An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. For a broader class of publications which include scientific journals see Academic journal. Peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work research or Ideas to the scrutiny of others who are Magazines, periodicals or serials are Publications generally published on a regular schedule containing a variety of articles, generally An academic discipline or field of study is a branch of Knowledge which is taught or Researched at the college or university level Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research. The term critique derives from the Greek term kritik, meaning "disgusting judgment" usually of the value of something Content typically takes the form of articles presenting original research, review articles, and book reviews. Original research is Research that is not exclusively based on a summary review or synthesis of earlier publications on the subject of research A review journal in Academic publishing is a periodical or series that is devoted to the publication of review articles that summarize the progress in some particular area or For book reviews in academia see also Academic Journal - Book reviews For the Looney Tunes cartoon see Book Revue. Academic or professional publications that are not peer-reviewed are usually called professional magazines.
The term "academic journal" applies to scholarly publications in all fields; this article discusses the aspects common to all academic field journals. Scientific journals and journals of the quantitative social sciences vary in form and function from journals of the humanities and qualitative social sciences; their specific aspects are separately discussed. For a broader class of publications which include scientific journals see Academic journal. A quantitative attribute is one that exists in a range of magnitudes and can therefore be measured. The social sciences comprise academic disciplines concerned with the study of the social life of human groups and individuals including Anthropology, Communication studies The humanities are academic disciplines which study the Human condition, using methods that are primarily Analytic, Critical, or Speculative The similar American and British journal publication systems are primarily discussed here; practices differ in other regions of the world.
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Scholarly articles
In academia, professional scholars typically make unsolicited submissions of their articles to academic journals. Upon receipt of a submitted article manuscript, the journal editor (or editors) determines whether to reject the submission outright or begin the process of peer review. A manuscript is any Document that is Written by hand as opposed to being printed or reproduced in some other way In the latter case, the submission becomes subject to anonymous peer-review by outside scholars of the editor's choosing. Peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work research or Ideas to the scrutiny of others who are The number of these peer reviewers (or "referees") varies according to each journal's editorial practice — typically, no fewer than two, and usually at least three outside peers review the article. The editor(s) uses the reviewers' opinions in determining whether to publish the article, return it to the author(s) for revision, or to reject it. ReVision A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation is a Peer-reviewed Interdisciplinary Quarterly journal issued by Heldref Publications (This process is discussed in the peer review article). Peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work research or Ideas to the scrutiny of others who are Even accepted articles are subjected to further (sometimes considerable) editing by journal editorial staff before they appear in print. Typically, because the process is lengthy, an accepted article will not be published until months after its initial submission, while publication after a period of several years is not unknown.
The peer-review process is considered critical to establishing a reliable body of research and knowledge. Scholars can be expert only in a limited area of their fields; they rely upon peer-reviewed journals to provide reliable, credible research upon which they can build subsequent, related research.
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, others contain a few in each issue, but most 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 journals are enumerative, listing all significant articles in a given subject, others are selective, including only what they think worthwhile. In Mathematics and theoretical Computer science, the broadest and most abstract definition of an enumeration of a set is an exact listing of all of its 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, book reviews tend to be solicited submissions, sometimes planned years in advance. Book review authors are paid a few hundred dollars for reviews, because of this, the standard definitions of open access do not require review articles to be open access, though many are so. Open access ( OA) is free immediate permanent full-text Online access for any user web-wide to digital scientific and scholarly material primarily 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
Book 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
An academic 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 there are dominant journals that receive the largest number of submissions, and therefore can be selective in choosing their content. Yet, not only the largest journals are of excellent quality. For example, among United States academic historians, the two dominant journals are the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History, but there are dozens of other American peer-reviewed history journals specializing in specific historical periods, themes, or regions, and these may be considered of equally high quality in their specialties. The Journal of American History (sometimes abbreviated as JAH) is the official journal of the Organization of American Historians.
In the natural sciences and in the "hard" social sciences, impact factor is a convenient proxy, measuring the number of later articles citing articles already published in the journal. The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure of the Citations to science and social science journals. There are other, possible quantitative factors, such as the overall number of citations, how quickly articles are cited, and the average "half-life" of articles, i. e. when they are no longer cited. There also is the question of whether or not any quantitative factor can reflect true prestige; natural science journals are categorized and ranked in the Science Citation Index, and social science journals in the Social Science Citation Index. Science Citation Index ( SCI) is a Citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI in 1960 which is now owned by Social Sciences Citation Index ( SSCI) is an interdisciplinary Citation index product of Thomson Scientific.
In the Anglo-American humanities, there is no tradition (as there is in the sciences) of giving impact-factors that could be used — however incorrectly — in establishing a journal's prestige. The humanities are academic disciplines which study the Human condition, using methods that are primarily Analytic, Critical, or Speculative Perhaps a key reason for this is the relative unimportance of academic journals in these subjects, in contrast with the importance of academic monographs. Very recently, there has been preliminary work done for determining such a measurement's validity.
The categorization journal prestige in some subjects has been attempted, using letters to rank their academic world importance. This journal-ranking is administered by the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. The Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (WU Wien or Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration is the largest University focusing on Business
Publishing
Humanities and social science academic journals are usually subsidized by universities or professional organizations, and do not exist to make a profit, however, they often accept advertising to pay for production costs. In Economics, a subsidy (also known as a subvention is a form of financial assistance paid to a business or economic sector Publishers charge libraries higher subscription prices than are charged to individual subscribers; institutional subscriptions range between several hundred to several thousand dollars. Journal editors tend to have other professional responsibilities, most often as teaching professors. In the case of the very largest journals, there is paid staff assisting in the editing. The production of the journals is most always done by publisher-paid staff. Subject journal publishers often are the university presses:
- Oxford University Press
- Cambridge University Press
- Harvard University Press
- University of California Press. Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP is a Publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534 Harvard University Press ( HUP) is a Publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in Academic publishing. University of California Press, also known as UC Press, is a Publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in Academic
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. The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks Individual articles are subject-indexed in databases such as Google Scholar. Google Scholar ( GS) is a freely-accessible Web search engine that indexes the full text of Scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats 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.
Currently, there is a movement in higher education encouraging open access, either via self archiving, whereby the author deposits his paper in a repository where it can be searched for and read, or via publishing it in a free open access journal, which does not charge for subscriptions, being either subsidized or financed with author page charges. Open access ( OA) is free immediate permanent full-text Online access for any user web-wide to digital scientific and scholarly material primarily Self-archiving involves depositing a free copy of a digital document on the World Wide Web in order to provide Open access to it A repository is a place where Data or specimens are stored and maintained for future retrieval Open access journals are Scholarly journals that are available to the reader "without financial or other barrier other than access to the internet itself The subscription business model is a Business model where a customer must pay a subscription price to have access to the product/service However, to date, open access has affected science journals more than humanities journals.
References
- Waller, A. C. Editorial Peer Review Its Strengths and Weaknesses ASIST monograph series. Information Today, 2001. ISBN 1573871001.
- Nisa Bakkalbasi, Kathleen Bauer, Janis Glover and Lei Wang Three options for citation tracking: Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science Biomedical Digital Libraries 2006, 3:7 doi:10. 1186/1742-5581-3-7
- Deis et al. "Update on Scopus and Web of Science Charleston Advisor
See also
- Academic databases and search engines
- List of journals available free online
- List of academic journals
- Open Access
- Scientific journals
External links
- JournalSeek - A Searchable Database of Online Scholarly Journals
- Links to the world's electronic journals
- Electronic journals available onsite at the British Library
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