Editorial boards (sometimes also called advisory boards) are a
much more distant influence on what journals do than are the
editors. But the extent to which a journal has well-known and
senior people on its editorial board can provide a fair indication
of where it stands in the international profession. If it has no
one well known involved as a board member it may have only
a very small circulation, or there may be some problem in its
approach to refereeing.
Professional ownership versus commercial ownership.
In general, journals run by professional bodies in each of the
disciplines have higher prestige than those which are chiefly set
up by commercial publishers and entrepreneurial academics to
earn a major buck. Professional journals are normally supplied
free to members of the professional association as part of their
overall subscription, which tends to mean that far more indi-
vidual readers in at least its home country will routinely notice
that your paper has been published. There are far fewer indi-
vidual subscriptions to commercial journals, and so readers
mainly have to come across your paper in the library or look it
up directly. The chief reasons why people find your material are
because they regularly search particular journals’ electronic
contents; because a colleague or the journal’s e-mail alerting
service draws their attention to it; or because they are starting a
new article or research project of their own and hence are doing
a systematic literature trawl.
Survey responses. Most of the key professional groups in
the major countries survey their members each year on how
they rate their discipline’s journals. These responses often pro-
vide invaluable guidance about which journals are actually
being read by academics and students in the different fields.
Articles in prestigious journals are quite frequently unreadably
dense or too esoteric for most professional readers. Their high
level of citations can be sustained at any one time by a small
group of elite academics citing each other but not necessarily
being read or followed more widely. Sometimes a cohesive ref-
erencing circle of lesser authors can also achieve high (mutual)
citation scores.
Quality of production. Journals vary greatly in their ‘look
and feel’. Older journals, and those run by professional bodies,
often have a cramped, unattractive appearance. Indeed some
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