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.
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. Searches in Scopus also incorporate searches of patent database Lexis-Nexis, albeit with a limited functionality.
The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysis, a field pioneered by Garfield.
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.
Bibliometrics is the use of statistical methods to analyse books, articles and other publications, especially in scientific contents. Bibliometric methods are frequently used in the field of library and information science. Bibliometrics is closely associated with scientometrics, the analysis of scientific metrics and indicators, to the point that both fields largely overlap.
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.
The Archives of Sexual Behavior is a peer-reviewed academic journal in sexology. It is the official publication of the International Academy of Sex Research.
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is an annual publication by Clarivate. It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science Core Collection. It provides information about academic journals in the natural and social sciences, including impact factors. The JCR was originally published as a part of the Science Citation Index. Currently, the JCR, as a distinct service, is based on citations compiled from the Science Citation Index Expanded and the Social Sciences Citation Index. As of the 2023 edition, journals from the Arts and Humanities Citation Index and the Emerging Sources Citation Index will also be included.
The Web of Science is a paid-access platform that provides access to multiple databases that provide reference and citation data from academic journals, conference proceedings, and other documents in various academic disciplines. It was originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information. It is currently owned by Clarivate.
The Postgraduate Medical Journal is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal that was established in 1925 by the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, of which it is the official journal. It is currently published on behalf of the Fellowship by the BMJ Group.
MDPI is a publisher of open access scientific journals. Founded by Shu-Kun Lin as a chemical sample archive, it now publishes over 390 peer-reviewed, open access journals. MDPI is among the largest publishers in the world in terms of journal article output, and is the largest publisher of open access articles.
The Accounting Review is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Accounting Association (AAA) that covers accounting with a scope encompassing any accounting-related subject and any research methodology. The Accounting Review is one of the oldest accounting journals, and recent studies considered it to be one of the leading academic journals in accounting.
The Journal of Contemporary History is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering the study of history in all parts of the world since 1930. It was established in 1966 by Walter Laqueur and George L. Mosse. Originally published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson it was purchased by SAGE Publications in 1972. The editors-in-chief are Richard J. Evans and Mary C. Neuburger.
Mechanisms of Development is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of developmental biology. It is the official journal of the International Society of Developmental Biologists and is published by Elsevier. The journal was established in 1972 as Cell Differentiation and was renamed Cell Differentiation and Development in 1988. It acquired its current name in December 1990. The editor-in-chief is D. Wilkinson. A separate section of the journal, Gene Expression Patterns, covers research on cloning and gene expression. In 2020 the journal became Cells & Development with the subtitle: 'Cell and Developmental Biology and their Quantitative Approaches'.
Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches is a quarterly peer-reviewed medical journal published by Routledge covering research on the psychological treatments of psychosis and the psycho-social causes of psychosis. It is an official journal of the International Society for the Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis and was established in 2009. The editor-in-chief is John Read. The journal contains original research, systematic reviews, commentaries on contentious articles, short reports, first-persons accounts, a book review section, and a correspondence column. The journal publishes papers on both quantitative research and qualitative research, as well as papers focusing on conceptual and ethical issues.
Gender & Society is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers research in the field of gender studies. The editor-in-chief is Jo Reger. It was established in 1987 and is currently published by SAGE Publications in association with Sociologists for Women in Society.
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, and has since expanded to other academic fields. 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.
OpenPsych is an online collection of three open access journals covering behavioral genetics, psychology, and quantitative research in sociology. Many articles on OpenPsych promote scientific racism, and the site has been described as a "pseudoscience factory-farm". The journals were started in 2014 by Emil Kirkegaard, an activist with ties to the far-right, and Davide Piffer, an Italian parapsychologist, who had difficulty publishing their research in mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journals. The website describes them as open peer reviewed journals, but the qualifications and neutrality of the reviewers have been disputed.
