A journal is a collection of articles that are published at regular intervals.

There are different types of journals and platforms for publishing the work. Depending on the expertise and background, it will be determined which platform is best suited for the specific material.

Academic/Scholarly Journals:

Research articles that are for some type of academic community. They are usually available in libraries and subscription-based databases.

Academic Journals serve as an important forum for researchers and academicians to access important information about recent developments in their field.

Newspapers:

A regularly published collection of fairly brief articles that provide updates on current events and interests.

Newspapers are generally published daily, weekly, and biweekly, although they may have less regular publication schedules. Most major newspapers publish daily, with expanded coverage on the weekends.

Trade Journals:

Included in the trade journals are editorials, letters to the editor, photo essays, and advertisements that target members of the profession. 

Current Affairs/Opinion Magazines: 

Detailed articles that may take a political or philosophical stance are available at university libraries, and public libraries, and sometimes from newsagents.

Popular Magazines:

Mostly focus on a particular subject, but can cover a wide range of subjects as well. Easily accessible to the public, and available in supermarkets and from newsagents.

Here are a few broad guidelines on what and where to search during the writing process.

• Scan through journals in the field of specialization and narrow the focus to a few that satisfy their needs.
• Read the abstracts of the articles in the journals and analyse the rationale for research.
• Examine if there is any new input and determine whether or not to build a similar case or foundation from the work that has been done.
• Carefully go through the entire text of the articles and determine whether there is any specific writing genre that can be identified.
• Search for different types of journal articles and various types of structures that have been used. This will help to decide on the basic structure that can be used for the journal article and choose the sources that can be used for citations.

There are exclusive social networking sites available for research as well as tools to support it:

1. Certain sites like Connected Researchers
2. Several tools on the Web can help in finding articles on a particular topic. There are a number of websites like ERIC, Academia.edu, and Ingenta that contain a number of publications from various fields.
3. Library has tools like Findit that help explore the library’s entire collection. It also has a feature where articles are categorized based on various topics, and searches can be performed on the databases.
4. Consider utilizing free bibliography and citation creators like BibMe.
5. Save the journal articles read in reference management systems such as Endnote, Mendeley, or Zotero. These tools can help keep track of all papers related to research.
6. Finally, reference management systems can be used to handle the citations and create reference lists.

Lapiz assists authors in developing research drafts. Do you need assistance in developing your journal content?