An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and discussion of research. They nearly universally require peer review or other scrutiny from contemporaries competent and established in their respective fields. Content typically takes the form of articles presenting original research, review articles, or book reviews. The purpose of an academic journal, according to Henry Oldenburg, is to give researchers a venue to "impart their knowledge to one another, and contribute what they can to the Grand design of improving natural knowledge, and perfecting all Philosophical Arts, and Sciences."
A citation index is a kind of bibliographic index, an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. A form of citation index is first found in 12th-century Hebrew religious literature. Legal citation indexes are found in the 18th century and were made popular by citators such as Shepard's Citations (1873). In 1961, Eugene Garfield's Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) introduced the first citation index for papers published in academic journals, first the Science Citation Index (SCI), and later the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). American Chemical Society converted its printed Chemical Abstract Service into internet-accessible SciFinder in 2008. The first automated citation indexing was done by CiteSeer in 1997 and was patented. Other sources for such data include Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, Elsevier's Scopus, and the National Institutes of Health's iCite.
The BMJ is a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal, published by BMJ Group, which in turn is wholly-owned by the British Medical Association (BMA). The BMJ has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Previously called the British Medical Journal, the title was officially shortened to BMJ in 1988, and then changed to The BMJ in 2014. The journal is published by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd, a subsidiary of the British Medical Association (BMA). The current editor-in-chief of The BMJ is Kamran Abbasi, who was appointed in January 2022.
Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-level subject fields: life sciences, social sciences, physical sciences and health sciences. It covers three types of sources: book series, journals, and trade journals. All journals covered in the Scopus database are reviewed for sufficiently high quality each year according to four types of numerical quality measure for each title; those are h-Index, CiteScore, SJR and SNIP. Scopus also allows patent searches in a dedicated patent database Lexis-Nexis, albeit with a limited functionality.
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science.
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes peer-reviewed online academic journals and books, conference papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, and other scholarly literature, including court opinions and patents.
Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology is a peer-reviewed medical journal published by Nature Portfolio. It was established in 2004 as Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology and obtained its current title in April 2009. The editor-in-chief is Katrina Ray.
Heart is a biweekly peer-reviewed medical journal covering all areas of cardiovascular medicine and surgery. It is the official journal of the British Cardiovascular Society. It was established in 1939 as the British Heart Journal and is published by the BMJ Group. The name was changed from British Heart Journal to Heart in 1996 with the start of volume 75. The editor-in-chief is Catherine Otto.
The Journal of Immunology is a biweekly peer-reviewed medical journal that publishes basic and clinical studies in all aspects of immunology. Established in 1916, it changed its name to Journal of Immunology, Virus Research and Experimental Chemotherapy from 1943 to 1949, then returned to the original Journal of Immunology in 1950. It is the official journal of the American Association of Immunologists. The editor-in-chief is Eugene M. Oltz.
The Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 22 times a year. It is the official journal of the Australian Medical Association, published by Wiley on behalf of the Australasian Medical Publishing Company.
The Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal published by the BMJ Group. It covers research and reviews in the fields of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry. Its Editor-in-Chief is Karen L. Furie of the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
Open peer review is the various possible modifications of the traditional scholarly peer review process. The three most common modifications to which the term is applied are:
- Open identities: Authors and reviewers are aware of each other's identity.
- Open reports: Review reports are published alongside the relevant article.
- Open participation: The wider community are able to contribute to the review process.
Hepatitis Monthly is a monthly peer-reviewed open access medical journal published by Brieflands Publishing, formerly known as Kowsar Publishing. Kowsar was included on Beall's List prior to the list's shutdown in 2017. The journal was established in 2002 by Seyed-Moayed Alavian, who is the journal's editor-in-chief.
Acupuncture in Medicine is a bi-monthly peer-reviewed medical journal covering aspects of acupuncture and related techniques. The journal was established in 1982 by the British Medical Acupuncture Society, but was published by the BMJ Group on behalf of the Society from 2008 to 2018 and SAGE Publishing from 2019. The current editor-in-chief is David Coggin-Carr.
Frontiers in Psychology is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal covering all aspects of psychology. It was established in 2010 and is published by Frontiers Media, a controversial company that is included in Jeffrey Beall's list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory publishers". The editor-in-chief is Axel Cleeremans.
Frontiers Media SA is a publisher of peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine. It was founded in 2007 by Kamila and Henry Markram. Frontiers is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, with other offices in London, Madrid, Seattle and Brussels. In 2022, Frontiers employed more than 1,400 people, across 14 countries. All Frontiers journals are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
eLife is a not-for-profit, peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journal for the biomedical and life sciences. It was established at the end of 2012 by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Max Planck Society, and Wellcome Trust, following a workshop held in 2010 at the Janelia Farm Research Campus. Together, these organizations provided the initial funding to support the business and publishing operations. In 2016, the organizations committed US$26 million to continue publication of the journal.
PeerJ is an open access peer-reviewed scientific mega journal covering research in the biological and medical sciences. It is published by a company of the same name that was co-founded by CEO Jason Hoyt and publisher Peter Binfield, with initial financial backing of US$950,000 from O'Reilly Media's O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and later funding from Sage Publishing.
Conflicts of interest (COIs) often arise in academic publishing. Such conflicts may cause wrongdoing and make it more likely. Ethical standards in academic publishing exist to avoid and deal with conflicts of interest, and the field continues to develop new standards. Standards vary between journals and are unevenly applied. According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, "[a]uthors have a responsibility to evaluate the integrity, history, practices and reputation of the journals to which they submit manuscripts".
Journalology is the scholarly study of all aspects of the academic publishing process. The field seeks to improve the quality of scholarly research by implementing evidence-based practices in academic publishing. The term "journalology" was coined by Stephen Lock, the former editor-in-chief of the BMJ. The first Peer Review Congress, held in 1989 in Chicago, Illinois, is considered a pivotal moment in the founding of journalology as a distinct field. The field of journalology has been influential in pushing for study pre-registration in science, particularly in clinical trials. Clinical trial registration is now expected in most countries. Journalology researchers also work to reform the peer review process.
