Re: How many (peer reveiwed) journals are there?

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

Maybe it's a journal if it has an ISSN?

Sandy Thatcher

> I'm sorry to be coy, but I don't understand how this question is
> meaningful.  Journals are defined (mostly) by the community they
> serve. While we like to think of journals as collections of
> articles, "article" also requires some definition.  And while we
> consider peer-review to be a universal standard of rigor, it is
> based on *whose* peers you are talking about.  A journal can
> still be a journal even though it publishes so infrequently, one
> would question whether calling it a journal is even appropriate.
> Look at scores of BioMedCentral or Bentham Science journals that
> seem to maintain their presence in spite of attracting no
> articles.
>
> To the question of "what is a journal anyway?" we should add
> "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" and ponder this for
> some time.
>
> --Phil Davis