I am an assistant professor in religious studies who is thinking ahead
to tenure. My main areas of interest are: the Protestant Reformation,
theory of religion, religion and violence, and pedagogy. I am seeking
a list of the twenty most prestigious peer-reviewed journals in which
it would be appropriate for me to publish my work. I would
specifically like to exclude journals whose primary focus is another
discipline (e.g., the American Historical Review). I would also like
to exclude four journals from the list that are already very familiar
to me: the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Church
History, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, and Teaching
Theology and Religion. For each journal, I would ideally like the
following information: a few sentences describing the journal's
editorial emphases (e.g., social-scientific, historical, contemporary,
non-Western, etc); a link to the submission policy; citation style;
typical article length in pages or (better) words; and, if
available, any information on typical turnaround time for manuscripts.
I welcome requests for clarification. Thank you in advance for your
help.

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Request for Question Clarification by czh-ga on 24 Mar 2005 13:19 PST

Hello nathan_br-ga,

Please take a look at this list of publications from the American
Theological Library Association. Both the Databases and Print lists
offer long lists of journals that might be suitable for your purposes.
What criteria should be applied to choosing ?the twenty most
prestigious peer-reviewed journals?? Do you have denominational
restrictions on which publications might be appropriate for you?

http://www.atla.com/products/titles.html

I look forward to your clarification.

~ czh ~

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Clarification of Question by nathan_br-ga on 24 Mar 2005 21:37 PST

Dear czh-ga, 

Thank you for your request. It's an excellent question. When I posted
the question, I was kind of hoping someone would know the field
intimately and be able to rattle off the twenty best-known journals
off the top of their head. This is my first time using Google Answers.
As is probably obvious, I hope to choose twenty journals to target for
possible future publications.

My ideal criterion for "prestige" is probably too intangible to be
helpful, namely general level of respect and reputation in the field.
Off the top of my head, here, I imagine this might be measured by the
number of libraries that carry the journal (more libraries = more
standard in the field) or percentage of articles that are frequently
cited by other writers. This second measurement is probably too
labor-intensive to discover, though. Possibly the question is not
really answerable.

No specific denominational limitations, but my primary interest is in
non-affiliated publications (except for those with a relatively high
scholarly cachet like Lutheran Quarterly).

Thanks for the ATLA link; I didn't know they had that information on
their website.

Let me know if you think this can be done. I look forward to your response. 

NBR

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Request for Question Clarification by czh-ga on 25 Mar 2005 14:24 PST

Hello again nathan_br-ga,

I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently familiar with your topic to "rattle
off the twenty best-known journals" off the top of my head. I couldn't
guess from the ATLA site lists as to which ones were worth exploring.
Let's hope that with the additional information you furnished another
researcher will be able to answer your question. Good luck.

~ czh ~

What you seem to be looking for is a Humanities version of ISI Journal
Citation Reports (JCR). JCR annually computes an ISI Impact Factor for
6,100 Science and 1,800 Social Science scholarly journals. (See a
quick overview at http://www.isinet.com/products/evaltools/jcr/jcrweb/.)
The impact factor is based on the number of citations vs. the number
of articles or some such quantitative analysis. No qualitative
criteria are included.

Unfortunately, due to their esoteric nature, Humanities journals don't
lend themselves well to the ISI analytical approach. I suspect that is
why no such version is published.

An alternate approach might be to identify the most prominent scholars
in your fields of interest and see where they have most recently
published.