Evaluating Periodical Literature in Religion

Facing the wealth of information and critical argument available in print and digital media can be an overwhelming experience. Even a relatively narrow search of standard indices, such as the ATLA can produce dozens, sometimes hundreds of sources. Sadly, few writers of term-papers and theses enjoy the leisure necessary to simply read everything on a particular topic. Where should one begin? Periodical literature in your chosen field is a good place to start. Most scholars of religion, as a matter of professional discipline, keep abreast of the latest information and current arguments in their fields and subfields by regular and careful review of the pertinent journals and other periodicals available in print and online. Although there is some overlap among them, it might prove useful to distinguish between professional journals, popular periodicals, and confessional publications. I will suggest that for our purposes, academic journals are the preferred starting point for your exploration of a topic. Academic journals normally publish peer-reviewed articles. They have apparatuses that will help you extend your own research, things like footnotes and bibliographies.

JOURNALS
For our purposes, journals are periodicals published by academic institutions or scholarly societies, as forums for moderated discussion within their defined fields. As a typical example, I will use the Journal of Early Christian Studies as typical of the genre. Its fundamental structure is shared across the other sub-fields; I just happen to be rather familiar with it. You will find close similarity of structure in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, the Harvard Theological Review, and hundreds of other journals in the humanities. Please note, not every periodical that meets the definition I am using will have the word "journal" in its title; also, there are a number of periodicals that call themselves journals that don't fit the definition I employ here. Journals can be published in the traditional manner, or digitally online. Many are now available in both media.

Publisher
When evaluating a periodical, your first step is to check the publishing information. It is normally on the inside of the front cover or on the first page. Is the journal you are considering published by an academic institution or a scholarly society? In the case of the JECS we find:

"The official publication of the North American Patristic Society (NAPS)"

This may or may not be enough information for you. Who are these people? If you are unfamiliar with the membership of NAPS you should probably find out who they are. There are a number of ways to do this. One way is to see if they are members of the American Council of Learned Societies. The ACLS maintains a list of its constituent societies online with links to its constituents. If your publisher is not a member, and NAPS is not, you can also try to find a link at The Council of Societies for the Study of Religion.

Other resources for locating academic societies include:

The Scholarly Societies Project of the University of Waterloo Library
The Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion
The Professional Resources page of the University of Notre Dame
The Academic Jewish Studies Internet Directory

or you might simply try to find the society's homepage on google. In the case of NAPS, this proved the easiest way. You can find the homepage of the publisher of the Journal of Early Christian Studies. A quick browse through the society's information page informs us that membership in the society is open to anyone who wishes to join; this is not that unusual. The list of NAPS presidents, however, reads like a "who's who" of among the luminaries in the field of early Christian studies over the past 30 years. Despite its openness to all and sundry, it seems to be run by the academics who have defined the field.

Editorial Board
Obviously, every member of the publishing institution or society has not read every submission to the institution or society's journal. Submissions to journals like the JECS are subject to peer review under the guidance of an editorial board whose members are appointed by the publishing institution or society. These selected specialists in the field are responsible for the content of the journal. To preserve impartiality it is normally, but not always, the case that peer review is "blind;" the reviewer does not see the name of the author of the text he or she is reviewing. Peer review does not mean that the reviewers (sometimes the editors themselves, but more often specialists designated by the editors, managing editors, or their delegates) found a particular submission faultless or that the reviewer even agreed with the substance of a particular argument or interpretation. Rather it indicates that the reviewer(s) found the submission, perhaps after extensive revision, to meet the journal's standards as a coherent, informed argument within the field of interest. Published submissions are generally offered as informed contributions to the published discussions moderated by the editorial board.

It will be worth your while, especially at first, to check the editorial board of the journal you are considering, in order to evaluate the judgments of that board in the light of your research goals. Under certain circumstances it might matter to you that a particular editorial board is primarily made up of adherents to a particular theological viewpoint, or are members of one particular religious or social movement. It is in the nature of religious studies that much of the published scholarship in the subfields is the work of adherents to the various religious traditions. The same is true of many editorial boards as well. There is nothing particularly sinister about this, but because you are trying to make a judgment about editorial judgments, it is something you should consider. To get a sense of the editorial board, if you are unfamiliar with the members, do a search on ATLA or similar index to determine their publication records and areas of expertise.

Table of Contents
You are all familiar with tables of content, of course. They are worth a close look once you have identified a journal as a promising source for ideas and information in your area of interest. The table of contents lets you know where the scholarly conversation is now.

Reviews
For the professional academic, one of the most important functions of the journal is to review new publications in the field. Critical reviews generally include brief descriptions of the topic, summaries of the argument, and evaluation of the competence of the work. Especially in fields relying on a high degree of philological competence, book reviews may seem a bit arcane to the novice. They will, however, more than repay the effort by saving the reader considerable time and by raising knowledgeable questions about the work under consideration. Writers of theses and lengthy term-papers, in particular, are well advised to familiarize themselves with the critical reviews of the written works they will engage.

Books Received
Many journals will also contain a brief list of works received. Either submitted by the publisher or obtained for review, these are often made available for review by competent readers, quite often members of the publishing society. If a journal adheres closely to your area of interest, scanning the books received section can prove very rewarding.

Advertisements
It is now the practice for many journals to offset their costs by accepting advertisements from publishers. Although such advertised publications are normally within the field covered by the journal, an advertisement is normally evidence of little more than a commercial transaction. That a book has been advertised in a well-respected journal is no indication, one way or another, of its worth.

POPULAR NON-PROFIT & COMMERICAL PUBLICATIONS
Good, well-informed authors do not limit their publication efforts to peer-reviewed journals, there are a host of periodical venues that allow experts to place their work before a more general audience. Some such publications are rather easy to detect. You might for example, find a popular article by a leading academic nestled between an advertisement for vacuum cleaners and one for "creationist" videos. Other general interest periodicals might look a lot like JECS or JAAR.

As was the case with journals, the best place to start is with the publisher's information. As a point of comparison, take the publisher's information, the masthead, of the Biblical Archeology Review.

A little investigating would lead you to conclude that the BAR's publisher, the Biblical Archeology Society, has assembled a credible editorial advisory board, and has published work by some of the leading figures in biblical archeology as well as by historians of Christianity and Judaism—people like Shaye Cohen, Larry Stager and William Dever. You will also note, however, that their articles lack the critical apparatus that normally appears in a professional journal. Footnotes are few and far between, those that do occur are often of the "do you want to learn more?" variety. Bibliographies are thin or non-existent. Tracking down the Biblical Archeology Society in much the same fashion that we located the North American Patristic Society we find out why.

"The Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) educates the public about archaeology and the Bible through magazines, books, visual materials and seminars. Our readers rely on us to present the latest that scholarship has to offer in a fair and accessible manner. BAS serves as an important authority and as an invaluable source of reliable information."

We have stumbled on a periodical that allows academics to popularize their work for a more general audience. Such articles are frequently excellent in their own right and can often orient you to a particular scholar's thought on a subject. Perhaps useful for clarifying your understanding of an author whom you have encountered in a journal or monograph, they cannot substitute for the full argument with noted evidence and sources that one should find in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Examples of such publications could be advanced for every religious tradition that we cover in the department.

CONFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS
Finally, we enter the grey area of confessional publications. These can run the gamut from commercial endeavors to journals published by religious institutions and societies of scholars who share a faith-commitment. Titles such as Tricycle: the Buddhist Review, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, and Christian History come to mind. Some of the publishers are members of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion others are not. It's all a bit confusing.

THE FIELD AND UTILITY
Remember, however, that we began this brief inquiry as a way of sorting out the sources of information that turned up in a subject search of an index. Here, again, you will have to use your judgment.

1. How will it matter if the author of a particular study is an adherent to the religion under investigation in the study? For certain questions it might matter a great deal. For others, not at all.

2. Does the field of the journal overlap sufficiently with your field of interest for utility to be likely?

3. Does the publication provide an adequate scholarly apparatus? Will you be able to engage the author in a responsible manner?

Endnote
This no doubt seems like an awful lot of work. It will be, initially. Eventually, however, you will become familiar with the journals in your chosen field. Names on editorial boards will become familiar authors to you. You will begin to discern where you are likely to fit in the big conversation.