2020 is the fifty-third year anniversary of Iranian Studies. With its broad international reception it currently stands as the leading scholarly periodical in the field of Iranian studies. This achievement is due to an outstanding pool of scholars worldwide whose contributions have expanded the field of Iranian studies in depth and breadth, and also to the journal’s successive editorial teams for their commitment and dedicated hard work. As the journal editor I have been particularly privileged to work with an exemplary team of both current and former core editorial colleagues whose command of their respective fields of specialization combined with erudition, professionalism, and collegiality has been instrumental in making a highly demanding and complex operation into a pleasant and rewarding experience. I would like to take this opportunity to record my deep gratitude to my colleagues in the editorial office, individually and collectively.

The year 2020 also shows a particularly strong pool of general submissions and hence a relatively lower rejection rate in comparison with previous review cycles. This, in turn, is a reflection of the journal’s raised status in the field and also of its inclusion of diverse disciplines, subfields, and periods. The journal, however, has maintained no overriding preferential criteria other than high scholarship.

We also owe the journal’s growth and circulation to its publishers for providing an online submission platform which facilitates efficient editorial work as well as timely publication and distribution. The publishers have also maintained the journal’s historic archive, which is a valuable research tool for accessing the journal’s fifty-three-year inventory. The operational value of the journal’s production alone is paramount when we consider that Iranian Studies publishes scholarly, at times highly technical, material in all relevant disciplines from pre-Islamic to medieval and modern Iran. The journal has recently achieved its highest impact factor to date and has also been listed as one of the most valued academic journals in WoS/Scopus 1st Quartile. The publishers have been a major contributor to these achievements.

Beginning with Volume 52 (2019), the journal’s print edition began to appear as three double issues annually. This frequency and format has been very well received by readers. The new format allows for a better balance between a diverse range of material from regular articles and book reviews to memorial notes and the occasional reports on primary sources and archival notes. Change in the format of the print edition, however, does not impact the ongoing and regular publication of the journal’s online edition. For all practical purposes such as referencing, sharing, or inclusion in the academic file, the online edition (complete with DOI number) is just as good as the print version which will then appear in due course. Two other changes that were also introduced in 2019 are the journal’s significant increase in the word limit for all submissions and also the adoption of a more reader-friendly format of using footnotes instead of endnotes. Beginning with Volume 53 (2020) the journal has also added a new section on Recent Titles in Iranian Studies, which presents a selective list of recent scholarly books in different languages and in different disciplines within the general scope of Iranian studies. Now two years into these changes, we have noticed that all these measures have been widely welcomed by the journal’s readership and prospective authors.

In addition to its regular articles and book reviews, and in line with its past tradition, from time to time the journal has continued to allocate special thematic sections. Earlier in 2020 two such special sections were allocated. The first appeared in issue 01–02, under “Medicine and Public Health in Modern Iran: Historical and Sociological Perspectives.” This special issue was initiated by the Iranian Studies editorial office, and Professor Amir A. Afkhami of George Washington University was invited to serve as Consulting Editor. Although work on this issue had begun in 2018, its publication coincided with the 2020 pandemic crisis and its various contributions were particularly well received by readers across the field. The second thematic section was incorporated in issue 03–04. It focused on “Endangered Iranian Languages: Language Contact and Language Islands in Iran,” and was guest edited by Professor Saloumeh Gholami of the Goethe University Frankfurt. This special issue consisted of a broad range of systematic surveys of Iran’s linguistic context and was also very well received by specialists and non-specialists alike.

Presently Iranian Studies has a strong reserve of material on its online edition that were processed by the current editorial office. These materials consist of regular articles, review essays and book reviews that will appear in the forthcoming issues of the journal’s print edition in 2021.Footnote ¹ It is also my pleasure to list a Comprehensive Table of Contents of Iranian Studies for Volumes 50, 51, 52, 53 (2017–20), during which time I served as its Editor.Footnote ²

I close by welcoming Professor Sussan Siavoshi as the next Editor-in-Chief of Iranian Studies in 2021, and wishing her every success in leading the journal forward.