Discussion: Find a “Best” Journal in your Field

My Field is Educ Admin & Lshp Admin (Non)

Resources

Thomas, G. (2017). How to do your research project: A guide for students (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

• Chapter 1, “Your Introduction: Starting Points” (pp. 7–26)

Butin, D. W. (2010). The education dissertation: A guide for practitioner scholars. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

• Chapter 4, “Structuring Your Research” (pp. 63–69

Perhaps you have developed overly selective habits resulting from the ease of using Google Scholar and the library’s databases. Scholars typically hunt for articles related to their focused interests and might not pay much attention to what journal they come from, except to confirm that it is a peer-reviewed journal. But you can miss new developments in your field or miss a chance to reframe what you think are central concepts if you do not review recent articles in key journals.In addition, consider journals from psychology, sociology, or cognitive science for your conceptual or theoretical framework.

Desired outcomes for this Discussion:

• Build awareness of scholarly community
• Get familiar with a journal you can use regularly
• Appreciate the many journals presented by your peers
• Appreciate the efforts made by journals’ editors and editorial boards to provide you with useful scholarly articles
• Appreciate the criteria used by others to evaluate the worth of a journal
• Expand or refine your interests by reviewing a top journal in your field

Journals have webpages, and many include features, such as the table of contents for recent issues as well as links to the abstract of the most cited and most read articles. Of course, given the thousands of journals available, you should not limit yourself to reading a few journals. The purpose here is not to override your use of keywords to search databases or Google Scholar but to expand your search process.

Here are several strategies you can use to find such a journal and the criteria by which you might choose it:

• What do leaders in your field say are the best journals? Perhaps you have heard experts talking about journals when you have been at professional conferences.
• If you have already developed a list of dozens of articles related to your topic, you might notice that one or more journals appear in your reference list frequently.
• You know of the best professional association in your field with a journal(s).
• You have decided you want to learn more about the most highly-rated journals – all of which are more general (and more likely to be cited by more authors), such as Educational Researcher.
• Try a new search for articles related to your interests on Google Scholar, limiting your search to the last five years and noting which journals come up frequently.

To Prepare

Consider questions such as:

• What is the journal’s editorial policy?
• Who is the editor?
• What impressions do you have of the editorial board?
• What kind of articles do they seek?
• What contribution to positive social change does the editorial board seek to make?
• How many times a year is it published?
• What articles stood out for you in the last few issues?
• Why do you think their most frequently cited article is so popular?

By Day 7 of Week 7

Your discussion posting should include :

1. A description of the journal

2. Why you chose it and a link to the journal’s webpage.

3. Share something of what you learned when you explored the webpage of the journal

4. Address as many of the questions above as you can.