Guide to Selecting a Journal: Academic Journals and Peer-Review

Academic journals date back to 1665, with the publication Journal des Scavans (Harter and Kim, 1996) and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Rallison, 2015). Journals can best be described as the collective memory and archive of scientific knowledge (Spinak and Packer, 2015). 

What do journals do?

Academic journals serve four basic functions. A fifth function was added for online journals.

Registration - establishes an authors' ownership of an idea

Certification - peer review establishes the quality and authenticity of the research

Dissemination - published research is communicated to its intended audience

Archiving - the published record serves an an archive of scientific research

Navigation - published articles contain links to other records which direct users to other supporting publications and data 

(Rallison, 2015)