Journal Publication Sources in Outdoor Education, Outdoor Recreation, Outdoor Leisure, Adventure Therapy and Experiential Education

James Neill
Last updated:
05 Mar 2007

Education Journals

Professional journals are generally where new scholarly findings and ideas have been published in the Western world, particularly since approximately the late 1800s.
A key feature of these journals is the idea of peer review, i.e., a draft paper is reviewed by at least a couple of experts who comment and accept/reject and suggest changes, before a final version of the paper is published.
During the 20th century journals have become an increasingly important means for recording and globally communicating new human knowledge and for the conduct scholarly debate.

Journal proliferation has accelerated since the 1990s due the internet age. Journal publishing increased 68% from 1990 to 1997. In 1997, 165,000 different journal titles were published. Currently most major journals are available both electronically and in hard copy, with the volume of electronic access now vastly outweighing hard copy access.
The massive volume of published journal content exceeds a single human's comprehension or close attention.
Therefore, methods for organizing, searching and ranking journal content are more critical than ever, e.g.,
- Indexing
- Abstracts
- "Review" journals
- Electronic search methods
- Rejection rate
- Content alerts
- Journal impact ratings
- Citation analysis

The journal impact factor is the average number of times an article in that journal is cited by other articles.
The average impact factor for a journals article is just below 1, i.e., the average journal article is only ever cited in one other journal article.
In recent years journal impact studies have become more common within both scientific and social science disciplines.