The Journal of Cold War Studies
About the Journal of Cold War Studies
Please direct all editorial inquiries, comments, and electronic submissions to the JCWS email account: jcws@fas.harvard.edu
For all subscription-related inquires for both the print and the electronic versions of the Journal, please contact MIT Press for ordering information and rates. Authors who want to submit manuscripts for possible publication agreement should see the guidelines at https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/jcws/jcws-submissions.
Additional information can be found at the JCWS page on MIT Press's website.
Scope
The Journal of Cold War Studies features peer-reviewed articles based on archival research in the former Communist world and in Western countries. Some articles offer reevaluations of important historical events or themes, emphasizing the changes of interpretation necessitated by declassified documents and new firsthand accounts. Other articles seek to bring new evidence to bear on current theoretical debates. Many existing theories of international and domestic politics have relied on generalizations from the Cold War period, but until very recently the evidence for these generalizations was tenuous at best. Articles in the Journal of Cold War Studies use declassified materials and new memoirs from the former Eastern bloc, from the West, and from other countries around the world to illuminate and raise questions about numerous theoretical concerns, including theories of decision-making, deterrence, bureaucratic politics, institutional formation, bargaining, diplomacy, foreign policy conduct, and international relations. Drawing on the latest evidence, articles in the Journal subject these theories, and others, to rigorous empirical analysis. The Journal's emphasis on the use of new evidence for theoretical purposes is in no way intended to exclude solid historical reassessments, but articles set within a theoretical context are particularly encouraged.The Journal's Editorial Board consists of 46 distinguished political scientists, historians, and specialists on international relations.
Discussion Forum
Since 1999, the H-Diplo website, a site that links several thousand historians and political scientists, has been featuring regular discussions of JCWS articles. In some cases, several commentators evaluate an article or group of articles in the JCWS; in other cases, a single commentator evaluates a JCWS article. Hundreds of such discussions have appeared. You can find an archived set of the discussions, by article, here.
Selected Articles
Every issue of the Journal publishes one full access article that is open to public. To view these articles, please see the "Selected Articles" page.
The Journal is edited by Mark Kramer, Harvard University, and published by The MIT Press for the Cold War Studies Program at Harvard University.