A bibliometric analysis of the IRAL over the past six decades

Using a bibliometric analysis of the publications in the International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (IRAL), one of the journals with the most extended history in applied linguistics (AL), we combed through three periods of the journal's development trajectory over 60 years. Specifically, we 1) examined the most frequently discussed topics in IRAL and their evolving patterns; 2) extracted the most highly-cited articles, the sources of citations, the sub-subjects of sources of citations, as well as the most highly-cited references; and 3) calculated the counts of authors in each year and their h-index, and identified the authors and countries/regions that contributed most to the journal. The results provide information on IRAL's content, impact, and attractiveness, constituting a multi-faceted evaluation of the journal. Meanwhile, the same bibliometric procedures were conducted on Language Learning (LL), which acted as a reference for interpreting the performance of IRAL and identifying the gaps between IRAL and the leading journals in AL. Finally, suggestions for further adjustments and improvements to the journal were discussed.