Journal articles are the primary outlet for academics to publish their research.
The universal format of journal articles makes them easy for other researchers to discover, evaluate and reference. The peer-review process set by certain publishers contributes to academic journals' reputation and credibility.
As you progress in your academic journey, you may seek answers to the following questions:
What makes academic journal articles useful?
Academic journal articles follow a similar format including the following sections:
- Title
- Authors (including title and contact information)
- Highlights
- Abstract
- Keywords
- The article's body
- Acknowledgements
- References
The journal website usually adds useful functionalities around the article such as referencing, citation, bibliometrics and related articles.
This additional information to the article's core text helps you evaluate if the article is suitable for your research and explore related content.
The keywords and terminology used in the abstract really matter when searching for articles. The more abstracts you read, the more you enrich your subject's vocabulary and the more effective your search will be.
In Library Search, articles' abstracts are displayed in the record's detailed view under the Description field.
What is the peer-review process?
Most journals require the articles to be reviewed before publishing. This process ensures the quality of the content:
- The authors submit their article to a journal.
- The journal asks academics (peers), who are specialists in the field, to review the article.
- The peers, write an anonymous review and may suggest changes.
- The article is rejected or approved by the journal based on the final review outcomes.
Identifying peer-reviewed articles
In Library Search, peer-reviewed articles are clearly marked as such in the article description.
In the articles itself, the header includes the key publishing events and dates such as Revised and Accepted. See an example below:
Received 15 May 2018, Revised 24 July 2018, Accepted 10 August 2018, Available online 17 August 2018, Version of Record 22 August 2018.
Are academic journal articles free to read?
All journals make an abstract of the articles available to the public. However, high-profile journals often require a fee to read the article's full text. Many journals contain open articles which are freely available for you to read.
BCU Library subscribes to many journals you can access through Library Search or with your BCU ID.
What is the scale and frequency of publications?
In May 2023, Ulrich’s Web shows records for over 48,000 active, scholarly peer-reviewed journals in all languages.
The Scopus database lists in excess of 25,000 journal titles while Web of Science database lists the records of 24,974 journals.
All journals have a volume number for each year. Each volume contains issues that reflect the frequency of publication: often monthly or four or six times a year with a few still published weekly.
BCU Library search will find many more journal titles but these include all the name changes, journals bought as one-off purchases, annual reports, open-access titles, law reports and titles still held in print.
What are the trends in journal publishing?
"The central role of the journal article in scholarly communication is stronger than ever" (STM, 2018: 11).
In Newton’s time (1643:1727) "the emergence of the journal article conflicted with the model that knowledge was best communicated by a book written as the culmination of a life’s work" (Drott, 1995: 304).
Since then, the number of articles published each year and the number of journals have both grown steadily for over two centuries, a growth which accelerated to between 5 and 6.5% for articles (ISTM, 2021: 17) and over 5% for journals until the mid-2010s. This is a result of the growth in research and development expenditure and the rising number of researchers (ISTM, 2018: 25-26). However, the growth rate in the number of new journals has recently begun to decline (ISTM, 2021).
The academic publishing industry comprises around 10,000 different publishers who check and process three million articles every year from eight million authors across the globe (ISTM, 2023). These publishers have created a digital archive of over 40 million articles since the early 1800s.
There are six key trends identified by the ISTM in their annual Trends publication impacting the industry in the next 3-5 years. These include:
- The rise of open research where research outputs are required to be shared and published early in the process. There is a guide to open access resources.
- The need to ensure research and integrity by fostering transparency and good publishing ethics, fighting paper mills and banning bad practice. There is guidance on predatory publishing and how to identify predatory journals.