What is a Journal?

A journal is a critical publication containing articles written by researchers, professors and alternative consultants. Journals concentrate on a selected discipline or field of study. Journals are usually meant for an educational or a technical audience and not general readers, unlike newspapers and magazines although journals also are referred to as periodicals or serials as are newspapers and magazines. Journals contain articles written by consultants belonging to a particular field of study. The conclusions, arrived at by the author, are usually supported by analyses which may embrace case studies within the field. Journals are sometimes, also authored by students as part of their research requirements.

An important requirement for a journal is the conduction of a peer review after it is written. Peer reviewed articles are evaluated and critiqued by researchers and consultants within the same field. A peer review features a board of reviewers who are specialists in their field. These specialists assess the standard of submitted articles. Following the scrutiny, the articles could either be admitted for publication or revised by the author or even rejected.

Such a peer review ensures that an article, within a journal, maintains a high standard of quality, accuracy, and academic integrity. Authors like to increase the credibility of their journals by having a peer review done which helps them tap into a wealth of established and verified knowledge. An article that is peer reviewed articles is also called scholarly or refereed.

Authors are required to site sources in their articles. Besides being a legal requirement, citing lends credibility to the work and demonstrates the author’s familiarity with the issues and trends in the field of study.

Journal databases are often the best places to look for articles on previous analysis on a given field of study as scientific journals are specific, well cited and peer reviewed. Even for someone without a background in a particular field of study, scientific journals are a valuable source of information as one need not understand an entire article to be able to derive information from it.

There are online directories that provide a listing of journals. Authors of journals are eager to have their journals listed on the reputed directories. The journals listed in such directories are carefully evaluated to ensure that they meet the quality standards set by the directory. One such directory is JournalsDirectory.in. Such directories are extremely useful for the scientific community as they provide a comprehensive listing of journals and help users in picking the ones which are able to best meet their requirements.