Activity: Identifying Top Journals & Scholars

Identifying top journals and scholars in your area of study is a foundational step in understanding the conversations happening, and how you can step in. These journals may later be those that you'll want to publish in.

Activity: Find Top Journals

There are a number of ways to discover what journals are important in your area of research interest. Try some of these strategies.

• Talk to faculty members and librarians in your field. Most will recommend journals of importance.
  
  
• Use Scimago Links to an external site.or Google Scholar Metrics Links to an external site., sites that provides ranked lists of journals in broad disciplinary fields.
  • Examples: classics journals Links to an external site. and special education journals Links to an external site.
    
    
• Identify journals published by key organizations in your discipline. (Faculty members and librarians can recommend organizations.)
  
  • Example: the Association for Computational Linguistics Links to an external site. publishes the journal Computational Linguistics Links to an external site.
    
    
• Search for articles related to your research interest (in UW Libraries Search, Google Scholar or a research database) and see if the some journals consistently publish on the topic.
  To find research databases in your field check out a Research Guide. Each guide is focused on a subject area and links to the major databases and resources for that field. You can start browsing the research guides by subject by visiting the Research Guide subject list (there are additional subject lists for UW Bothell, UW Tacoma, and Health Sciences).
  • Example: I am interested in Native Americans during the colonial period. I browse the Research Guide subject list and see that there is an American history research guide. The guide recommends a database called America History & Life Links to an external site.. I search the database for my keywords and discover many articles are published in the journal Early American Studies Links to an external site..

Once you identify some possible journal titles, use UW Libraries' E-Journals search Links to an external site. to see if the UW Libraries has an online subscription. Browse issues and be sure to save PDFs of interesting articles. 

As you begin reading articles related to your subject area you will begin to notice that many of the same authors show up in the literature review section and article footnotes -- you've just identified some of the top scholars in the field. 

Bonus Tip:

• Many journals have an option to set an automatic alert (you may have to set up an account) so that you are emailed the table of contents when a new issue is published.
  
  
  Next Up:
• Return to the Activity Breakout or jump to the next module.