Academic journal
- In relation to the natural sciences, see Scientific journal
An academic journal is a regularly-published, peer-reviewed publication that publishes scholarship relating to an academic discipline. The purpose of such a journal is to provide a place for the introduction and scrutiny of new research, and often a forum for the critique of existing research. These purposes are most often manifested in the publication of original research articles (research findings), review articles, and book reviews.
The term "academic journal" applies to scholarly publications in all fields, and this article covers the aspects common to all academic fields. Scientific journals and journals in the quantitative social sciences vary somewhat in form and function from journals in the humanities and qualitative social sciences, and the specific aspects are discussed separately. The very similar American and British systems are being primarily discussed here--other regions are somewhat different.
Scholarly articles
In academia, submissions are generally unsolicited. Professional scholars generally submit an article to a journal; then, the editor (or co-editors) determines whether or not to reject the submission outright, often on grounds of not being appropriate to the subject of the journal. 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. There are usually two reviewers; a third is sometimes asked if the two disagree. 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. (There are many variations on this process, discussed in the article on peer review). Even accepted articles are subject to further (often considerable) editing by the journal before publication. Because of this lengthy process, an accepted article will typically not appear in print until several months at the very least after its initial submission--several years is not unknown.
The process of peer review is generally considered critical to establishing a reliable body of research and knowledge. Scholars can only be expert in a limited area; they rely on 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 a published article, as many other scholars, and more generally the field of study itself, have relied upon that research.
Review Articles
Review articles, often called "reviews of progress," serve as a check on the research published in the journals. Unlike research articles, review articles are usually solicited from long-standing experts in the field. Some journals are entirely devoted to review articles, others contain a few each issue, but most do not publish review articles at all. Such reviews often cover the research for the preceding year, some for longer or shorter periods; some are devoted to very specific topics, some to general surveys. Some are enumerative, with intent to list all significant articles in a subject. Others are selective, including what they think is worth including. Yet others are evaluative, aiming to give a judgment of the state of progress in the field. Some are published in series, covering each year a complete subject field, or covering a number of specific fields over several years. Unlike original research articles, book reviews tend to be solicited, and are sometimes planned years in advance. Authors are often paid a few hundred dollars for such reviews. Because of this, the standard definitions of open access do not require review articles to be open access, although many are. They are typically relied on by students beginning a study in a field, or for current awareness for those already in the field. There is another type of specialized review called systematic review which forms the core of evidence-based medicine. For further details, See review article.
Book reviews
Book reviews of scholarly books serve as a check on the research published in book 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 and publishable review. Publishers or authors 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. The extent to which textbooks and other non-scholarly books are covered also varies from journal to journal.
Prestige
The prestige of an academic journal is established over time. It can reflect many factors, some but not all expressible quantitatively. 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, and these may be considered of equally high quality in their specialty.
In the sciences, and the "hard" social sciences, impact factor is a convenient numerical measure, reflecting the number of later articles citing those articles already published in the journal. There are other possible quantitative factors, and there is question whether the number of citations is a best quantitative measure of prestige--See the discussion of impact factor. There is also a question of whether any quantitative factor can reflect true prestige. An excellent review on the pitfalls of impact factor is available [1]. In the Anglo-American humanities, there has not yet been a 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). Perhaps a key reason for this is the relative unimportance of academic journals in these field, as contrasted with the importance of academic monographs. Very recently, there have been some preliminary work towards determining the validity of such measurement [2], Faculty of 1000 [3]. (refs to be inserted)
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 journals tend to have other professional responsibilities, most often as teaching professors. In the case of the very largest journals, there is sometimes paid staff to assist in the editing. The production of the journals is almost always done by paid staff from the publisher. Publishers in the subjects are often university presses; some of them specialize in such journals, such as the Oxford University Press.
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, and can be increasingly found in such databases as Google Scholar. Other specialized databases serve as platforms for disseminating journals (i.e. JSTOR or ScienceDirect). Some of the smallest and most specialized journals are prepared in-house by an academic department and published only on the internet--recently such publication has sometimes taken the form of a blog.
There is currently a movement in higher education encouraging open access, either by self archiving, where the author places his paper in a repository where it can be searched for and read, or by publishing in an open access journal, which does not charge for subscriptions, being either subsidized or financed through author page charges. To date, open access has had a much greater effect on science journals than on those in the humanities.