For a broader class of publications, which include scientific journals, see Academic journal. An academic journal is a peer-reviewed Periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular Academic discipline is published

Nature, Science and PNAS

In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Academic publishing describes the subfield of Publishing which distributes academic Research and Scholarship. Magazines, periodicals or serials are Publications generally published on a regular schedule containing a variety of articles, generally To publish is to make content Publicly known. The term is most frequently applied to the distribution of text or images on paper or to the placing of content Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning " Knowledge " or "knowing" is the effort to discover, and increase human understanding Research is defined as Human activity based on Intellectual application in the investigation of Matter. Most journals are highly specialized, although some of the oldest journals such as Nature publish articles and scientific papers across a wide range of scientific fields. Nature is a prominent Scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869 Academic publishing describes the subfield of Publishing which distributes academic Research and Scholarship. Scientific journals contain articles that have been peer reviewed, in an attempt to ensure that articles meet the journal's standards of quality, and scientific validity. 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 term validity (also called logical truth, analytic truth, or necessary truth) as it occurs in Logic refers generally to a property of Although scientific journals are superficially similar to professional magazines, they are actually quite different. This article is about people called professionals For the Movie, see The Professional or Leon. Magazines, periodicals or serials are Publications generally published on a regular schedule containing a variety of articles, generally Issues of a scientific journal are rarely read casually, as one would read a magazine. Magazines, periodicals or serials are Publications generally published on a regular schedule containing a variety of articles, generally The publication of the results of research is an essential part of the scientific method. Scientific method refers to bodies of Techniques for investigating phenomena If they are describing experiments or calculations, they must supply enough details that an independent researcher could repeat the experiment or calculation to verify the results. Each such journal article becomes part of the permanent scientific record.

The history of scientific journals dates from 1665, when the French Journal des sçavans and the English Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society first began systematically publishing research results. The Journal des sçavans (later renamed Journal des savants) founded by Denis de Sallo, was the earliest Scientific journal The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, or Phil Trans Over a thousand, mostly ephemeral, were founded in the 18th century, and the number has increased rapidly after that. Ephemeral things (from Greek εφήμερος - ephemeros, literally "lasting only one day" are transitory existing only briefly (D. A. Kronick, "History of Scientific and Technical Periodicals," 2nd ed. Scarecrow, 1976)

These articles can be used in research and graduate education. See also Postgraduate Training in Education Postgraduate education (synonymous in North America with graduate education, and sometimes described Some classes are partially devoted to the explication of classic articles, and seminar classes can consist of the presentation by each student of a classic or current paper. Seminar is generally a form of Academic instruction either at a University or offered by a commercial or professional organization In a scientific research group or academic department it is usual for the content of current scientific journals to be discussed in journal clubs. An academic department is a division of a University or School faculty devoted to a particular Academic discipline. A journal club is a group of individuals who meet regularly to critically evaluate recent articles in Scientific literature.

The standards that a journal uses to determine publication can vary widely. Some journals, such as Nature, Science, PNAS or Physical Review Letters, have a reputation of publishing articles which mark a fundamental breakthrough in their respective fields. Nature is a prominent Scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869 Science is the Academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is considered one of the world's most prestigious Scientific The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, usually referred to as PNAS, is the official journal of the United Physical Review Letters is one of the most prestigious journals in Physics. In many fields, an informal hierarchy of scientific journals exists; the most prestigious journal in a field tends to be the most selective in terms of the articles it will select for publication. It is also common for journals to have a regional focus, specializing in publishing papers from a particular country or other geographic region.

Articles tend to be highly technical, representing the latest theoretical research and experimental results in the field of science covered by the journal. They are often incomprehensible to anyone except for researchers in the field and advanced students. In some subjects this is inevitable given the nature of the content.

Types of articles

There are several types of journal articles; the exact terminology and definitions vary by field and specific journal, but often include:

• Letters (also called communications, and not to be confused with letters to the editor) are short descriptions of important current research findings which are usually fast-tracked for immediate publication because they are considered urgent. Academic publishing describes the subfield of Publishing which distributes academic Research and Scholarship.
• Research notes are short descriptions of current research findings which are considered less urgent or important than Letters
• Articles are usually between five and twenty pages and are a complete descriptions of current original research finding, but there are considerable variations between scientific fields and journals: 80-page articles are not rare in mathematics or theoretical computer science. Mathematics is the body of Knowledge and Academic discipline that studies such concepts as Quantity, Structure, Space and Theoretical computer science is the collection of topics of Computer science that focuses on the more abstract logical and mathematical aspects of Computing, such
• Supplemental articles contain a large volume of tabular data that is the result of current research and may be dozens or hundreds of pages with mostly numerical data. Debt AIDS Trade in Africa (or DATA) is a Multinational non-government organization founded in January 2002 in London by U2 's Some journals now only publish this data electronically on the internet.
• Review articles do not cover original research but rather accumulate the results of many different articles on a particular topic into a coherent narrative about the state of the art in that field. Examples of reviews include the 'Nature Reviews' series of journals and the 'Trends in' series, which invite experts to write on their specialization and then have the article peer-reviewed before accepting the article for publication. Other journals, such as the Current Opinion series, are less rigorous in peer-reviewing each article and instead rely on the author to present an accurate and unbiased view. Review articles provide information about the topic, and also provide journal references to the original research.

The formats of journal articles vary, but many follow the general IMRAD scheme recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). IMRAD is an Acronym for I ntroduction M ethods R esults A nd D iscussion Such articles begin with an abstract, which is a one-to-four-paragraph summary of the paper. An abstract is a brief summary of a research article Thesis, review conference proceeding or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject or discipline The introduction describes the background for the research including a discussion of similar research. The materials and methods or experimental section provides specific details of how the research was conducted. The results and discussion section describes the outcome and implications of the research, and the conclusion section places the research in context and describes avenues for further exploration.

In addition to the above, some scientific journals such as Science will include a news section where scientific developments (often involving political issues) are described. These articles are often written by science journalists and not by scientists. In addition some journals will include an editorial section and a section for letters to the editor. While these are articles published within a journal, they are not generally regarded as scientific journal articles because they have not been peer-reviewed.

Electronic publishing

It has been argued that peer-reviewed paper journals are in the process of being replaced by electronic publishing, in its various forms. 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 Electronic publishing includes the digital publication of E-books and Electronic articles and the development of digital libraries and catalogues

One form is the online equivalent of the conventional paper journal. By 2006, almost all scientific journals have, while retaining their peer-review process, established electronic versions; a number have even moved entirely to electronic publication. Most academic libraries, similarly, buy the electronic version, and purchase a paper copy only for the most important or most used titles.

There is usually a delay of several months after an article is written before it is published in a journal and this makes paper journals not an ideal format for announcing the latest research. Many journals now publish the final papers in their electronic version as soon as they are ready, without waiting for the assembly of a complete issue, as is necessary in paper. In many fields where even greater speed is wanted, such as physics, the role of the journal at disseminating the latest research has largely been replaced by preprint databases such as arXiv.org. Physics (Greek Physis - φύσις in everyday terms is the Science of Matter and its motion. A preprint is a draft of a Scientific paper that has not yet been published in a Peer-reviewed Scientific journal. The arXiv ( pronounced " Archive " as if the "X" were the Greek letter Chi, χ is an Archive for electronic Almost all such articles are eventually published in traditional journals, which still provide an important role in quality control, archiving papers, and establishing scientific credit. In Engineering and Manufacturing, quality control and quality engineering are involved in developing systems to ensure products or services

Cost

Many scientists and librarians have long protested the cost of journals, especially as they see these payments going to large for-profit publishing houses. To allow their researchers online access to journals, universities generally purchase site licenses, permitting access from anywhere in the university--and, with appropriate authorization, by university-affiliated users at home or elsewhere. These may be quite expensive, sometimes much more than the cost for a print subscription - although this reflects the number of people who will be using the license; a print subscription is the cost for one person to receive the journal, while a site-license can let sometimes thousands of people access it.

Publications by scholarly societies, also known as not-for-profit-publishers (NFP), usually cost less than commercial publishers, but the prices of their scientific journals are still usually several thousand dollars a year. A learned society is an Organization that exists to promote an Academic discipline or group of disciplines However, this money is generally used to fund the activities of the scientific societies that run such journals, or is invested in providing further scholarly resources for scientists, and thus the money remains in and benefits the scientific sphere.

Despite the transition to electronic publishing the serials crisis persists. The term serials crisis has become common shorthand for the runaway cost increases of many scholarly journals.

Concerns about cost and open access have led to the creation of free-access journals such as the Public Library of Science family and partly-open or reduced-cost journals such as the Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP). The Public Library of Science (PLoS is a nonprofit open-access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of Open access journals and other Scientific The Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP is a refereed Scientific journal in the field of High energy physics. However, professional editors still have to be paid and PLoS still relies heavily on donations from foundations to cover the majority of its operating costs; resources that smaller journals do not often have access to.

An article titled "Online or Invisible?" ^[1] has used statistical arguments to show that electronic publishing online, and to some extent open access, both provide wider dissemination and increase the average number of citations an article receives. Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of Literature or Information &ndash the activity of making information available for public view Open access ( OA) is free immediate permanent full-text Online access for any user web-wide to digital scientific and scholarly material primarily Lawrence postulates that papers that are easier to access are naturally used more often and therefore cited more often. However, this is more an argument in favour of disseminating research online, rather than for open access per se. Open access ( OA) is free immediate permanent full-text Online access for any user web-wide to digital scientific and scholarly material primarily

Copyright

In most cases, the author of an article is required to transfer the copyright to the journal publisher. Copyright is a legal concept enacted by Governments, giving the creator of an original work of authorship Exclusive rights to control its distribution usually for Publishers claim this is necessary in order to protect author's rights, and to coordinate permissions for reprints or other use. Many authors, especially those active in the open access movement, find this unsatisfactory, and would prefer a situation in which they give the publisher an irrevocable license to publish, but retain the other rights themselves. Open access ( OA) is free immediate permanent full-text Online access for any user web-wide to digital scientific and scholarly material primarily

Even while retaining the copyright to an article, most journals allow certain rights to their authors. These rights usually include the ability to reuse parts of the paper in the author's future work, and allow him to distribute a limited number of copies. In the print format, such copies are called reprints; in the electronic format they are called postprints. A postprint is a digital draft of a Research Journal article after it has been Peer reviewed A draft before peer review is called a Preprint Some publishers, for example the American Physical Society also grant the author the right to post and update the article on the author's or employer's website and on free e-print servers, to grant permission to others to use or reuse figures, and even to reprint the article as long as no fee is charged. The American Physical Society was founded in 1899 and is the World 's second largest organization of physicists behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. ^[2] The rise of open access journals, in which the author retains the copyright but must pay a publication charge, such as the Public Library of Science family of journals is another recent response to copyright concerns. The Public Library of Science (PLoS is a nonprofit open-access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of Open access journals and other Scientific

In Other Languages

See also

To find related topics in a list, see List of scientific journals. The following is a partial list of scientific journals. There are thousands of Scientific journals in publication and many more have been published at various points in the past

• Academic conference
• Academic journals
• Citation index
• Citebase
• Citeseer
• Google Scholar
• Journal Club
• Mathematical journal
• Open access
• Open access journal
• Public Library of Science
• Science magazine

References

External links

• Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science (online book) by Charles Bazerman
• 'Free at Last: The Future of Peer-Reviewed Journals' by Stevan Harnad
• Bibliography of Findings on the Open Access Impact Advantage
• Links to the world's electronic journals
• Electronic publishing in science: changes and risks by Otto Kinne
• The scientific communication life-cycle model by Bo-Christer Björk