Academic journal
Encyclopedia : A : AC : ACA : Academic journal
- In relation to the natural sciences, see Scientific journal
The term "academic journal" applies to scholarly publications in all fields, but scientific journals vary somewhat in form and function from journals in the humanities and qualitative social sciences.
Scholarly articles
In American academia, submissions are generally unsolicited. Professional scholars generally submit an article to a journal, and the editor (or editors) determines whether to reject the submission outright. If the editor chooses to consider the article for publication, it is then subject to anonymous peer-review by other scholars of the editor's choosing. The opinions of these outside reviewers are used in the determination to publish the article, to return it to the author for revision, or to reject the article. Even accepted articles are subject to further (and sometimes considerable) editing by the journal before publication. Because of this lengthy process, an accepted article will typically not appear in print until several months after its initial submission.
The process of peer review is considered critical to establishing a reliable body of research and knowledge. Scholars can only be expert in a limited area; they rely upon peer-reviewed journals to provide reliable and credible research which they can build upon for subsequent or related research. As a result, significant scandal ensues when an author is found to have falsified the research included in an article, as many other scholars, and more generally the field of study itself, have relied upon that research.
Book reviews
Book reviews serve as a check on the research published by scholars in manuscript form. Unlike articles, book reviews tend to be solicited. Journals typically have a separate book review editor who determines which new books should be reviewed and by whom. If an outside scholar accepts the book review editor's request to review a book, he or she generally receives a free copy of that 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 reviews vary considerably from journal to journal.
Prestige
The prestige of an academic journal is established over time. There are dominant journals in each academic discipline that receive the largest number of submissions and therefore can be most selective in choosing their content. Among academic historians in the United States, for example, the two dominant journals are the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History, but there are dozens of other American peer-reviewed journals of history that specialize in specific time-periods, themes, or regions.
In the American humanities, there is as yet no tradition (as currently exists in the sciences) of giving numerical prestige "values" to journals in schemes to quantify the relative importance of research (based on the number of references made to an article in other academic articles).
Financial operation
Academic journals in the humanities and social sciences are usually subsidized by universities or professional organizations, and do not exist to make a profit. However, they often accept advertisements as a way of off-setting production costs. It is standard practice for academic journals to charge libraries much higher subscription rates than individual subscribers pay. Editors of smaller journals tend to have other professional responsibilities, most often as teaching professors.
New developments
In recent years, the Internet has revolutionized the production of, and access to, academic journals. Journal content is often available online via services subscribed to by academic libraries. Individual articles are indexed in databases by subject.
There is currently a movement in higher education encouraging self archiving, whereby the author places his paper in a repository where it can be searched for and read; this is also know as open access. This service is often free. However, to date it has not had a significant impact on journals.
See also
External links
- [The American Historical Review]
- [The Journal of American History]
- [The Podium: A Collegiate Journal]
- [Links to the world's electronic journals]
- [Electronic journals available onsite at the British Library]
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