Overview
The Vestnik drevnei istorii (VDI, Journal of Ancient History, Revue d’Histoire Ancienne) is a leading Russian academic journal in the field of ancient history and related disciplines. Founded in 1937, the VDI is Russia’s oldest scholarly history journal that continues to be published. From the autumn of 1937 till March of 1941, it also accepted papers on the history of the Slavs, Byzantium, and Ancient Russia. After a break during the World War, it has been appearing quarterly since 1946.
Since 1938, the journal has been edited in the Institute of History (since 1968, Institute of World History) of the Soviet (since 1991, Russian) Academy of Sciences. It was published by the United State Publishing House [OGIZ] (1937–1941) and the Publishing House of the Soviet/Russian Academy of Sciences [“Nauka”] (1946 – present).
The editors-in-chief were Alexander Svanidze (1937), Alexander Mishulin (1938-1948), Sergey Kiselyov (1949-1962), Vassily Struve (1962-1965), Sergey Utchenko (1965-1976), Zinaida Udaltsova (1976-1987), Gregory Bongard-Levin (1988-2008), Askold Ivantchik (2009 – present).
In 1937-1947, the VDI had the French subtitle Revue d’histoire ancienne and summaries in French. Since 1967 it has the English subtitle Journal of Ancient History and summaries in English.
Aims and Scope
The journal publishes original scholarly papers in all fields of ancient history, Classical and Ancient Eastern philology, and archaeology of ancient civilizations, in Russian, English, French and German. The VDI's primary focus is to inform academic circles about new discoveries and achievements within its scope of interest. It also undertakes to promote studies of Classical and Oriental antiquity.
The journal comprises the following sections:
- Research articles (the main section): original scholarly papers within the VDI’s field of interest.
- Publications of new archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic and other data.
- Discussions of controversial issues.
- History of research in the field of ancient history and related disciplines, including archival data and historiography.
- Scholarly life: reports on conferences, workshops and other scholarly events.
- Personalia: anniversaries, congratulations, necrologies etc.
- Supplement: commented editions and translations of ancient texts.
Occasionally, the journal includes other sections such as issue-related Roundtables, Ancient Civilization: New Discoveries, and From the World's Museum Collections).
Impressum
The journal is published by the Branch for History and Philology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The contents is prepared in the Institute of World History (Russian Academy of Sciences) in cooperation with the State Hermitage and Moscow State Lomonossov University.
Editor-in-chief: Askold Ivantchik
Publishing house: Nauka
ISSN: 0321-0391
Periodicity: quarterly
Pages per issue: 272 to 352.
Rospechat subscription index: 70119
Indexing
The journal is indexed in Web of Science Core Collection (Emerging Sources Citation Index).
The journal is indexed in Russian Science Citation Index (on the Web of Science platform).
The journal is listed in Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory.
The VDI is indexed in the following full-text and bibliographical databases, aggregators and document delivery services:
Anthropological Literature (Online) (on the Ebsco platform)
Dietrich's Index Philosophicus, De Gruyter Saur Publ.
FRANCIS (on the Ebsco and Proquest platforms)
IBZ - Internationale Bibliographie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur, De Gruyter Saur Publ.
Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur
Linguistic Bibliography (Online), Brill Publ.
MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association) (on the Ebsco, Gale, and Proquest platforms)
Old Testament Abstracts (Online)
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (Repertoire International de Litterature Musicale) (on the Ebsco and Proquest platforms)
Russian Academy of Sciences Bibliographies
Full-text databases of East View Information Services:
Complete List of Russian, Ukrainian, CIS and Baltic Titles, 2000-
Nauka Online, 2000-
Universal Database of Russian Individual Titles, 2000-
Universal Database of Russian Social Sciences and Humanities Journals, 2000-
Universal Database of Russian Social Sciences and Humanities Journals (Voprosy istorii backfile), 2000-
Universal Database of Social Sciences & Humanities (UDB-EDU) (DFG Nationallizenzen), 2000-
