- History, culture of the Middle East, and Eastern Asia and contemporary regional problems;
- Studies on history, internal and foreign policy, socio-economic situation, ideological streams, policy of Genocide and other principal issues of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic;
- Studies on history of national liberation movements in Arabic countries, the trends of their socio-political and spiritual-cultural development, inter-Arabic, as well as Armenian-Arabic historical and political relations, the role of Islam and research of history of Armenian communities in Arabic countries;
- Studies on history of Iran, internal and foreign policy, Iranian philology and Armenian-Iranian historical and cultural relations;
- Studies on the Kurds, their history, folklore, Armenian-Kurdish relations;
- The main problems of the history of Christian Orient and Caucasus, Caucasian Albania, Armenian-Byzantine political-confessional relations and Armenian-Georgian relations;
- Studies on the main issues of history and culture of cuneiform and Hellenistic civilizations;
- Տtudy of Eastern sources, documents and their translation into Armenian. 

Main scientific achievements:
- The Institute of Oriental Studies published more than 450 books and collections of papers, as well as several thousands of scientific articles;
- Several works published by the Institute are due of mention, them being "Turkish Sources about Armenia and the Armenians" (4 volumes), "Arabic Sources about Armenia and Neighboring Countries", "The Documents of the Matenadaran in Persian" (4 volumes), "History of Arabic Countries" (4 volumes), "History of Iran", etc.
- The Institute publishes various collections of articles, namely "Countries and Peoples of the Near and Middle East", "Turkic and Ottoman Studies", "Middle East", "Caucasia and Byzantium", "Ancient Orient", "Eastern Asian Studies", "Contemporary Eurasia"