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."
Scientific literature comprises scholarly publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences. Within an academic field, scientific literature is often referred to as "the literature". Academic publishing is the process of contributing the results of one's research into the literature, which often requires a peer-review process.
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.
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.
American Psychologist is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Psychological Association. The journal publishes articles of broad interest to psychologists, including empirical reports and scholarly reviews covering science, practice, education, and policy, and occasionally publishes special issues on relevant topics in the field of psychology. The editor-in-chief is Harris Cooper.
Studia Islamica is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering Islamic studies focusing on the history, religion, law, literature, and language of the Muslim world, primarily of the Southwest Asian and Mediterranean regions. The editor-in-chief is Houari Touati. Articles are published in English or French.
Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering religious studies, focusing on the academic study of new religious movements. It was established in 1997 by Seven Bridges Press, initially published semi-annually, changing to tri-annually in 2003, and then quarterly in 2005. In 2002, it became published by the University of California Press.
The Journal of Vietnamese Studies is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering social science and humanities research about Vietnamese history, politics, culture and, society. It was established in 2006, and is published by University of California Press on behalf of the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Since September 2022, the editors-in-chief are Martha Lincoln, Van Nguyen-Marshall, and Peter Zinoman. The journal publishes original articles, book reviews, communications with the editor, and occasionally also translations of Vietnamese language documents and texts.
The Medical Journal of Australia 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 Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality was a peer reviewed academic journal that published articles, dissertations, theses, posters, and other academic materials about all aspects of human sexuality. It was published by David S. Hall for the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, beginning in 1998 until 2014, with 17 volumes in total. The founder and original editor-in-chief of the journal was David S. Hall, who later was succeeded as editor by Peter B. Anderson Walden University).
Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research is a quarterly, peer-reviewed, scientific journal, published by Wiley-Blackwell. It was originally established in 1963, then reestablished in 1994 by John Wiley & Sons. The editor in chief is Dr. Wilfried Westheide. According to Journal Citation Reports, the 2016 impact factor for this journal is 2.444.
Mental Health, Religion and Culture is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed academic journal published by Routledge. It publishes original articles that deal with mental health in relation to religion and spirituality. The journal was established in 1998. The journal is abstracted and indexed by Scopus, Caredata, CINAHL, CommunityWISE, Family Studies Database, PsycINFO, Theology Digest, Sociological Abstracts, Social Care Institute for Excellence, and Religious and Theological Abstracts.
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the fields of Information Science and Library Science. The journal's Editor is Anne Goulding. It has been in publication since 1969 and is currently published by SAGE Publications.
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.
Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region is a semi-annual peer-reviewed academic journal covering the history of Atlantic Canada. The current editors-in-chief are Erin Morton and Peter Twohig. It is published by the Department of History at the University of New Brunswick, with articles in either English or French. The name Acadiensis originated with an earlier periodical with the same name, a general interest quarterly magazine for the Maritime provinces, with an emphasis on local history. It was published in Saint John, New Brunswick by David Russell Jack from 1901 to 1908 but failed due to insufficient financial support.
Studia Islamika is a triannual peer-reviewed open access academic journal covering Islamic studies, especially concerning Indonesia and Southeast Asia in general. It was established in 1994 and is published by the Center for the Study of Islam and Society. The editor-in-chief is Azyumardi Azra. Articles are published in English or Arabic.
Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue canadienne des slavistes is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering Central and Eastern European studies. It is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Slavists and published on its behalf by Taylor & Francis. The editor-in-chief is James Krapfl. Articles are in English or French.
The Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy (JHAP) is a peer-reviewed platinum standard open access academic journal. It publishes research articles on the history of analytic philosophy. It is published by McMaster University Library Press. The editor-in-chief is Marcus Rossberg. JHAP published its first volume in 2011. The journal is indexed by The Philosophers' Index, PhilPapers, and Scopus.
The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship is a peer-reviewed open access academic journal covering comics studies. The journal also publishes scholarly articles in comics form.
