[xmca] Do academic journals exist?

Dear xmca folks-

Our discussion of "publish and/or perish" and the ISI "web of knowledge"
makes me think about the nature of academic journals and my personal
professional practice of using them. As a reader of academic journals, I
must admit that for me, academic journals do not exist. I rarely read
academic journals (and it's getting worse). Rather I hunt for particular
articles of my interests using either recommendations coming from other
articles (regardless journals where they publish) via their reference lists
OR databases such as ERIC and PsyINFO OR recommendations by my colleagues
like you. I've noticed that my reading practice becomes more and more like
that after our university library vastly increase journals available
electronically on-line. For me, as a reader, now, "journal" becomes an
accidental assembly of unrelated papers.

However, as a writer, I still treat journal as a particular institution with
a particular direction, particular editor, possible body of reviewers,
particular "readership". If my experiences are not unique, I wonder if the
later is my myth by now, forgetting that I, myself, do not belong to any
journal readership anymore.

Are your reader and writer experiences similar with regard to academic
journals? I wonder what consequences and new opportunities these changes
bring to the academia.

What do you think?

Eugene

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Eugene Matusov, Ph.D.

Professor of Education

School of Education

University of Delaware

Newark, DE 19716, USA

email: ematusov@udel.edu

fax: 1-(302)-831-4110

website: http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu

publications: http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/vita/publications.htm

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Received on Tue Jul 8 08:51 PDT 2008