The Austrian Political Science Association (ÖGPW) was founded in 1971 and nowadays, with about 500 members, fosters research and knowledge exchange between the Austrian PS community and the international one. Along with conference and workshop organization, the association publishes its academic journal, the Österreichischen Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft (ÖZP), whose issues since 1996 are retrievable for free through an internal linking: abstracts, some full text and contributions’list are also available. The association has three sections, focused on democracy, political economy and comparative politics, as well as one dedicated to graduated and young scholars, each of them with a specific page in the website describing their initiatives, providing description of their projects and their meetings’programs as well as some publications (articles and books) retrievable full-text for free. The webpages of the ÖGPW are available in German only. The site is completely open and free and materials and info are retrievable by all users without any fee, but mostly they can be only saved on-screen. News, job and scholarship announcements, plus summers-schools and research grants are also frequently notified. A link list is available, pointing to external PS-related websources. The site structure is extremely simple and no navigational aid is needed to retrieve informations.
Österreichische Gesellschaft für Politikwissenschaft
The Austrian Political Science Association
Political Studies Association
The UK Political Science Association
The Political Studies Association (PSA) of the United Kingdom was founded in 1950. The aim of the association is “to promote the development of political studies and to encourage education and the advancement of learning in the art and science of government and in other branches of political sciences”. The PSA website has top-of-the-range online resources for political studies, being also ranked first by several search engines. The site provides instant free access to Political Studies Review and to PSA specialist groups’ webpages, as well as to the 1994/present PSA annual conference papers and the 2008/present conference podcasts and photo galleries. A very rich series of links to governments, parties, NGOs, mass media, archives and data, online academic political journals, University Politics Departments, political interest groups, research institutes, libraries and research groups, is also available. Access to full-text articles of some PSA publications (Political Studies, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Politics and PSANews, the association newsletter) is restricted only to its members. Most of the website’s content is freely open to the public, while only a few areas are restricted to paid members of the association.
Political Studies Association Gateway
A collection of worldwide PS-related web resources
Launched in January 1995, the Political Studies Association gateway has grown to a collection of over 12,000 links pointing to a variety of political information sources on the Internet. The PSA gateway displays links to governments, legislatures, political parties, non-governmental organisations and mass media as well as to on-line national constitutions, academic political journals and libraries, data archives of interest to political researchers. However, the content outline and resource descritption is not always clear. Classifications of categories and links are on a thematic basis. Resources and links are briefly annotated or simply listed. Users can browse the category listings by country/region or by topics and they can also suggest a resource to be included in the database. Based on a simple and intuitive design, this web site is open to the public in its entirety and is quite user-friendly. Also provided is a comprehensive sitemap and a powerful keyword-based search engine (also to be used for the entire PSA Web site).
Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Político
The Argentina Political Analysis Association
The Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Político (SAAP) aims at distributing and stimulating PS research within scientific and academic communities, at establishing collaboration projects with private and pubic entities, as well as at strengthening and enabling the necessary tools for information exchange in Argentina and throughout South America. The SAAP is member of the IPSA and the Argentian representative in this association. The website provides general information about the Association and its members, along with abstracts and tables of contents of its publications: the newsletters (whose archive goes back to 2004), the SAAP bullettin (published only until 2000 with some downloadable articles), and its follower, the SAAP journal. Reports from public events, PS annual congresses and calendar entries are also provided. Under a basic page structure and a simple outline, the whole site content is open and free to the public, who can save on screen its contents or download in pdf format the available documents. An entire section of the website is devoted to Argentinian, South American and worldwide PS pertinent and related websites, which are linked and listed by topic and nature (although not always working or updated). The overall navigation is quite simple, and no specific help is needed nor provided. The SAAP website and all its contents are entirely in Spanish only.
Società Italiana di Scienza Politica
The Italian Political Science Association
The Italian Political Science Association (SISP) supports and encourages cooperation in research and training among individual political scientists in Italy and cross-nationally, by promoting scientific activities in all sectors of Political Science. The PS Italian association’s website provides a relevant amount of general info concerning the discipline in Italy for teaching (courses, syllabi), research (projects, opportunities, conferences, PhD programs, research centres), and scholarly contacts (members directory, contact details and research interests, publications and projects in details for each member). Research materials are also available, mainly proceedings of the annual conference and other papers provided by the members or related research institutes. Link lists to external pertinent online research resources are also provided (other associations, databanks, publishers and journals, etc.). Access to all materials is completely free and open for all users, as well as browsing, search and downloading. The website architecture is very intuitive and simple. The SISP website is in Italian and only a limited part of its pages are translated into English.
Société Québécoise de Science Politique
The Quebec Political Science Association
The Société Québécoise de Science Politique (SQSP) promotes research and teaching of Political Science and supports the development of the discipline with a specific interest in the French-speaking world. Therefore its website (whose pages are available only in French) provides all necessary academic information about the activities of the society, mainly congresses, seminars and conferences. The Quebec Political Science Association also encourages the publication and diffusion of scientific contributions, being responsible for publishing the society’s Revue Politique et Sociétés, whose abstracts (from 1991) and full-text articles (from 2002) are available online through “érudite”, a canadian non-profit inter university consortium platform, although not sistematically. The SQSP also publishes, in co-operation with the Canadian Association of Political Science, the “Revue canadienne de science politique”. A long links list to other Political Science associations and to (mainly Canadian) research centres and universities is provided. The SQSP website is extremely easy to navigate so that no help tools are needed for locating the desired information.
