Electronic Journals

Scholarly journals, which include substantive research articles and other materials,including letters to the editor,book reviews,and announcements of meetings, trace their origins back to 1665,with Les Journal des Scavans (trans.,“Journal of the experts”) in Paris and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London in London. These journals developed to share scientific discoveries among interested parties and to establish who was first to have made a given discovery or to have advanced a given theory.

Peer review is an important part of publication in scholarly journals. It is a system whereby scholars who are experts in the same field as the author (the author’s peers) read,comment on,and recommend publication or rejection of an article.This process is usually single-blind (the author does not know who the reviewers are, but the reviewers know who the author is) or double-blind (the author does not know who the reviewers are and the reviewers do not know the identity of the author), which gives both readers and authors increased confidence in the validity of the published articles.Although it has been criticized from time to time, peer review remains one of the most valued aspects of publication in scholarly journals, which are also referred to as peer-reviewed journals, scholarly journals, or refereed journals.