Academic journal
They nearly universally require peer review for research articles or other scrutiny from contemporaries competent and established in their respective fields.
The purpose of an academic journal, according to Henry Oldenburg (the first editor of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society), 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.
[4] The idea of a published journal with the purpose of "[letting] people know what is happening in the Republic of Letters" was first conceived by François Eudes de Mézeray in 1663.
It was aimed at people of letters, and had four main objectives:[5] Soon after, the Royal Society established Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in March 1665, and the Académie des Sciences established the Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences in 1666, which focused on scientific communications.
[10] Upon receipt of a submitted article, editors at the journal determine whether to reject the submission outright or begin the process of peer review.
The number of these peer reviewers (or "referees") varies according to each journal's editorial practice – typically, no fewer than two, though sometimes three or more, experts in the subject matter of the article produce reports upon the content, style, and other factors, which inform the editors' publication decisions.
Such reviews often cover the research from the preceding year, some for longer or shorter terms; some are devoted to specific topics, some to general surveys.
In each academic discipline, some journals receive a high number of submissions and opt to restrict how many they publish, keeping the acceptance rate low.
Recent moves have been made by the European Science Foundation (ESF) to change the situation, resulting in the publication of preliminary lists for the ranking of academic journals in the humanities.
[18] In some disciplines such as knowledge management/intellectual capital, the lack of a well-established journal ranking system is perceived by academics as "a major obstacle on the way to tenure, promotion and achievement recognition".
[19] Conversely, a significant number of scientists and organizations consider the pursuit of impact factor calculations as inimical to the goals of science, and have signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment to limit its use.
On the other hand, some journals are produced by commercial publishers who do make a profit by charging subscriptions to individuals and libraries.
[27] 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.
[32] Some academic journals use the registered report format, which aims to counteract issues such as data dredging and hypothesizing after the results are known.
[33] 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.
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.
[38] 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.
