An academic journal or scholarly journal is a
periodical publication
A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a journal are also examples ...
in which
scholarship relating to a particular
academic discipline
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, f ...
is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and discussion of
research. They nearly-universally require
peer-review or other scrutiny from contemporaries competent and established in their respective fields. Content typically takes the form of articles presenting
original research,
review articles, or
book reviews
__NOTOC__
A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is merely described (summary review) or analyzed based on content, style, and merit.
A book review may be a primary source, opinion piece, summary review or scholarly revie ...
. The purpose of an academic journal, according to
Henry Oldenburg
Henry Oldenburg (also Henry Oldenbourg) FRS (c. 1618 as Heinrich Oldenburg – 5 September 1677), was a German theologian, diplomat, and natural philosopher, known as one of the creators of modern scientific peer review. He was one of the fo ...
(the first editor of ''
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society'' is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society. In its earliest days, it was a private venture of the Royal Society's secretary. It was established in 1665, making it the first journa ...
''), is to give researchers a venue to "impart their knowledge to one another, and contribute what they can to the Grand design of improving natural knowledge, and perfecting all Philosophical Arts, and Sciences."
The term ''academic journal'' applies to scholarly publications in all fields; this article discusses the aspects common to all academic field journals.
Scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research.
Content
Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as ...
s and journals of the
quantitative
Quantitative may refer to:
* Quantitative research, scientific investigation of quantitative properties
* Quantitative analysis (disambiguation)
* Quantitative verse, a metrical system in poetry
* Statistics, also known as quantitative analysis
...
social sciences vary in form and function from journals of the
humanities and
qualitative social sciences; their specific aspects are separately discussed.
The first academic journal was ''
Journal des sçavans'' (January 1665), followed soon after by ''
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society'' is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society. In its earliest days, it was a private venture of the Royal Society's secretary. It was established in 1665, making it the first journa ...
'' (March 1665), and ''
Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences'' (1666). The first fully
peer-reviewed journal was ''Medical Essays and Observations'' (1733).
History
The idea of a published journal with the purpose of "
etting
Etting (; ; Lorraine Franconian: ''Ettinge'') is a commune in the Moselle department of the Grand Est administrative region in north-eastern France.
The village belongs to the Pays de Bitche.
See also
* Communes of the Moselle department
The ...
people know what is happening in the
Republic of Letters" was first conceived by
François Eudes de Mézeray in 1663. A publication titled ''Journal littéraire général'' was supposed to be published to fulfill that goal, but never was.
Humanist scholar Denis de Sallo (under the
pseudonym "Sieur de Hédouville") and printer
Jean Cusson took Mazerai's idea, and obtained a
royal privilege from
King Louis XIV
, house = Bourbon
, father = Louis XIII
, mother = Anne of Austria
, birth_date =
, birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
, death_date =
, death_place = Palace of Ver ...
on 8 August 1664 to establish the ''
Journal des sçavans''. The journal's first issue was published on 5 January 1665. It was aimed at
people of letters, and had four main objectives:
[Histoire du Journal des Savants]
, p. 1-2
# review newly published major European books,
# publish the
obituaries
An obituary (obit for short) is an article about a recently deceased person. Newspapers often publish obituaries as news articles. Although obituaries tend to focus on positive aspects of the subject's life, this is not always the case. Acc ...
of famous people,
# report on discoveries in
arts
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...
and
science, and
# report on the
proceedings and
censure
A censure is an expression of strong disapproval or harsh criticism. In parliamentary procedure, it is a debatable main motion that could be adopted by a majority vote. Among the forms that it can take are a stern rebuke by a legislature, a spir ...
s of both
secular and
ecclesiastical court
An ecclesiastical court, also called court Christian or court spiritual, is any of certain courts having jurisdiction mainly in spiritual or religious matters. In the Middle Ages, these courts had much wider powers in many areas of Europe than be ...
s, as well as those of Universities both in France and outside.
Soon after, the
Royal Society established
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society'' is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society. In its earliest days, it was a private venture of the Royal Society's secretary. It was established in 1665, making it the first journa ...
in March 1665, and the
Académie des Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the ...
established the ''
Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences'' in 1666, which more strongly focused on scientific communications. By the end of the 18th century, nearly 500 such periodicals had been published, the vast majority coming from
Germany (304 periodicals),
France (53), and
England (34). Several of those publications, however, and in particular the German journals, tended to be short-lived (under 5 years). A.J. Meadows has estimated the proliferation of journal to reach 10,000 journals in 1950, and 71,000 in 1987. However, Michael Mabe warns that the estimates will vary depending on the definition of what exactly counts as a scholarly publication, but that the growth rate has been "remarkably consistent over time", with an average rate of 3.46% per year from 1800 to 2003.
In 1733, ''
Medical Essays and Observations'' was established by the
Medical Society of Edinburgh as the first fully
peer-reviewed journal.
Peer review was introduced as an attempt to increase the quality and pertinence of submissions. Other important events in the history of academic journals include the establishment of ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are p ...
'' (1869) and ''
Science'' (1880), the establishment of ''
Postmodern Culture'' in 1990 as the first
online-only journal, the foundation of
arXiv
arXiv (pronounced "archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists of s ...
in 1991 for the dissemination of
preprint
In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset versio ...
s to be discussed prior to publication in a journal, and the establishment of ''
PLOS One'' in 2006 as the first
megajournal.
Scholarly articles
There are two kinds of
article or paper submissions in
academia
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy ...
: solicited, where an individual has been invited to submit work either through direct contact or through a general submissions call, and unsolicited, where an individual submits a work for potential publication without directly being asked to do so. Upon receipt of a submitted article, editors at the journal determine whether to reject the submission outright or begin the process of
peer review. In the latter case, the submission becomes subject to review by outside scholars of the editor's choosing who typically remain anonymous. The number of these peer reviewers (or "referees") varies according to each journal's editorial practice – typically, no fewer than two, though sometimes three or more, experts in the subject matter of the article produce reports upon the content, style, and other factors, which inform the editors' publication decisions. Though these reports are generally confidential, some journals and publishers also practice
public peer review. The editors either choose to reject the article, ask for a revision and resubmission, or accept the article for publication. Even accepted articles are often subjected to further (sometimes considerable) editing by journal editorial staff before they appear in print. The peer review can take from several weeks to several months.
Reviewing
Review articles
Review articles, also called "reviews of progress," are checks on the research published in journals. Some journals are devoted entirely to review articles, some contain a few in each issue, and others do not publish review articles. Such reviews often cover the research from the preceding year, some for longer or shorter terms; some are devoted to specific topics, some to general surveys. Some reviews are
enumerative
An enumeration is a complete, ordered listing of all the items in a collection. The term is commonly used in mathematics and computer science to refer to a listing of all of the elements of a set. The precise requirements for an enumeration ...
, listing all significant articles in a given subject; others are selective, including only what they think worthwhile. Yet others are evaluative, judging the state of progress in the subject field. Some journals are published in series, each covering a complete subject field year, or covering specific fields through several years. Unlike original research articles, review articles tend to be solicited or "peer-invited" submissions, often planned years in advance, which may themselves go through a peer-review process once received.
They are typically relied upon by students beginning a study in a given field, or for current awareness of those already in the field.
[
]
Book reviews
Reviews of scholarly books are checks upon the research books published by scholars; unlike articles, book reviews tend to be solicited. Journals typically have a separate book review editor determining which new books to review and by whom. If an outside scholar accepts the book review editor's request for a book review, he or she generally receives a free copy of the book from the journal in exchange for a timely review. Publishers send books to book review editors in the hope that their books will be reviewed. The length and depth of research book reviews varies much from journal to journal, as does the extent of textbook and trade book review.
Prestige and ranking
An
academic
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...
journal's prestige is established over time, and can reflect many factors, some but not all of which are expressible quantitatively. In each
academic discipline
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, f ...
, some journals receive a high number of submissions and opt to restrict how many they publish, keeping the
acceptance rate low.
[
]
Size or prestige are not a guarantee of reliability.
In the
natural sciences and in the
social sciences, the
impact factor
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ...
is an established proxy, measuring the number of later articles citing articles already published in the journal. There are other quantitative measures of prestige, such as the overall number of citations, how quickly articles are cited, and the average "
half-life
Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ato ...
" of articles.
Clarivate Analytics
Clarivate Plc is a British-American publicly traded analytics company that operates a collection of subscription-based services, in the areas of bibliometrics and scientometrics; business / market intelligence, and competitive profiling for ph ...
' ''
Journal Citation Reports'', which among other features, computes an
impact factor
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ...
for academic journals, draws data for computation from the
Science Citation Index Expanded (for natural science journals), and from the
Social Sciences Citation Index (for social science journals).
Several other metrics are also used, including the
SCImago Journal Rank,
CiteScore
CiteScore (CS) of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal. This journal evaluation metric was launched in December 2016 by Elsevier as an alternative to the ge ...
,
Eigenfactor
The Eigenfactor score, developed by Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom at the University of Washington, is a rating of the total importance of a scientific journal. Journals are rated according to the number of incoming citations, with citations from ...
, and
Altmetrics
In scholarly and scientific publishing, altmetrics are non-traditional bibliometrics proposed as an alternative or complement to more traditional citation impact metrics, such as impact factor and ''h''-index. The term altmetrics was proposed in ...
.
In the
Anglo-American
Anglo-Americans are people who are English-speaking inhabitants of Anglo-America. It typically refers to the nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language, making up the majority of people in the world who spe ...
humanities, there is no tradition (as there is in the sciences) of giving impact-factors that could be used in establishing a journal's prestige. Recent moves have been made by the European Science Foundation (ESF) to change the situation, resulting in the publication of preliminary lists for the
ranking
A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than" or "ranked equal to" the second.
In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of ...
of academic journals in the humanities.
These rankings have been severely criticized, notably by history and sociology of science British journals that have published a common editorial entitled "Journals under Threat." Though it did not prevent ESF and some national organizations from proposing
journal ranking
Journal ranking is widely used in academic circles in the evaluation of an academic journal's impact and quality. Journal rankings are intended to reflect the place of a journal within its field, the relative difficulty of being published in that ...
s, it largely prevented their use as evaluation tools.
In some disciplines such as
knowledge management/
intellectual capital, the lack of a well-established journal ranking system is perceived by academics as "a major obstacle on the way to tenure, promotion and achievement recognition".
[
] Conversely, a significant number of scientists and organizations consider the pursuit of
impact factor
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ...
calculations as inimical to the goals of science, and have signed the
San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment to limit its use.
The categorization of journal prestige in some subjects has been attempted, typically using letters to rank their academic world importance.
Three categories of techniques have developed to assess journal quality and create journal rankings:
* stated preference;
* revealed preference; and
* publication power approaches
Costs
Many academic journals are
subsidized
A subsidy or government incentive is a form of financial aid or support extended to an economic sector (business, or individual) generally with the aim of promoting economic and social policy. Although commonly extended from the government, the ter ...
by universities or professional organizations, and do not exist to make a profit. However, they often accept advertising, page and image charges from authors to pay for production costs. On the other hand, some journals are produced by commercial publishers who do make a profit by charging subscriptions to individuals and libraries. They may also sell all of their journals in discipline-specific collections or a variety of other packages.
[
]
Journal editors tend to have other professional responsibilities, most often as teaching professors. In the case of the largest journals, there are paid staff assisting in the editing. The production of the journals is almost always done by publisher-paid staff. Humanities and social science academic journals are usually subsidized by universities or professional organization.
The cost and value proposition of subscription to academic journals is being continuously re-assessed by institutions worldwide. In the context of the
big deal cancellations by several library systems in the world, data analysis tools like
Unpaywall Journals are used by libraries to estimate the specific cost and value of the various options: libraries can avoid subscriptions for materials already served by instant
open access via
open archives like PubMed Central.
New developments
The
Internet has revolutionized the production of, and access to, academic journals, with their contents available online via services subscribed to by
academic libraries. Individual articles are subject-indexed in databases such as
Google Scholar. Some of the smallest, most specialized journals are prepared in-house, by an academic department, and published only online – such form of publication has sometimes been in the blog format though some, like the
open access journal
Internet Archaeology, use the medium to embed searchable datasets, 3D models, and interactive mapping. Currently, there is a movement in higher education encouraging
open access, either via
self archiving, whereby the author deposits a paper in a
disciplinary
Discipline refers to rule following behavior, to regulate, order, control and authority. It may also refer to punishment. Discipline is used to create habits, routines, and automatic mechanisms such as blind obedience. It may be inflicted on ot ...
or
institutional repository where it can be searched for and read, or via publishing it in a free
open access journal
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
, which does not charge for
subscriptions, being either subsidized or financed by a
publication fee
An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors. Most commonly, it is involved in making a work available as open access (OA), in either a full OA journal or in a hybrid journal. ...
. Given the goal of sharing scientific research to speed advances, open access has affected science journals more than humanities journals. Commercial publishers are experimenting with open access models, but are trying to protect their subscription revenues.
The much lower entry cost of on-line publishing has also raised concerns of an increase in
publication of "junk" journals with lower publishing standards. These journals, often with names chosen as similar to well-established publications, solicit articles via e-mail and then charge the author to publish an article, often with
no sign of actual review.
Jeffrey Beall, a research librarian at the
University of Colorado
The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University of C ...
, has compiled a list of what he considers to be "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers"; the list numbered over 300 journals as of April 2013, but he estimates that there may be thousands. The
OMICS Publishing Group
OMICS Publishing Group is a predatory publisher of open access academic journals. It started publishing its first journal in 2008. By 2015, it claimed over 700 journals, although about half of them were defunct. Its subsidiaries and brands in ...
, which publishes a number of the journals on this list, has
threatened to sue Beall.
Some academic journals use the
registered report
Preregistration is the practice of registering the hypotheses, methods, and/or analyses of a scientific study before it is conducted. This can include analyzing primary data or secondary data. Clinical trial registration is similar, although it may ...
format, which aims to counteract issues such as
data dredging and hypothesizing after the results are known. For example, ''
Nature Human Behaviour'' has adopted the registered report format, as it "shift
the emphasis from the results of research to the questions that guide the research and the methods used to answer them". The ''
European Journal of Personality'' defines this format: "In a registered report, authors create a study proposal that includes theoretical and empirical background, research questions/hypotheses, and pilot data (if available). Upon submission, this proposal will then be reviewed prior to data collection, and if accepted, the paper resulting from this peer-reviewed procedure will be published, regardless of the study outcomes."
Electronic journals
Some journals are ''
born digital'', such as the ''
Electronic Journal of Combinatorics
The ''Electronic Journal of Combinatorics'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering research in combinatorial mathematics.
The journal was established in 1994 by Herbert Wilf ( University of Pennsylvania) and Neil Calkin ( Ge ...
'', in that they are solely published on the web and in a digital format. Most electronic journals originated as print journals, which subsequently evolved to have an electronic version, while still maintaining a print component, while others eventually become electronic-only.
An e-journal closely resembles a print journal in structure: there is a table of contents which lists the articles, and many electronic journals still use a volume/issue model, although some titles now publish on a continuous basis. Online journal articles are a specialized form of
electronic document: they have the purpose of providing material for academic
research and study, and they are formatted approximately like journal articles in traditional printed journals. Often a journal article will be available for download in two formats - as a PDF and in HTML format, although other electronic file types are often supported for supplementary material. Articles are indexed in
bibliographic databases
A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records, an organized digital collection of references to published literature, including journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications, ...
, as well as by search engines. E-journals allow new types on content to be included in journals, for example video material, or the data sets on which research has been based.
With the growth and development of the Internet, there has been a growth in the number of new journals, especially in those that exist as digital publications only. A subset of these journals exist as Open Access titles, meaning that they are free to access for all, and have
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has releas ...
licences which permit the reproduction of content in different ways. High quality
open access journals are listed in
Directory of Open Access Journals
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a website that hosts a community-curated list of open access journals, maintained by Infrastructure Services for Open Access (IS4OA). It was launched in 2003 with 300 open access journals. The proje ...
. Most however continue to exist as subscription journals, for which libraries, organisations and individuals purchase access.
Lists
The largest database providing detailed information about journals is
Ulrichs Global Serials Directory. Other databases providing detailed information about journals are the Modern Language Association Directory of Periodicals and
Genamics JournalSeek
JournalSeek is an online database covering academic journals. It includes journals published by over 5400 publishers
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for s ...
. Journal hosting websites like
Project MUSE
Project MUSE, a non-profit collaboration between libraries and publishers, is an online database of peer-reviewed academic journals and electronic books. Project MUSE contains digital humanities and social science content from over 250 universit ...
,
JSTOR,
Pubmed,
Ingenta Web of Science, and
Informaworld also provide journal lists. Some sites evaluate journals, providing information such as how long a journal takes to review articles and what types of articles it publishes.
See also
Explanatory notes
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
ERIH 'Initial' lists European Science Foundation
The European Science Foundation (ESF) is an association of 11 member organizations devoted to scientific research in 8 European countries. ESF is an independent, non-governmental, non-profit organisation that promotes the highest quality science ...
JournalSeek – A Searchable Database of Online Scholarly JournalsMaster Journal List(Thomson Reuters) – a list of selected, and notable academic journals in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
Links to electronic journalsJURN directory of Arts & Humanities ejournalsan
''Academic Writing''. Dennis G. Jerz. Seton Hill University. 2001.
Peer reviewed articles San Diego State University.
Directory of Open Access Journals
{{Authority control
Academic publishing
Peer review
Scholarly communication