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

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

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


Joseph J. Esposito wrote:
> In a conversation with a client recently, I made the offhand
> remark about "the 24,000 peer-reviewed journals."  She said, Not
> so fast!  That number is suspect; the actual number is both
> bigger and smaller.  The number is smaller, in her view, because
> only a subset of journals have a careful peer review process; and
> it is larger in that the number of journals continues to grow,
> but the review process is often sketchy at best.  (As far as I
> know, none of this has anything to do with whether a journal is
> open access or toll access.)
>
> Clearly there are matters of definition at issue here:  What must
> peer review consist of in order for it to earn the use of the
> name? And while we are at it, what is a journal anyway?
>
> I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has some thoughts on
> this topic.
>
> How many journals are there?
>
> Joe Esposito