---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 08:28:40 -0400
From: Albert Henderson <NobleStation@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Professional Journals (Lauren Corbett)

on Wed, 21 Oct 1998 Lauren Corbett <lcorbett@ODU.EDU> wrote:

> Could anyone help me provide an answer to the following question?
>
> [snip]
> Since you are the Serials Librarian, I thought I'd ask you. - I was
> asked to define "professional journal" the other day and realized
> that I had some doubt about part of it.  Is a "professional journal"
> exactly the same as a "scholary journal" or a "refereed journal"?   I
> looked in some library science dictionaries and encyclopedias and
> wasn't able to find a definition.

I don't think that precise, mutually exclusive definitions are
possible. The qualifiers "professional," "scholarly," "scientific,"
"technical," "clinical," "medical," and "learned" all refer to the
audience as well as content. A professional journal can also be
clinical or scientific or both. "Refereed" means some or all
articles are referred by the editor for a recommendation by experts.
The experts may be "blind" or not.

In short, if a journal is read for professional reasons, it is
probably a "professional" journal -- whether the profession is
accounting, medicine, motorcycle racing, or physical education.

A scholarly or scientific journal is more likely to carry citations
and be cited by other such journals, a description well supported by
various studies published in the Journal of the American Society
for Information Science, Scientometrics, etc. This is the basis
of the success of the Science Citation Index and its like. Some
scholarly and scientific journals, however, focus on news, abstracts,
meetings, etc. -- for example the Bulletin of the American Physical
Society.

> For instance, the American Association for the Advancement of
> Science from 1979 to 1987 put out two periodicals with the same
> title, Science.  The one which ran from 1979 to 1987 was the popular
> one, the kind you could buy at a news stand.

> The scholarly publication extends into the late 19th century.  Since
> Jan. 1901 the official proceedings and most of the papers of the
> American Association for the Advancement of Science have been
> included in Science.

> To me, they both ought to be professional, although only one is
> scholarly.

"Popular," as you said above, is good for the other.

Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY
<70244.1532@compuserve.com>
.
.