87 0.51 up from 2022 | 35 | 47% | $3,090 | ||
22Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and HeritageTaylor & Francis · United States | 0.96Q3 | 0.81 0.31 up from 2022 | 34 | 22% | — | ||
23Archaeological DialoguesCambridge University Press · United Kingdom | 0.93Q3 | 0.95 0.28 down from 2022 | 66 | 100% | $3,550 | ||
24Journal of African Cultural StudiesTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 0.91Q3 | 0.88 0.79 down from 2022 | 106 | 22% | — | ||
25Journal of Anthropological ResearchUniversity of Chicago Press · United States | 0.89Q3 | 1.18 0.33 up from 2022 | 67 | 3% | — | ||
26Post-Medieval ArchaeologyTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 0.75Q3 | 0.48 0.09 up from 2022 | 61 | 36% | — | ||
27Asian ArchaeologySpringer Science+Business Media · Singapore | 0.75Q3 | 0.81 0.33 down from 2022 | 38 | 31% | $3,190 | ||
28Social AnalysisOABerghahn Books · United States | 0.74Q3 | 0.71 0.34 down from 2022 | 111 | 100% | — | ||
29Annual Review of AnthropologyAnnual Reviews · United States | 0.69Q3 | 4.39 0.39 up from 2022 | 81 | 93% | — | ||
30L AnthropologieElsevier BV · France | 0.66Q4 | 0.58 0.10 down from 2022 | 201 | 41% | $3,000 | ||
31BritanniaCambridge University Press · United Kingdom | 0.63Q4 | 0.55 0.27 up from 2022 | 98 | 39% | $3,550 | ||
32Journal of world historyWorld History Association · United States | 0.58Q4 | 0.33 0.36 down from 2022 | 154 | 6% | — | ||
33PaléoFrance | 0.38Q4 | 0.23 0.09 up from 2022 | 60 | 100% | — | ||
34KIVATaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 0.29Q4 | 0.60 0.23 up from 2022 | 89 | 8% | — | ||
35AfriquesOAInstitut des Mondes Africains · France | 0.25Q4 | 0.16 0.01 up from 2022 | 50 | 100% | — | ||
36Plains AnthropologistTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 0.25Q4 | 0.38 0.04 down from 2022 | 59 | 14% | — | ||
37General AnthropologyWiley · United States | 0.09Q4 | 0.17 0.17 up from 2022 | 30 | 53% | $3,090 | ||
38Wicazo Sa ReviewUniversity of Minnesota Press · United States | 0.01Q4 | 0.02 0.02 up from 2022 | 72 | 0% | — |
Subfields of Social Sciences, with Anthropology highlighted.
- Sociology and Political Science1,403
- Education732
- Political Science and International Relations334
- Communication73
- Gender Studies66
- Safety Research59
- Health55
- Transportation53
- Public Administration52
- Urban Studies52
- Linguistics and Language49
- Law45
- Library and Information Sciences41
- Demography40
- Anthropology38
- Geography, Planning and Development33
- Cultural Studies9
- Development4
- General Social Sciences4
- Human Factors and Ergonomics1
- Life-span and Life-course Studies1
- Archeology0
Journals
Citations made in 2023. Corpus-wide, 88.9% of core-journal articles and reviews published that year have at least one matched reference; the share varies by journal and field.
10 additional Anthropology journals with metrics are unranked under this release’s eligibility rules: a journal needs at least 30 citable documents in 2020–2022, 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: 2023. Publication window: 2020–2022. How these summaries are calculated
- Ranked journals
- 38
- Window papers (baseline)
- 48,994 -3.6% from indicator year 2020
- Median OJR
- 1.089 -0.1% from indicator year 2020
- Rising journals (2025)
- 2
Window papers are the baseline paper population: citable papers (articles, reviews and conference papers) from 2020–2022 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.