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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Academic journal | 5/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_journal | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:52:46.563930+00:00 | kb-cron |
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 – this 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 or institutional 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 by a publication fee. 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. Academic journals have been criticized for persistent gender, geographic, and other representation imbalances on editorial boards.
=== Predatory and junk journals ===
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, 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, which publishes a number of the journals on this list, threatened to sue Beall in 2013 and Beall stopped publishing in 2017, citing pressure from his university. A US judge fined OMICS $50 million in 2019 stemming from an FTC lawsuit. Some academic journals use the registered report 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[s] 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 in that they are solely published on the web and in a digital format. Though most electronic journals originated as print journals, which subsequently evolved to have an electronic version, while still maintaining a print component, others eventually became 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: PDF and HTML, although other electronic file types are often supported for supplementary material. New tools such as JATS and Utopia Documents provide a 'bridge' to the 'web-versions' in that they connect the content in PDF versions directly to the World Wide Web via hyperlinks that are created 'on-the-fly'. The PDF version of an article is usually seen as the version of record, but the matter is subject to some debate. Articles are indexed in bibliographic databases as well as by search engines. E-journals allow new types of 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 digital-only journals. A subset of these journals exist as Open Access titles, meaning that they are free to access for all, and have Creative Commons licences which permit the reproduction of content in different ways. High quality open access journals are listed in Directory of Open Access Journals. Most, however, continue to exist as subscription journals, for which libraries, organisations and individuals purchase access. Benefits of electronically publishing include easy availability of supplementary materials (data, graphics and video), lower cost, and availability to more people, especially scientists from non-developed countries. Hence, research results from more developed nations are becoming more accessible to scientists from non-developed countries.
== Lists ==
Databases providing detailed information about journals: Ulrich's Global Serials Directory Directory of Periodicals by Modern Language Association JournalSeek by Genamics Web of Science Scopus WorldCat Journal hosting sites that also provide lists. Some sites evaluate journals, providing information such as how long a journal takes to review articles and what types of articles it publishes: Project MUSE JSTOR ScienceDirect Informaworld
== See also ==
== Explanatory notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading == Bakkalbasi, N; Bauer, K; Glover, J; Wang, L (2006). "Three options for citation tracking: Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science". Biomedical Digital Libraries. 3 7. doi:10.1186/1742-5581-3-7. PMC 1533854. PMID 16805916. Waller, A.C. (2001). Editorial Peer Review Its Strengths and Weaknesses. ASIST monograph series. Information Today. ISBN 978-1-57387-100-6. Ware, Mark; Mabe, Michael (2015). The STM Report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing (PDF) (4th ed.). International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers.
== External links ==
Journal Collection at the Internet Archive