Mapping and Bibliometric Analysis of American Historical Review

Abstract

This paper aims to represent the bibliometric characteristics of theAmerican HistoricalReview(AHR) in an attempt to highlight the journal's contribution to the ̄eld of History as one of theleading journals in Journal Citation Reports (JCR). AHR has the highest impact factor among the otherjournals in its ̄eld, and has been bringing together scholars from all over the world since 1895. Althoughthe ̄eld of History is known as localized and non-interdisciplinarity, the present study's ̄ndings revealthat AHR has di®erent characteristics compared to traditional contributions to the ̄eld of History byother journals. In addition, the results show that approximately three quarters of AHR citations, from 67di®erent categories, are gathered by articles. This indicates that AHR has an increased degree of con-vergence with other disciplines. These ̄ndings may be interpreted as an indication that traditionalhistorical scholarly communication is increasingly changing toward interdisciplinarity. However, it wouldbe problematic to generalize these ̄ndings for all history literature, based on a single journal evaluation.This study suggests that AHR has become increasingly diversi ̄ed and consequently no longer re°ects themain characteristics of the ̄eld of History. Future studies of more History journals are needed to validatethe results and reveal possible changes in the ̄eld.