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Sunday, July 16, 2017

By Stephen Bennett


Academic journals are periodical publications containing articles on book reviews, review articles and original research. Their purpose is for researchers to have a venue where they can impart their knowledge to others, contribute in improving natural knowledge and to perfect every Philosophical Arts and Sciences. Articles are usually refereed or peer reviewed to prevent those containing fraudulent data from being published.

These articles are written by researchers with the funds received from institutions, government agencies and universities, and then donated to journal publications. Institutions, government agencies and universities then buys them from them, even those who provided funds for the research, through subscription usually. This is why the peer reviewed open access journals slowly become more popular because reading them cost virtually nothing.

Researchers in this method receive funding the same way but their works are accessible to anyone that has an internet connection allowing them to read without subscription fee. Barriers like legal and permission ones are removed also such as restrictions in licensing and copyright. Authors though sometimes pay them for their articles to get published.

OA journals have numerous varieties with full being one of them where accessing all their contents can be freely done. Delayed ones are those delaying the access and grants them after a few months and hybrid have some accessible contents and some not. These works can either be solicited meaning they were invited to pass their work, or else unsolicited, meaning they pass theirs even without an invitation.

These, same as traditional publications, are peer reviewed or have people with similar competence the author has evaluate it. They were selected by publishers and review the works anonymously to avoid getting influenced. Doing this method provides credibility, improves performance and maintain standards of quality.

They help in determining if the work will get accepted, rejected or even acceptable but with revisions to be done. A community of experts on a specific field with qualifications and ability to do impartial review reasonably is needed. Being impartial is difficult to accomplish specially in fields that are less narrowly defined and inter disciplinary.

This makes the significance that an idea has, either good or bad, harder to become appreciated widely among their contemporaries. Refereeing though is considered important to academic quality but preventing all invalid research from getting published is impossible. Although it is done anonymously by tradition, some can currently give their comments publicly which anyone can read.

Identifying if a journal is refereed or not could be done with many different ways and the first is to limit search criteria when searching databases. Some search screens offer this option readily and others need you to click the expert option or advance one. But some databases do not have an option like this available to limit search criteria.

You could examine the journal published also physically or online through looking at its masthead in the cover displaying all their information. Another is by examining how it was written and if it includes footnotes and bibliography of references used. And it would help you to find their official website because they would state it there.




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