Originally posted by Sailor Saturn
I wish I could afford to subscribe to scientific journals...'course...I'd have to know what the scientific journals are.
First, forgive my long answer, but I've really got the impression that you have a serious interest in science, so I will give you my take on the issue of scientific journals:
Scientific journals are usually defined as professional, peer-reviewed journals where scientists first present their original findings in the form of articles. A scientific article is a special kind of report that has to be written according to specific rules, covering background, hypothesis etc and all the methods and procedures used must be described so detailed so experiments can be reproduced by any other scientist reading the article. There are many different cathgories of scientific journals, and they have sort of a rank based on how broad the impact they have.
First, there are
Nature and
Science. They are the only journals covering all sciences, and they are always the first to publish major breakthorughs and new findings that are considered to be of high impact and interest to science and people in general. Stuff like the splitting of the atom, the cloning of the sheep Dolly, the human genome sequencing was first published in Nature and Science. People like Einstein, Hawking and all the Nobel prize winners have published in Nature and Science.
Then, there are the specialist journals, I think they are around 8000, covering different fields and having different degrees of specialisation. The Lancet it very famous, it deals with all medicine. American Journal of Psychiatry and deals with all psychiatry. Schizophrenia bullentine only deals with schizophrenia. And so on. The more specialised a journal is, the less interesting it usually is for non-specialist since the level of detail increases. A cure for schizophrenia would be published in Nature, a minor finding regarding a differency in responing to certain medicine, would probably be published in Schizophrenia Bullentin. Just to illustrate how the hierachy of importance goes.
The national academies of science in different countries publish many scientific journals. Some of the major academies like NAS (National Academy of Science is the US, with members not only from the US but from many countries, including Einstein when he was alive and Hawking, for instance) give out journals called "Annals of ...<insert topic of choice>..", a sort of yearly report of findings in a certain area. American Journal of..., British Journal of..., Trends of...are also journals generally good quality and with broader impact.
OK, then you have the popular science magazines, that do not report the original findings, but instead contain simplified and shorter (and sometimes totally distorted
) versions of orginal research. The best popular science journals are IMO New Scientist (weekly) and Scientific American (monthy), perhaps I have a slight preference for the fisrt one. Those magazines are serious, peer-reviewed and the articles are written by science journalists or invited scientists.
Then we have the more speculative "popular science" magazines that IMO don't deserve the name. Magazines that aim to make taboid news of scientific discoveries, quote researchers out of context to exaggregate or distort the meaning of findings, and draw extreme conclusion from findings. These I don't recommend anyone who has a serious interest in science, they are like the Discovery channel.
And last, we have the highly unserious propaganda journals who are
not sceintific journals but claim to be so. An example I saw on the net recently was a doctor who was selling some very expensive on-line treatment to decide the gender of your future child. He referred to a great number of publication in journals that at first glance looked serious (ie "International Journal of Gynecology") but when checking the ISI lists, it turned out there is no such journal, the journals he had published his results in were journals he himself was editor for, so they were not peer-reviewed (ie critically control-read by other researchers before publication). This trick is common among people who try to sell different "medical" products or organisations who wish to claim that their ideology has a scientific underpin such as the Scientology church. But if we know were to check, it's easy to find out whether a journal is "scientific" or not. Lists of all acknowledged, controlled and peer reviewed scientific journals can be found at university libraries (Caltech has one online) and ISI, Institute for Scientific Information.
If I were you, I would probably subscribe to New Scientist, and if my budget allowed me, I'd add Scientific American. The specialist journals in any field, be it physics or anthropology, have a lot of jargon and technical terms, but by using library services and the ISI ranking, I would find out what physics magazines are the best, and check them out at a library.
Nature and Science are quite heavy and technical too, although much less so than specialist journals. Both have special student discounts on subscriptions, probably around $150-200 annually (they are both weekly). You can also check out their websites,
http://www.nature.com and
http://www.sciencemag.com if you register you get a limited access to news and summaries of articles for free. But take a look at the whole paper version at your library too.
Hope you can afford to subscribe to at least one magazine - I'm sure your parents realize the value of this!
