Junior scholars often mention they find the array of journal titles bewildering. The following is a partial list of journal titles, organized alphabetically.

Tips to navigate the list:

* To locate titles of interest on the list, I recommend you use Control+F and type in major subfields and related disciplines.

* I used the following keywords to identify subdisciplines: all branches, applied, archaeology, biological/physical, cultural/social, folklore, linguistic, medical, methods, paleontology, theory and visual. If the journal spans additional disciplines, these fields are noted, such as: biology, cultural studies, education, economics, humanities, material culture, musicology, political economy, popular culture, political science, and sociology. If a title is heavily interdisciplinary across many of these, I indicate "social sciences." If the scope of a journal includes literature and the fine arts, I indicate "humanities." If a geographic area is part of the scope of the journal, I include major continents and regions. Some examples include: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania. Any of these might make good search terms.

Tips to evaluate titles of possible interest:

Once you find publication(s) of interest to you, either click on the hyperlink or use a search engine to locate the Aims and Scope, an "About this journal" page, and/or "Author Submission Guidelines." Any of these documents will provide details about the type of desired content, as well as submission details. Sometimes you will need to type in journal name and the word "journal." Beware that many journals have extremely similar titles, but are not the same. Also in the list of titles I did not spell out the word "journal" nor "quarterly."

Because maintaining working links is time-consuming, I only link to publications published by AAA.

Although it is essential to evaluate your manuscript against a prospective journal's scope, I recommend you also consider:

1) How much time do you have before you need an acceptance letter? Scholars may only submit a given paper to one journal at a time. Peer reviewers can be hard for editors to chase down. Loosely speaking, time to publication correlates with how well an editorial office is run and, if a journal is publishing late or an editor does not respond to an inquiry about average time ranges, these are harbingers that your manuscript may languish. Journals with more frequency (more issues each year) may be faster and those with "online first" options will get your publication out there a little more quickly. I eliminated any title that did not publish any content so far in 2012 and recommend you avoid submitting to any journal that is publishing behind schedule.

2) Where is the journal Abstracted and Indexed? Typically the more services that index a given journal, the more likely it is that the articles within will be located and read by various scholarly audiences. Reputable journals list abstracting and indexing information prominently under "About the Journal" or under "Author submission" pages. 

As an aside, keep in mind some specific things you can do as an author that increase the visibility of your research. These include careful attention to your title, subtitle, and your abstract.

3) What is the reputation of the journal? Beware "predatory" publishers, whose journals have no scholarly reputation. Jeffrey Beall assessed some publishing companies and found they offered little value to authors or users and, worse, charge authors fees for their putative service. More companies in this vein pop up all the time; his list was once only 6 companies and it's now more than 200. 

Among publishers who make legitimate investments and return value and services to their authors and readers, there is still a wide range of scholarly reputations. To help assess reputation, I compiled four systems of evaluation. To be frank, ranking journals is controversial; no single system is able to navigate the nuances of scholarly discourse in a completely fair or objective way. The journal list includes the following evaluations for the titles listed.

AAA survey: In the summer of 2008, AAA asked approximately 150 anthropology departments to indicate an A, B, or C tier in terms of how their promotions and tenure committees generally perceive a journal. If a title has no ranking ("n/a"), due the survey's length, the journal title was not included in the summer 2008 survey. 

ERIH: This humanities list published in July 2011 is influential in many European departments.

IF: I list the 2011 Impact Factors. If a title has no impact factor ("n/a"), the journal has not been accepted by ISI, the company who owns and calculates the Impact Factor. Different departments view the Impact Factor differently. As a general rule of thumb, biological and medical disciplines tend to give considerable weight to the Impact Factors. Early career anthropologists should also keep in mind that they may end up looking for jobs in psychology, education, medicine, and public health and these departments often value the prestige associated with publishing in journals with Impact Factors.

Scimago: The scimago index counts citations tracked by Scopus. The values listed are from a search in August 2012.

If you are interested in a more comprehensive resource, you might also consider purchasing How to Get Published in Anthropology.

For authors interested in international journals, the World Council of Anthropological Associations maintains an excellent list of its members' publications and other journals as well.

Please email corrections or suggestions to: oschmid@aaanet.org.