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You've seen that books, newspapers, and magazines are different types of sources that serve different purposes. Journals are yet another type of source. Their main purpose is to provide articles describing new information, discoveries, insights, applications, or inventions that resulted from research.
You may be familiar with a different use of the word 'journal' as a place to record your thoughts, ideas, and notes – kind of like writing in a diary. Some people refer to this activity as 'journaling' or 'keeping a journal.' But that's NOT the type of journal we're talking about on this page. Instead, we are talking about journals as a particular type of published information source.
So, we are NOT talking about THIS kind of journal:
Rather, we are talking about journals as a type of source that contains articles describing research projects. Below you see a stack of issues from different journals.
The first journals were launched in the 1660s and they were developed to meet the growing needs that researchers (and scientists in particular) had at that time – and which they still have today:
Research results need to be shared so others can learn from them and build upon them.
Research results need to be shared as quickly as possible so that researchers don't duplicate studies or embark on studies that are based on obsolete information.
Journals were created to resolve these needs! Prior to the development of journals, books were the most common type of information source, but they're not ideal for quickly and continually sharing research results. Research results can usually be written up in just a few pages, while most books are long and comprehensive and take a while to write. If researchers had to wait to publish their results only after they had enough material to fill a book, this would slow down communication and impede progress.
Journal issues and volumes
Journal issues and volumes
It turns out that a great way to share research results both quickly and continually is to produce a publication that comes out in installments – called issues – with each issue containing several individual, short articles. We call this type of publication a periodical or serial since it comes out periodically or serially – either daily, monthly, quarterly, or annually. Journals are a type of periodical publication, as are newspapers and magazines.
Journal issues typically have anywhere from three to twenty articles per issue, and a whole year of issues is called a volume. But let's slow down and examine journal issues and volumes in more detail.
Suppose that in the year 2021, you started a brand new journal called Journal of Brand New Research and you published one issue a month. In January you'd put out issue 1, in February issue 2, and so on until you got to issue 12 for December. That entire year of issues would then make up volume 1 of the journal. The next year (2022) you'd put out another twelve monthly issues, numbered from 1 to 12, and those issues would comprise volume 2. In 2023 you'd put out another 12 issues, and those would make up volume 3, and so on.
Below you see Volume 3, Issue 12, of Journal of Brand New Research. Because this journal comes out once a month, you know that issue 12 is the December issue.
Volume and issue numbers are important to know about because they show up in citations. You'll learn more about citing and citations in Lesson 7, but for now just be aware that the volume and issue number appear towards the end of the citation, just before the page numbers. Here's an example citation from our imaginary journal:
Below you see a stack of issues from an actual journal called Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities. This engineering journal puts out one issue every two months (bimonthly) for a total of six issues a year. The stack of journal issues shown below spans those that were published from Volume 21, Issue 1 to Volume 27, Issue 2. Take a look! Starting from the bottom you see issues 1-6 from 2007 which comprise volume 21. Then you see issues 1-6 from 2008 which comprise volume 22, and so on. Also notice that this journal calls it's issues numbers instead of issues. That's fairly common.
More about journals!
More about journals!
The very first journal ever published had a really long and pretentious title – check it out:
Philosophical transactions, giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.
While the earliest journals reported on scientific and philosophical matters, over time journals were created to disseminate research findings in all sorts of disciplines other than just the sciences – for example, today there are journals devoted to art, history, literary studies, psychology, etc.
Also, journal titles are much shorter now. Typical examples include:
American Literary History
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Journal of Finance
Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Nature
Most journals provide research articles covering a particular area of research – as you can see from the different examples of journals shown above, to the left, and below.
Also, notice that some journals have the word "journal" in the title, but many don't.
FYI - Currently, there are approximately 30,000 journals in publication worldwide, and many more that used to exist but are no longer published.
QUESTION 1. Journals, magazines, and newspapers are similar in the following ways: (Pick the TWO correct answers below.)
A. All three are released in issues.
B. All three are printed on glossy paper.
C. All three are filled with games and puzzles.
D. All three are flammable in their paper (or print) form.
(Answer at bottom of page.)What's inside a journal?
What's inside a journal?
Well, the same as what's inside a newspaper or magazine: articles. Above you saw a bunch of different images of front covers of journal issues. If you had a paper copy of any of those issues in your hands right now, you could thumb through and look at all the different articles printed inside, just like you could thumb through a paper newspaper issue. But, journal articles look quite different from newspaper articles, as you can see from the example shown below.
Take a look at the first page of this journal article published in the Journal of Advertising entitled: "Yo, DJ, That's My Brand: An Examination of Consumer Response to Brand Placements in Hip-Hop Music." The authors of this article conducted a study on how consumers respond to products they see in hip-hop music videos.
This example is pretty typical of how all journal articles look, no matter what subject matter they are about. The writing is dense and matter-of-fact, and you might see tables and diagrams within the text.
Note that journal articles are sometimes referred to as papers or studies, so people will use the word article, paper, and study interchangeably. You may also hear people refer to journal articles collectively as the journal literature. The word 'literature' in this sense doesn't mean great literary works of fiction like Moby Dick, Great Expectations, or Pride and Prejudice, rather it means the body of research output published in journals.
One more thing to note about journals is that some of them contain content other than just articles. Examples of other types of content a journal might offer include:
Short papers
Reports
Protocols
Tutorials
Perspectives
Viewpoints, Opinion, or Commentary
Editorials
Letters to the editor
Book reviews
Obituaries
Ok. So, what's the PURPOSE of a journal article?
Ok. So, what's the PURPOSE of a journal article?
The purpose of a journal article is to describe research that the author(s) conducted and to share the findings of that research with others. That's why journal articles exist. Note that journal articles are not published for consumption by the general public like most other sources are. Rather, the audience is other experts.
Something else you might note is how narrowly focused journal articles are, especially compared to books. Most journal articles report on a single, detailed, research project that is described in about ten to twenty pages or so, on average.
FYI - The total number of journal articles in existence is around 65 million, with around 2.5 million more published each year.
QUESTION 2. Journals, and the articles they contain, have the most restricted audience of any source discussed in this lesson; they are pretty much only directed at other experts.
true
false
QUESTION 3. How do you think expert researchers use journal articles? Give it your best shot and see if you can pick the TWO best answers below.
A. They scan recently published journal articles to keep up with the latest information and discoveries in their field.
B. They consult journal articles to find out what research projects have already been conducted and to determine which research projects still need doing.
C. They read journal articles in coffee shops hoping that someone will ask what they are reading so they can explain the content of the article in great detail.
(Answer at bottom of page.)QUESTION 4. Remember how books and journal articles serve different information needs? Let's take a look at that in action. Suppose you work for the Arizona Department of Water Resources and you've just been put on a team that's working on watershed management issues. This is a new area for you that you are not very familiar with, so you need to get up-to-speed. For that particular information need, which source is more likely to be helpful to you:
A. A book? For example: Brooks, K.N. and Magner, J.A., 2012. Hydrology and the Management of Watersheds. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 344 pages.
B. Or, a journal article? For example: Hawkins, G.A. and Vivoni, E.R., 2015. A climate change projection for summer hydrologic conditions in a semiarid watershed of northern Arizona. Journal of Arid Environments, 118, pp.9-20.
(Answer at bottom of page.)Comparing journals to newspapers
Comparing journals to newspapers
To understand journals better, it might help to compare them to newspapers, which you are probably more familiar with. So, take a look below to see how these two sources are similar and how they are different.
A newspaper is a publication containing articles about newsworthy events that have taken place.
Newspaper articles are written by reporters/journalists.
Most newspapers are published in daily issues (also called editions).
Most newspapers are published in two formats - in paper (like you see in the image above), and online so that articles are available on the internet.
A journal is a publication containing articles about research projects that have taken place.
Journal articles are written by researchers.
Most journals are published in weekly or monthly issues.
Most journals are published in two formats - in paper (like you see in the image above), and online so that articles are available on the internet.
QUESTION 5. Students have been overheard in NAU's Cline Library saying "I need to find journals and articles for my research paper." What's wrong with this question?
A. Those students don't seem to realize that journals and articles are more likely to be found at Flagstaff Public Library, not at NAU's Cline Library.
B. Those students seem to think that journals and articles are two distinct sources, when actually articles are found within journals just like chapters are found within books.
C. Those students shouldn't even be in the library since it is temporarily closed for remodeling – an undertaking that will include painting the library's walls a color that is not peach.
D. Those students don't realize that journals and articles are probably not the best places to find information for their research papers.
(Answer at bottom of page.)Journal formats: print and electronic
Journal formats: print and electronic
You've seen lots of covers of print journal issues in this lesson and you may have noticed that they look somewhat like a print magazines – but there are differences that are pretty easy to spot:
Journal issues tend to have a more serious-looking and less colorful front cover.
Journals often have more scholarly sounding names, and the name may contain the word "journal."
The articles within a journal are dense and technical and often include diagrams and tables.
Journals rarely contain any advertisements.
In the past, libraries would receive print journal issues in the mail, and at the end of the calendar year, once all the issues for that year had been received, they'd be bound together in a volume and shelved next to the volume from the previous year.
You will still see shelves in the library with lots of journal issues bound together in hardcover volumes, usually in beautiful colors, as you can see in the photo above. This is a legacy from the time before journals had an online version, and the paper version was the only option for libraries to collect.
Nowadays journals are published online in addition to in print. Most libraries opt to subscribe to the online version of the journal which is sometimes called an e-journal. As you can imagine, subscribing to the electronic version of a journal – rather than the print version – saves a lot of shelf space!
Since e-journals have largely replaced print journals it's common for people to drop the 'e' and simply refer to e-journals as journals.
Because journals are now available in electronic format and hosted online, its common to find individual journal articles within your Google results. Remember that Google search on 'coral reef conservation' that turned up a newspaper article and a magazine article? Well, it also turned up a journal article, as you can see to the right.
How would you know that last result is a journal article? It takes practice and experience to pick up on source clues within your Google results. For this particular result, the clues indicating it’s a journal article are as follows:
The result is coming from an internet address that has 'journal.plos.org' in it. PLOS is a well-known journal publisher (PLOS stands for Public Library of Science).
The result shows a DOI which is a type of persistent link associated with journal articles.
The article has been 'Cited by 28' which is a metric associated with journal articles.
QUESTION 6. Why make so much fuss pointing out that newspapers, magazines, and journals are published in paper form but you can also discover their digital counterpart online?
A. Because then you can read them in both formats, compare them, and make sure there are no mistakes or discrepancies.
B. Because if they are already published in two formats, even more formats are sure to come soon - such as an olfactory format.
C. Because when you understand how sources differ in their tangible, paper form, it might make it easier to identify them and distinguish them from each other when you encounter them in their online form.
D. There's no real need to make a fuss, just go along with it because the author of this tutorial seems really uptight about it.
(Answer at bottom of page.)Journal article PDFs
Journal article PDFs
E-journals contain articles in a format known as a PDF. A PDF digitally captures exactly what the journal article would look like if you were thumbing through a print issue of a journal. PDFs can either be viewed online or downloaded and printed out.
Below you see an article as it appears within a print journal issue, along with the same article downloaded as a PDF from the journal's website, then printed out and stapled together. Notice that the layout and text are identical.
Make sure you understand the connection between articles and the journals they're published in.
Make sure you understand the connection between articles and the journals they're published in.
Think about this: if someone tore out a chapter from a book and gave you the chapter, or if they snipped out an article from a print newspaper – it would be hard for you to know what book or newspaper that content belonged to. You wouldn't have the book's cover, nor would you have the front page of the newspaper.
It's kind of the same with journal article PDFs that you download from the internet; it's like you are viewing them after they have been torn out of their journal issue, which means you can't see the name of the journal on the issue's cover. So, when you encounter a journal article PDF, how do you know what journal the article belongs to?
Look on the first page of the article; the name of the journal is usually printed at the very top or bottom of the page. Sometimes the journal name is in small letters and it might be abbreviated. In the example to the right you can see that this article is published in the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History .
You might notice that next to the title of the journal you can usually find the volume number, issue number, and page numbers for the article. So, when you need to cite an article, you can usually find all the elements you need on the first page of the PDF – and this is true for most PDFs. Good to know – but don't worry too much about it now. You'll learn more about citing in Lesson 7.
QUESTION 7. Take a look at this article: https://libproxy.nau.edu/login?&url=https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10530-017-1395-3. What journal was it published in?
A. CrossMark
B. Biol. Invasions (which is an abbreviation for Biological Invasions)
C. Original Paper
D. The importance of disturbance by fire and other abiotic and biotic factors in driving cheatgrass invasion varies based on invasion stage
(Answer at bottom of page.)Locating a specific journal article
Locating a specific journal article
Suppose you wanted to track down this article:
Usman, B., Muslem, A., & Basyah, N. A. (2018). The effectiveness of using the jigsaw model to improve students’ economics teaching-learning achievement. The New Educational Review, 51, 30-40.
Just use the same techniques you've already learned for finding newspaper and magazine articles. You can first try conducting a Google search on the title of the article to see if you can find it somewhere on the internet for free. But journal articles tend to be harder to find for free compared to newspaper and magazine articles. So, if you can't find it, or if you encounter a paywall (a notice asking you to pay to read the article) then go to Cline Library's website to look for the article. Just enter the title of the article into the discovery tool, Quick Search.
Can't find a specific journal article using Quick Search? Then just request it through Cline Library's Document Delivery Service. You'll learn more about this service on the last page of Lesson 6: Get the sources you've chosen.
Browsing for journal articles on a topic
Browsing for journal articles on a topic
To browse for journal articles on a topic, you can use Cline Library's discovery tool, Quick Search, found on Cline Library's home page. Enter your topic, run your search, then look to the left of your results for options to View Only Peer-reviewed Journals.
You can also browse for journal articles on a topic using databases like Google Scholar. And there are lots more databases for finding journal articles. To see what databases are available, click the Find databases link under the Quick Search search box.
Distinguishing journal articles from other sources
Distinguishing journal articles from other sources
Earlier in this lesson you saw examples of what print journal issues look like – and you now know those journal issues contain journal articles. But, it's pretty unlikely you'll encounter journals articles in their print form – rather, you'll probably only encounter them in their online format, or as PDF files you can download. So, how will you know when you are looking at a journal article? Here are some clues you can gather:
Note whether the article title sounds like a research project.
Look for dense, technical writing.
See if you can find the journal name, volume number, issue number, page numbers, and/or a DOI number somewhere on the first page of the PDF.
Page through the article and see if the text that is organized into sections that include an introduction, methods, results, and discussion. (Not all journal articles are organized this way, but many are.)
Let's move on to CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS!
Let's move on to CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS!
Note that in some disciplines – like computer science and engineering – researchers tend to publish papers about their research findings in conference proceedings rather than journals.
Conference proceedings are kind of like journals but a bit different. So what are they? Well, in many disciplines, scholars, experts, and professionals attend local, national, or international meetings to share their research and network with others. In some cases, the research that is presented at these meetings is written up, peer-reviewed, and published.
The written-up versions of presentations given at conferences are known as conference papers and they are bound together in a volume called a conference proceedings.
So, while journal issues are typically published once a month, bimonthly, or quarterly, conference papers usually just come out once a year (since most conferences are only held once a year). And, while journals contain articles, conference proceedings contain papers – but conference papers are often a lot like journal articles in their content.
Below are some images of front covers of conference proceedings just to give you and idea how they look, and to dazzle your eyes with a splash of color.
Conference proceeding formats: print and electronic
Conference proceeding formats: print and electronic
The print version of a proceeding usually looks a lot like a book. Print proceedings may be available for sale through booksellers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble or may be available for sale on the website of the organization that sponsored the meeting. College and university libraries also collect some print proceedings.
The electronic – or online – version of a conference proceeding is usually presented on the website of the society that organized the conference. The online version will have options to navigate to various papers within that proceeding. And, in addition to the proceeding itself, abstracts, posters, and even videos of talks may also be available online. A Google search on the title of the proceeding, or on the name and year of the conference, will usually lead you to this content (assuming it's available online). Libraries also offer access to proceedings in their electronic form.
Locating a specific conference paper
Locating a specific conference paper
What if your electrical engineering professor told you to consult the paper below for a project you're working on that's about collecting and storing accurate fingerprint data:
Shehu, Y. I., et al. (2018, February). Detecting an alteration in biometric fingerprint databases. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Digital Signal Processing (pp. 6-11).
You can search Google for the title of the paper to see if you can find it that way, or search Google for the name of the proceedings, and if you find it, navigate to the paper that starts on page 6 within that proceedings. If you encounter a paywall (a notice asking you to pay to read the paper) then go to Cline Library's website and search for the title of the paper using Quick Search.
Can't find a specific conference paper in Quick Search? Then just request it through Cline Library's Document Delivery Service. You'll learn more about this service on the last page of Lesson 6: Get the sources you've chosen.
Distinguishing conference papers from other sources
Distinguishing conference papers from other sources
It's fairly easy to distinguish print conference papers from other sources since they'll be bound within a volume that has a proceedings-sounding title on the cover. Proceeding titles usually contains the word 'proceedings' and often include the conference name, date, and/or number, as you see in these examples:
Proceedings from the 17th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering
WiSec 11 Proceedings of the Fourth ACM Conference on Wireless Network Security
Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation, March 2000
However, when you come across the online version of an individual paper from a proceeding, you might have a tougher time determining what type of source it is. If you can download it as a PDF, do that. Then, look it over to see if there are clues in the header or footer indicating what type of publication it belongs to – just like you learned to with journal article PDFs.
You should be aware that there are TWO MORE types of sources that disseminate research results:
You should be aware that there are TWO MORE types of sources that disseminate research results:
1. Dissertations
1. Dissertations
A dissertation is a book-length description of a long-term research project conducted by a graduate student. Graduate students are required to write and submit a dissertation as a requirement for earning a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree.
2. Theses
2. Theses
Typically, a thesis is the same sort of document, but shorter, and it is submitted by students who are earning a Master's level degree.
FYI – If you live outside the United States, then a thesis might be used to describe the culminating work of a doctoral student, while the output of a master's student might be called a dissertation – exactly the reverse of how these terms are used in the United States.
What's next?
What's next?
Answers to questions on this page:Question 1. A and DQuestion 2. trueQuestion 3. A and BQuestion 4. A Question 5. BQuestion 6. CQuestion 7. B
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