I am proud to have been able to serve Iranian Studies for thirteen years and delivered it into the capable hands of Ali Gheissari. But, in its first thirty-seven years, the journal was run by many dedicated souls or, to quote Saʿdi, “it is the legacy of many people.” The pride of place goes to Ali Banuazizi, the founding chief editor of the journal which he continued to publish for thirteen years. However over the past fifty years, virtually all scholars in the field of Iranian studies have contributed to Iranian Studies and/or have been involved with its editorial work in various capacities, too many to mention in this brief.
I was made chief editor of the journal in January 2004. It was then a rather irregularly published quarterly. But, since my tenure as editor, almost each and every issue was published in or before the due month. In 2007, on the suggestion of the publishers, Routledge of Taylor and Francis, we increased publication to five issues a year. From 2011 we published the journal every other month, after Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi and I negotiated a very favourable contract with the publishers, which, among other achievements, freed the journal of its habitual financial worries. In the same year, the journal was elevated to the status of an ISI journal and listed in the prestigious Social Sciences Citation Index, backdated to 2008. And just as new generations of the Iranian diaspora were entering the fields of humanities and social sciences, we opened our pages to the best scholars among them.
Today, Iranian Studies is the leading academic periodical and the principal forum for the publication of scholarly research on all aspects of Iranian and Persianate culture and civilization by scholars in all fields of humanities and social sciences. The journal’s longevity, the high quality of its contents, and the many fields of study which it covers reflect the enormous growth and flourishing of Iranian studies as an academic discipline, as well as the broader public interest in Iran itself. For its success we are all indebted to the hundreds of scholars who have contributed to its pages, to scores of others who have worked selflessly in various editorial capacities, and to still others who have helped promote the journal and make it available to students and scholars at libraries and research centers around the world. No less important in accounting for the success of Iranian Studies has been the continued vitality, non-exclusionary and non-ideological orientation of its sponsoring academic association, the International Society for Iranian Studies, now renamed the Association for Iranian Studies, which has provided the journal with the necessary institutional and professional support, financial resources, and personnel to continue and expand its operation.
All the while there was a steady improvement in the form and content of the journal. According to the publishers’ report, the journal’s latest published impact factor is more than three times that of the previous year. The number of our individual subscribers has increased by more than eightfold since 2004. Thus, between 2004 and 2016, the journal went from strength to strength so that it can now be delivered into the capable hands of Ali Gheissari as the flagship of Iranian studies, the world over.
Oxford
November 2016
