Inter-Asia Cultural Studies

• 1. Introduction

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  Inter-Asia Cultural Studies launched in 2000 with a specific ambition: to build bridges between scholarly communities across Asia and the broader world of cultural studies. The journal asked a question that had rarely been posed so directly in academic publishing. What would it look like to treat Asia not as an object of study from the outside, but as a site of intellectual exchange generating its own conversations? Two editors-in-chief, Chen Kuan-Hsing and Chua Beng Huat, have shaped the journal's direction since its founding. Published by Routledge, it appears four times a year as a quarterly peer-reviewed publication. The questions it raises about how knowledge travels across regions remain at the center of its mission.

• 2. Mission and Scope

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  Chen Kuan-Hsing and Chua Beng Huat have steered a journal whose stated purpose is unusually relational. Rather than representing a single national tradition or a single discipline, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies is oriented around exchange. The aim, as the journal frames it, is to enhance communication between inter-Asia and other regions of the cultural studies world. That framing positions Asia neither as a monolith nor as a peripheral zone but as an active participant in a global scholarly conversation. Peer review anchors its standards, ensuring that the exchange it facilitates meets the expectations of academic rigor. By 2010, the journal carried an impact factor of 0.195 according to the Journal Citation Reports, a measure of how frequently its articles were cited in other scholarly work during that period.

• 3. Routledge and Reach

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  Routledge, the publisher behind Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, brings the journal into a distribution network that spans academic libraries and institutions worldwide. A quarterly publication schedule means four issues per year, giving the editorial team a steady rhythm for shaping thematic conversations across issues. The journal is abstracted and indexed in standard academic databases, which allows researchers to locate its articles through the search tools they already use. That indexing infrastructure is what transforms a print or digital periodical into a discoverable resource for scholars working far outside any single region. The combination of a major academic publisher, a consistent publication cycle, and broad indexing has given the journal a durable presence in the field since its founding year of 2000.