What is a scientific journal?
Introduction.
Many times, when we are studying professional careers, we begin to talk about scientific articles, indexed magazines and many other terms that are used in the academy. The above can be overwhelming, but you learn over time. Today I am going to write about scientific journals and I will try to explain in a very simple way what they are and what they are about.
What makes scientific journals so special and what are the differences they have with general consumer magazines such as magazines and other types of printed or digital publications? In general, scientific journals are characterized by rigor, verification, evaluation and verification of published articles. Unlike general consumer magazines, scientific research stands out for having a strict and serious method, hence its good name.
Scientific journals are the most important means for communicating the results of scientific activity, in scientific journals original articles are published as a result of research, the first scientific journals date back to 1665 and since then they have been replicating and adding their importance. Currently the publication of scientific journals has had substantial changes especially with the introduction of the digital edition.
Next, we will delve a little deeper into the characteristics of scientific journals.
What is a scientific journal?
A scientific journal in its simplest aspect is a means of communication where articles are published with the results derived from scientific research. Although the above explanation is quite simple, scientific journals have particularities and very deep differences with journals of other classes as can be seen below.
Characteristics of a scientific publication.
Specialized
They are specialized and, depending on their specialty, they deal with specific topics, some of which even reach a very fine level of detail, such as neurosurgery journals, which is a specialty of medicine, which in turn is part of the health sciences. There are also more generic, but always within a specific area of knowledge such as engineering magazines where you can publish articles of any engineering, but without leaving to other areas of knowledge.
Selective
Scientific journals are selective ie the material that is published is selected, which tries to ensure the quality of the same using the peer review, only the best articles are chosen to be published, the articles not selected are not discarded immediately, in some cases the author is suggested to make changes to be able to publish them or the author is informed that the article is not relevant to the journal. In any case, the author is always fed back so that he can improve his work in the future.
Newspapers
They periodically publish what refers to the fact that journals have a fixed number of numbers per year, the most common is to find journals that have two issues per year, that is, every six months. There are also four-monthly periodicity that is three numbers per year, one every four months. And less frequently there are journals with a quarterly frequency that have four numbers per year.
With the introduction of ICT, the publication of a fixed number is being changed little by little to make way for continuous publication.
Indexed
It is preferable that they be indexed, the indexation refers to the journal being in databases, in Colombia the scientific journals categorized are in a catalog called Colciencias Publindex, once the journals are categorized by Colciencias seek to be in bases such as Scielo, Redalyc, Scupus, Pubmed among others. Indexed or indexed journals are preferred by authors because they guarantee editorial quality.
Conclusion.
As you can see, scientific journals are the quintessential medium for the dissemination of scientific information, they have a rigorous method to ensure the quality of published information and focus on a specific area of knowledge.
I hope that this fascinating type of publication is no longer a mystery, please let me know if you liked this article leaving a comment and if it has been useful do not forget to share.