Authority
Remember, if the journal is peer-reviewed then acknowledged experts in the subject will have read the article for quality before publication, you should also consider who has published the journal - is it an association, professional body/society, an organisation or a university press (e.g. Cambridge journals) or a commercial venture?
- Is there a sponsoring organisation for the journal and does it give a 'mission statement'?
- Does the journal have an editorial board and who is on it?
- Is the journal indexed in various abstracting and indexing services? (You should be able to find this out using a serials directory such as Ulrichsweb as previously mentioned)
It is important that when evaluating articles you consider who has written them.
- Do the authors list their qualifications?
- Are they considered experts?
- Have they published anything else on the subject?
- Has their work been cited by anyone else?
If you would like to try and find out you can do a citation search. This facility is available in Web of Science which is part of Web of Knowledge, a multi-disciplinary database. You can access a video guide that explains this on the Web of Knowledge training website - see Cited Reference Searching.
