Toward a Sustainable Method for Core Journal Lists: A Test Case Using Journals in Social Work |
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| Authors: | Joseph Aubele Carol Perruso |
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| Institution: | University Library, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, California, USA |
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| Abstract: | Determining the core journals in a discipline serves an important role for both academic librarians and departmental faculty. In addition to helping librarians build or weed journal collections, especially in difficult budget years, core lists help departments seeking accreditation, committees evaluating a candidate’s scholarship for tenure and promotion, and faculty choosing publications for their research. They also assist faculty guiding student research in the discipline. However, because of the inexorable changes that have occurred, and will continue to occur, in scholarly communication, no such list can be considered immutable. The purpose of this study is to identify a method by which individual librarians and/or libraries can create a list of journals considered important to a discipline, one that accurately reflects the state of scholarly communication in a field as it relates to the currency and quality of journal literature, and that is sustainable over time. More specifically, our purpose is twofold. First, to develop a sustainable method for defining the universe of potential core titles; and, second, to identify the core titles within that universe. As the result of discussions on this issue with a social work faculty member, the authors used social work journals for developing a methodology that may be applied to other disciplines. |
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| Keywords: | Academic libraries Collection development Core journals Social Work |
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