What is an Academic Journal?
Academic Journals, sometimes called Scholarly Journals, are a specific type of publication created for disseminating academic research and scholarship.
These journals are typically "peer-reviewed," and are published by university presses, non-profit research organizations, institutes, and professional associations. Academic journals usually have a very narrow or specific scope, and articles are written for other scholars and experts in the same field.
Academic Journals differ greatly in their content and presentation from the mass media magazines we find in supermarkets and book stores.
Other Ways to Find Journals
Search by Title
UCSB Library Search
If you know the title of the journal you are looking for, use UCSB Library Search and simply enter in the journal title into the search box.
You can also use Journal Search within UCSB Library Search to focus a title search to just journals.
If you're looking exclusively for our electronic journals, use our e-Journal Search
Search by Subject
UCSB eJournals ONLY
Alphabetical list of full-text online journals available through the UCSB Library.
Click on "Category" in the box on the left, then choose the "SubCategory" that best reflects your topic.
You can also do a keyword title search.
You can also find journals by browsing our Articles & Databases by Subject. Once you choose a database in a subject area, conduct a search and click on the Journal Titles from an article to learn more about the journals available within this database.
Scientific Journal Rankings
SCImago is a public portal that ranks journals according to 27 different thematic areas, with 313 different subject categories. These rankings are not representative of all journals in a given subject area. Use SCImago to sort by subject area, and subject category to explore additional journal titles within your discipline.
Not all titles in SCImago will be available through UCSB Library. To see if UCSB Library has a journal, use the Journal Search option within UCSB Library Search to search by title or ISSN.
Ask!
You can always contact a professor or a librarian to ask about journal publications. You can also use professor's Curriculum Vitae or Resume to see if they have published articles within journals that correlate to your subject or discpline!
Academic Journals - Sample List
Interdisciplinary Journals
- American Political Science Review
- Annual Review of Psychology
- Gender & Society
- Journal of Consumer Culture
- Social Anthropology
- Sociological Methods & Research
Using an Article Database to Locate Journals on a Subject
The most common reason for using an article database is to locate academic articles. However, some databases make it very easy to see the journals that they index and this can be a good way to generate a list of journals by broad subject.
From the top blue margin, click on "Publications." From here you can click the radio button "By Subject & Description" to further refine the list.
Is your journal Peer Reviewed?
Not sure if your journal is peer reviewed? You can check the journal title in the Ulrich's Periodical Directory! If your journal is peer reviewed you will see an icon that looks like a referee uniform. 
(The term "refereed" is synonymous with "peer reviewed.")