Talk:Scientific journal

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Contents

[edit] Nature

Nature is more of a "general science" journal than a biology journal. A number of astronomical papers have been published there. -- April

[edit] template:JSTOR

Use template:JSTOR for archives of scientific journals. It takes the parameters, "no" and "name". e.g. for Biometrika:

{{JSTOR|no=|name=Biometrika}}

Biometrika archived at JSTOR

Dunc|☺ 09:47, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)</nowiki>

[edit] Astrophysical Journal

While I can see the distinction being made, saying that the Astrophysical Journal will take anything so long as it's not "hopelessly and fundamentally flawed" seems a bit of a slur. Not being an astronomer, I can't be entirely sure that it's not some bottom-feeding journal that really does fit this criterion, but either way it does seem harsh. And it gives the reader the impression that all journals other than Nature and Science will take practically anything. Oddly enough, since Nature and Science aim to be at the cutting-edge, they occasionally take onboard something that ultimately turns out to be "hopelessly and fundamentally flawed" (e.g. cold fusion). Anyway, unless anyone objects, can I alter the text around this subject? --Plumbago 09:30, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad this was changed (long before I joined), for ApJ is not an example of a journal that will take anything so long as it's not "hopelessly and fundamentally flawed." It's the most prestigious journal in its field and will indeed take all articles from first-rate scientists at the research frontier of astrophysics, but that's not quite the same thing. There are plenty of other nominees for the "will take anything" category, but it would be invidious to mention only a few. Perhaps the comment was made because of its immense size,. but thats true of the top journals in some other fields. DGG 18:59, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Journal covers

I've reverted 'cos the new image includes a journal (Phil. Trans.) that, while highly esteemed, isn't mentioned in the article. Phys. Rev. is mentioned in its place. Also, aesthetically, the previous version looked better (well, to me at any rate!). Fatter images (like that added) squash the text horizontally a bit much.

On an unrelated note, what's with the alterations to the journal ordering (Nature, Science, PNAS) that happens from time to time? Is an anonymous editor working for PNAS???

Cheers, --Plumbago 17:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

What about the new image? The loading time is reduced significantly and all three journal covers nicely fit into the first section. The other three images are very large (not everyone has a dsl connection, there is quite a difference...) The fact that PNAS appeared in the second section and could not be seen at the first glance was maybe the reason the anonymous editor tried to alter the ordering. Nobbie 13:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I thought the new image was fine, but it included a journal not referenced in the article. Also, as I noted above, it's shape somewhat distorted the article, but that's a personal observation. Another reason for keeping the single images is that periodically people update them with more recent journal covers. That'd would make altering the new image somewhat complicated. You're definitely right about the download time though - presumably smaller original images would be better? As for the PNAS thing, the anonymous changes affected the journal ordering throughout the article - it wasn't just to bump it up the page so it could be seen. Cheers, --Plumbago 15:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Like the new image! Much better. Still has the problem re: updating, but that's not a huge deal. Nice work. Cheers, --Plumbago 16:45, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Academic vs. scientific

I am confused with the difference between this article (scientific journal) and the academic journal article. Academic journal refers to scientific journals as a subfield (in relation to the natural sciences, see scientific journal), wich is confirmed by that article: or a broader class of publications, which include scientific journals, see Academic journal. Therefore what leaps to mind is that scientific journals are for natural sciences only, and academic journal is for social sciences. If this is not a correct conclusion that those articles need to be redefined. Second I note that we have a List of scientific journals which lists journals both from natural and social sciences, and that the List of academic journals is a red link. Curiouser and curiouser, but not necessarily more logical. Finally, the difference between a scientific journal and a science magazine should probably be also explain in the lead, as this is yet another dimension of possible confusion.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:54, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I will work on this. The distinction is that the "hard" social sciences work like the sciences, with a reliance on journal articles and a citation network. In the humanities, it's altogether different, of course. Iask, though, whether it is appropriate to have an article on social science journals, or a refer to a discussion of them on the science journals page.

[edit] Volumes, issues and pages

Scientific journals seem to have their own rules for sorting editions of their magazines. For example, ACM SIGGRAPH's Computer Graphics [1] sorts by volumes (currently volume 39), in which there are issues (usually four per volume, always beginning with issue 1 when a new volume starts). Science Magazine on the other side has currently 312 volumes, and the issue numbers are consecutively adding up. Pages are also weirdly enumerated, with starting page number in one issue taking off where the previous issue left (for example Science mag's issue 5771 starting with page 155.

So to come up with my question: Why are scientific journals split in volumes and issues? --Abdull 14:59, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Volumes are often annual or semi-annual, and are usually composed of several issues. Issues are the means by which papers are regularly published, volumes are a convenient way of grouping issues, usually into a single tome per year (or a few at most). Issues, however, are usually not relevant when it comes to citing work. While some journals still use the issue number, most simply refer to the volume and the page number (since the latter are continuous between issues in the same volume). As for how we got here, I think this structuring is almost certainly a historical artifact of the paper publishing industry. It wants regular output, hence frequent issues (as an aside, scientists want regular output too, but their concerns are usually secondary to those of publishers). I suspect these were then bundled into annual volumes for simple convenience, although it may be so that one could tell a journal's age from its volume number. However, if a historian of science could help us here ... --Plumbago 15:25, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
It's tradition from print. The issue is what gets mailed, the volume is what gets bound. This is a useful distinction in print, for the two have to handled differently in a library--the uunbound issues go in somewhere from which they won't disappear, the bound volumes go the the stacks. In our e-journal period, they serveas convenient chunks--people usually want to look at a reasonable sized batch of articles at a time. But many journals now publish the individual articles on line as they come out. This should all be discussed, but it belongs with academic journal because its general. DGG 08:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No history

We need a section on the history of the journals, mentioning Philosophical Transactions, one of the first.

That's a very good point. Karol 09:34, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
we certainly do, but its an immense topic, and will take some planning. In the meantime we do have pages on the individual journals, most ofwhich are stubbs.

BTW, what's thecriterion for which ones get an article--historicaly important ones of course, but there are 6,000 current major ones --major enough for web of Knowledge. Now that all journals have websites, I ask how much is necessary. There's usually not much to add to the publisher's description. If we put them in, we have to keep them up to date. DGG 08:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] images

Do we have permission for the images shown? If we do, is it the policy to say so? if we don;t we could probably get, but I am not sure about GFDL. I am open to the position that thumbnails are fair use, .DGG 08:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] role in education

Expanded previous addition of Journal clubs to include role in scientific education more generally, and slight cleanupDGG 19:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cost and Copyright

Added mentions of free-access journals (PLoS, JHEP) and gave example of "friendly" copyright transfer policies. 72.57.79.40 01:31, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

we seem to beworking towards the same purpose, which is good. (pls e-mail) DGG 02:01, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you think it makes sense to mention the Proceedings of Science here? It's an electronic "journal" for conference proceedings, not regular articles, but authors retain copyright to their contributions and the content is published under a Creative Commons licence. This is the first scientific publication I've seen that uses CC. HEL 16:15, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Why askif you should do it, after you put it in a few hours previously? I happened to see your qy before I saw the new article. -- see talk there for some necessary changes. DGG 03:50, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't understand.... I meant, "does it make sense to mention PoS in the Cost and/or Copyright sections of the Scientific journals article?" (since it is a publishing forum for conference proceedings, not primary journal articles). Thanks for the cleanups in the PoS article, BTW. HEL 04:46, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] JHEP

why is there a lock symbol on JHEP? It's a journal worth its own article, but this is an external link not marked as such; how does one get it removed, so it can be replaced by a appropriate reference and link. Or does the symbol have some other meaning?DGG 04:53, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe the lock is there just because it's an https (encrypted) link. I'm new at this and haven't figured out how to make new pages yet. 72.57.79.40 13:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
I made JHEP its own Wikipedia entry and changed the link. (Had to create an account first.) HEL 04:17, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] change in paragraph about Nature Science et al.

On what basis was the change made. Nature and Science do look for interest beyond their own specialty, and say so. PRL does not. ?? DGG (talk) 13:01, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] first paragraph

The first paragraph of the current version states: "they [= scientific journals] generally must supply enough details of an experiment that an independent researcher could repeat the experiment to verify the results". This articulates an extremely narrow and biassed view of what constitutes 'science'. It is not a necessary condition of science that a study is based on an "experiment" and that the experiment can be "repeated". This kind of definition simply strikes out such scientific fields as evolutionary biology from the definition of science - not to even mention many other well-established disciplines such as archaeology, linguistics, etc. Even many current theories in cosmology have not been tested and cannot be tested through an "experiment", but this does not mean that they are not science. Please rephrase this in an unbiassed manner. --213.139.161.102 (talk) 23:01, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I have made some changes to reflect this and also to point out that if calculations are being described, enough information must be provided for others to repeat the calculation. I also edited the paragraph below that. The use of single articles in graduate education is common in the USA, but it less common in others countries where there is often more emphasis on getting students to review a whole area. --Bduke (talk) 23:26, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
I certainly agree with these more inclusive changes. DGG (talk) 04:34, 15 December 2007 (UTC)