Academic journal
An academic or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation and discussion of research, they are peer-reviewed or refereed. Content takes the form of articles presenting original research, review articles, book reviews; the purpose of an academic journal, according to Henry Oldenburg, is to give researchers a venue to "impart their knowledge to one another, contribute what they can to the Grand design of improving natural knowledge, perfecting all Philosophical Arts, Sciences."The term academic journal applies to scholarly publications in all fields. Scientific journals and journals of the quantitative social sciences vary in form and function from journals of the humanities and qualitative social sciences; the first academic journal was Journal des sçavans, followed soon after by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences.
The first peer-reviewed journal was Medical Essays and Observations. The idea of a published journal with the purpose of " people know what is happening in the Republic of Letters" was first conceived by Eudes de Mazerai in 1663. A publication titled Journal littéraire général was supposed to be published to fulfill that goal, but never was. Humanist scholar Denis de Sallo and printer Jean Cusson took Mazerai's idea, obtained a royal privilege from King Louis XIV on 8 August 1664 to establish the Journal des sçavans; the journal's first issue was published on 5 January 1665. It was aimed at people of letters, had four main objectives: review newly published major European books, publish the obituaries of famous people, report on discoveries in arts and science, report on the proceedings and censures of both secular and ecclesiastical courts, as well as those of Universities both in France and outside. Soon after, the Royal Society established Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in March 1665, the Académie des Sciences established the Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences in 1666, which more focused on scientific communications.
By the end of the 18th century, nearly 500 such periodical had been published, the vast majority coming from Germany and England. Several of those publications however, in particular the German journals, tended to be short lived. A. J. Meadows has estimated the proliferation of journal to reach 10,000 journals in 1950, 71,000 in 1987. However, Michael Mabe warns that the estimates will vary depending on the definition of what counts as a scholarly publication, but that the growth rate has been "remarkably consistent over time", with an average rates of 3.46% per year from 1800 to 2003. In 1733, Medical Essays and Observations was established by the Medical Society of Edinburgh as the first peer-reviewed journal. Peer review was introduced as an attempt to increase the pertinence of submissions. Other important events in the history of academic journals include the establishment of Nature and Science, the establishment of Postmodern Culture in 1990 as the first online-only journal, the foundation of arXiv in 1991 for the dissemination of preprints to be discussed prior to publication in a journal, the establishment of PLOS One in 2006 as the first megajournal.
There are two kinds of article or paper submissions in academia: solicited, where an individual has been invited to submit work either through direct contact or through a general submissions call, unsolicited, where an individual submits a work for potential publication without directly being asked to do so. Upon receipt of a submitted article, editors at the journal determine whether to reject the submission outright or begin the process of peer review. In the latter case, the submission becomes subject to review by outside scholars of the editor's choosing who remain anonymous; the number of these peer reviewers varies according to each journal's editorial practice – no fewer than two, though sometimes three or more, experts in the subject matter of the article produce reports upon the content and other factors, which inform the editors' publication decisions. Though these reports are confidential, some journals and publishers practice public peer review; the editors either choose to reject the article, ask for a revision and resubmission, or accept the article for publication.
Accepted articles are subjected to further editing by journal editorial staff before they appear in print. The peer review can take from several weeks to several months. Review articles called "reviews of progress," are checks on the research published in journals; some journals are devoted to review articles, some contain a few in each issue, others do not publish review articles. Such reviews cover the research from the preceding year, some for longer or shorter terms; some journals are enumerative. Yet others are evaluative; some journals are published in series, each covering a complete subject field year, or covering specific fields through several years. Unlike original research article
Periodical literature
Periodical literature is a category of serial publications that appear in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is the magazine published weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Newspapers published daily or weekly, are speaking, a separate category of serial. Other examples of periodicals are newsletters, literary magazines, academic journals, science magazines and comic books; these examples are published and referenced by volume and issue. Volume refers to the number of years the publication has been circulated, issue refers to how many times that periodical has been published during that year. For example, the April 2011 publication of a monthly magazine first published in 2002 would be listed as, "volume 10, issue 4". Roman numerals are sometimes used in reference to the volume number; when citing a work in a periodical, there are standardized formats such as The Chicago Manual of Style. In the latest edition of this style, a work with volume number 17 and issue number 3 may be written as follows: James M. Heilman, Andrew G. West.
"Wikipedia and Medicine: Quantifying Readership and the Significance of Natural Language." Journal of Medical Internet Research 17, no. 3. Doi:10.2196/jmir.4069. Periodicals are classified as either popular or scholarly. Popular periodicals are magazines. Scholarly journals are most found in libraries and databases. Examples are the Journal of Social Work. Trade magazines are examples of periodicals, they are written for an audience of professionals in the world. As of the early 1990s, there were over 6,000 academic, scientific and trade publications in the United States alone; these examples are related to the idea of an indefinitely continuing cycle of production and publication: magazines plan to continue publishing, not to stop after a predetermined number of editions. A novel, in contrast, might be published in monthly parts, a method revived after the success of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens; this approach is called part-publication when each part is from a whole work, or a serial, for example in comic books.
It flourished during the nineteenth century, for example with Abraham John Valpy's Delphin Classics, was not restricted to fiction. The International Standard Serial Number is to serial publications what the International Standard Book Number is to books: a standardized reference number. Postal services carry periodicals at a preferential rate. Partwork
Religion in Japan
Religion in Japan is dominated by Shinto and by Buddhism. According to surveys carried out in 2006 and 2008, less than 40% of the population of Japan identifies with an organized religion: around 35% are Buddhists, 3% to 4% are members of Shinto sects and derived religions, from fewer than 1% to 2.3% are Christians. Most of the Japanese pray and worship ancestors and gods at Shinto shrines or at private altars, while not identifying as "Shinto" or "Shintoist" in surveys; this is because these terms have little meaning for the majority of the Japanese, or because they define membership in Shinto organizations or sects. The term "religion" itself in Japanese culture defines only organized religions. People who identify as "non-religious" in surveys mean that they do not belong to any religious organization though they may take part in Shinto rituals and worship; some scholars, such as Jun'ichi Isomae and Jason Ānanda Josephson, have challenged the usefulness of the term "religion" in regard to Japanese "traditions", arguing that the Japanese term and concept of "religion" is an invention of the 19th century.
However, other scholars, such as Hans Martin Kramer and Ian Reader, regard such claims as overstated and contend that the terms relate to terminology and categorizations that existed in Japan prior to the 19th century. Shinto kami-no-michi, is the indigenous religion of Japan and most of the people of Japan, it is defined as an action-centered religion, focused on ritual practices to be carried out diligently, to establish a connection between present-day Japan and its ancient roots. Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written historical records of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki in the 8th century. Still, these earliest Japanese writings do not refer to a unified "Shinto religion", but rather to a collection of native beliefs and mythology. Shinto today is the religion of public shrines devoted to the worship of a multitude of gods, suited to various purposes such as war memorials and harvest festivals, applies as well to various sectarian organizations. Practitioners express their diverse beliefs through a standard language and practice, adopting a similar style in dress and ritual, dating from around the time of the Nara and Heian periods.
The word Shinto was adopted as Shindo, from the written Chinese Shendao, combining two kanji: "shin", meaning "spirit" or kami. The oldest recorded usage of the word Shindo is from the second half of the 6th century. Kami are defined in English as "spirits", "essences" or "gods", referring to the energy generating the phenomena. Since Japanese language does not distinguish between singular and plural, kami refers to the divinity, or sacred essence, that manifests in multiple forms: rocks, rivers, animals and people can be said to possess the nature of kami. Kami and people are not separate. Shinto is the largest religion in Japan, practiced by nearly 80% of the population, yet only a small percentage of these identify themselves as "Shintoists" in surveys; this is due to the fact that "Shinto" has different meanings in Japan: most of the Japanese attend Shinto shrines and beseech kami without belonging to Shinto organisations, since there are no formal rituals to become a member of folk "Shinto", "Shinto membership" is estimated counting those who join organised Shinto sects.
Shinto has 78,890 priests in the country. With the profound changes that the Japanese society has gone through in the 20th century, after World War II, including rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, traditional religions were challenged by the transformation and underwent a reshaping themselves, principles of religious freedom articulated by the constitution provided space for the proliferation of new religious movements. Both new sects of Shinto and movements claiming a independent status, as well as new forms of Buddhist lay societies, provided ways of aggregation for people uprooted from traditional families and village institutions. While traditional Shinto is residential and hereditary, a person participates in the worship activities devoted to the local tutelary deity or ancestor asking for specific healing or blessing services or participating in pilgrimages, in the new religions groups were formed by individuals without regard to kinship or territorial origins, required a voluntary decision to join.
These new religions provided cohesion through a unified doctrine and practice shared by the nationwide community. The recognized new religions number in the hundreds, total membership is in the tens of millions; the largest new religion is Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist sect founded in 1930, which has about 10 million members in Japan. Scholars in Japan have estimated that between 10% and 20% of the population belongs to the new religions, although more realistic estimates put the number at well below the 10% mark; as of 2007, there are 223,831 priests and leaders of the new religions in Japan, three times the number of traditional Shinto priests. Many of these new religions are Shinto-derived and retain the fundamental characters of Shinto identifying themselves as forms of Shinto; these include Tenrikyo, Omotokyo, Shinreikyo, Sekai Shindokyo and others. Others are independent new
Religious studies
Religious studies, alternately known as the study of religion, is an academic field devoted to research into religious beliefs and institutions. It describes, compares and explains religion, emphasizing systematic based, cross-cultural perspectives. While theology attempts to understand the nature of transcendent or supernatural forces, religious studies tries to study religious behavior and belief from outside any particular religious viewpoint. Religious studies draws upon multiple disciplines and their methodologies including anthropology, psychology and history of religion. Religious studies originated in the 19th century, when scholarly and historical analysis of the Bible had flourished, Hindu and Buddhist texts were first being translated into European languages. Early influential scholars included Friedrich Max Müller, in England, Cornelius P. Tiele, in the Netherlands. Today religious studies is practiced by scholars worldwide. In its early years, it was known as "comparative religion" or the science of religion and, in the USA, there are those who today know the field as the History of religion.
The religious studies scholar Walter Capps described the purpose of the discipline as to provide "training and practice... in directing and conducting inquiry regarding the subject of religion". At the same time, Capps stated that its other purpose was to use "prescribed modes and techniques of inquiry to make the subject of religion intelligible." Religious studies scholar Robert A. Segal characterised the discipline as "a subject matter", "open to many approaches", thus it "does not require either a distinctive method or a distinctive explanation to be worthy of disciplinary status."Different scholars operating in the field have different interests and intentions. Some scholars of religious studies are interested in studying the religion to which they belong. Scholars of religion have argued that a study of the subject is useful for individuals because it will provide them with knowledge, pertinent in inter-personal and professional contexts within an globalised world, it has been argued that studying religion is useful in appreciating and understanding sectarian tensions and religious violence.
The term "religion" originated from the Latin noun religio, nominalized from one of three verbs: relegere. Because of these three different potential meanings, an etymological analysis alone does not resolve the ambiguity of defining religion, since each verb points to a different understanding of what religion is. During the Medieval Period, the term "religious" was used as a noun to describe someone who had joined a monastic order. Throughout the history of religious studies, there have been many attempts to define the term "religion". Many of these have been monothetic, seeking to determine a key, essential element which all religions share, which can be used to define "religion" as a category, which must be necessary in order for something to be classified as a "religion". There are two forms of monothetic definition; the second are functional, seeking to define "religion" in terms of what it does for humans, for instance defining it by the argument that it exists to assuage fear of death, unite a community, or reinforce the control of one group over another.
Other forms of definition are polythetic, producing a list of characteristics that are common to religion. In this definition there is no one characteristic. Causing further complications is the fact that there are various secular world views, such as nationalism and Marxism, which bear many of the same characteristics that are associated with religion, but which consider themselves to be religious. Conversely, other scholars of religious studies have argued that the discipline should reject the term "religion" altogether and cease trying to define it. In this perspective, "religion" is argued to be a Western concept, forced upon other cultures in an act of intellectual imperialism. According to scholar of religion Russell T. McCutcheon, "many of the peoples that we study by means of this category have no equivalent term or concept whatsoever". There is, for instance, no word for "religion" in languages like Sanskrit. Before religious studies became a field in its own right, flourishing in the United States in the late 1960s, several key intellectual figures explored religion from a variety of perspectives.
One of these figures was the famous pragmatist William James. His 1902 Gifford lectures and book The Varieties of Religious Experience examined religion from a psychological-philosophical perspective and is still influential today, his essay The Will to Believe defends the rationality of faith. Max Weber studied religion from an economic perspective in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, his most famous work; as a major figure in sociology, he has no doubt influenced sociologists of religion. Émile Durkheim holds continuing influence as one of the fathers of sociology. He explored Protestant and Catholic attitudes and doctrines regarding suicide i
Tokyo
Tokyo Tokyo Metropolis, one of the 47 prefectures of Japan, has served as the Japanese capital since 1869. As of 2018, the Greater Tokyo Area ranked as the most populous metropolitan area in the world; the urban area houses the seat of the Emperor of Japan, of the Japanese government and of the National Diet. Tokyo forms part of the Kantō region on the southeastern side of Japan's main island and includes the Izu Islands and Ogasawara Islands. Tokyo was named Edo when Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu made the city his headquarters in 1603, it became the capital after Emperor Meiji moved his seat to the city from Kyoto in 1868. Tokyo Metropolis formed in 1943 from the merger of the former Tokyo Prefecture and the city of Tokyo. Tokyo is referred to as a city but is known and governed as a "metropolitan prefecture", which differs from and combines elements of a city and a prefecture, a characteristic unique to Tokyo; the 23 Special Wards of Tokyo were Tokyo City. On July 1, 1943, it merged with Tokyo Prefecture and became Tokyo Metropolis with an additional 26 municipalities in the western part of the prefecture, the Izu islands and Ogasawara islands south of Tokyo.
The population of the special wards is over 9 million people, with the total population of Tokyo Metropolis exceeding 13.8 million. The prefecture is part of the world's most populous metropolitan area called the Greater Tokyo Area with over 38 million people and the world's largest urban agglomeration economy; as of 2011, Tokyo hosted 51 of the Fortune Global 500 companies, the highest number of any city in the world at that time. Tokyo ranked third in the International Financial Centres Development Index; the city is home to various television networks such as Fuji TV, Tokyo MX, TV Tokyo, TV Asahi, Nippon Television, NHK and the Tokyo Broadcasting System. Tokyo third in the Global Cities Index; the GaWC's 2018 inventory classified Tokyo as an alpha+ world city – and as of 2014 TripAdvisor's World City Survey ranked Tokyo first in its "Best overall experience" category. As of 2018 Tokyo ranked as the 2nd-most expensive city for expatriates, according to the Mercer consulting firm, and the world's 11th-most expensive city according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's cost-of-living survey.
In 2015, Tokyo was named the Most Liveable City in the world by the magazine Monocle. The Michelin Guide has awarded Tokyo by far the most Michelin stars of any city in the world. Tokyo was ranked first out of all sixty cities in the 2017 Safe Cities Index; the QS Best Student Cities ranked Tokyo as the 3rd-best city in the world to be a university student in 2016 and 2nd in 2018. Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics, the 1979 G-7 summit, the 1986 G-7 summit, the 1993 G-7 summit, will host the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the 2020 Summer Olympics and the 2020 Summer Paralympics. Tokyo was known as Edo, which means "estuary", its name was changed to Tokyo when it became the imperial capital with the arrival of Emperor Meiji in 1868, in line with the East Asian tradition of including the word capital in the name of the capital city. During the early Meiji period, the city was called "Tōkei", an alternative pronunciation for the same characters representing "Tokyo", making it a kanji homograph; some surviving official English documents use the spelling "Tokei".
The name Tokyo was first suggested in 1813 in the book Kondō Hisaku, written by Satō Nobuhiro. When Ōkubo Toshimichi proposed the renaming to the government during the Meiji Restoration, according to Oda Kanshi, he got the idea from that book. Tokyo was a small fishing village named Edo, in what was part of the old Musashi Province. Edo was first fortified in the late twelfth century. In 1457, Ōta Dōkan built Edo Castle. In 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu was transferred from Mikawa Province to Kantō region; when he became shōgun in 1603, Edo became the center of his ruling. During the subsequent Edo period, Edo grew into one of the largest cities in the world with a population topping one million by the 18th century, but Edo was Tokugawa's home and was not capital of Japan. The Emperor himself lived in Kyoto from 794 to 1868 as capital of Japan. During the Edo era, the city enjoyed a prolonged period of peace known as the Pax Tokugawa, in the presence of such peace, Edo adopted a stringent policy of seclusion, which helped to perpetuate the lack of any serious military threat to the city.
The absence of war-inflicted devastation allowed Edo to devote the majority of its resources to rebuilding in the wake of the consistent fires and other devastating natural disasters that plagued the city. However, this prolonged period of seclusion came to an end with the arrival of American Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853. Commodore Perry forced the opening of the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate, leading to an increase in the demand for new foreign goods and subsequently a severe rise in inflation. Social unrest mounted in the wake of these higher prices and culminated in widespread rebellions and demonstrations in the form of the "smashing" of rice establishments. Meanwhile, supporters of the Meiji Emperor leveraged the disruption that t
Asian Ethnology
Asian Ethnology is an open access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the promotion of research on the peoples and cultures of Asia. It was first published in 1942 at the Catholic University of Peking as Folklore Studies and subsequently at Nanzan University, where from 1963 to 2007 it was known as Asian Folklore Studies. Asian Ethnology presents formal essays and analyses, research reports, critical book reviews relating to a wide range of topical categories, including narratives and other forms of cultural representation popular religious concepts vernacular approaches to health and healing local ecological/environmental knowledge collective memory and uses of the past cultural transformations in diaspora transnational flows material cultureThe journal is indexed in Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Bibliography of Asian Studies, Directory of Open Access Journals, EBSCO: Academic Search Complete. Journal homepage JSTOR
Outline of academic disciplines
An academic discipline or field of study is a branch of knowledge and researched as part of higher education. A scholar's discipline is defined by the university faculties and learned societies to which she or he belongs and the academic journals in which she or he publishes research. Disciplines vary between well-established ones that exist in all universities and have well-defined rosters of journals and conferences and nascent ones supported by only a few universities and publications. A discipline may have branches, these are called sub-disciplines. There is no consensus on how some academic disciplines should be classified, for example whether anthropology and linguistics are disciplines of the social sciences or of the humanities; the following outline is provided as topical guide to academic disciplines. Biblical studies Religious studies Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Greek, Aramaic Buddhist theology Christian theology Anglican theology Baptist theology Catholic theology Eastern Orthodox theology Protestant theology Hindu theology Jewish theology Muslim theology Biological anthropology Linguistic anthropology Cultural anthropology Social anthropology Archaeology Accounting Business management Finance Marketing Operations management Edaphology Environmental chemistry Environmental science Gemology Geochemistry Geodesy Physical geography Atmospheric science / Meteorology Biogeography / Phytogeography Climatology / Paleoclimatology / Palaeogeography Coastal geography / Oceanography Edaphology / Pedology or Soil science Geobiology Geology Geostatistics Glaciology Hydrology / Limnology / Hydrogeology Landscape ecology Quaternary science Geophysics Paleontology Paleobiology Paleoecology Astrobiology Astronomy Observational astronomy Gamma ray astronomy Infrared astronomy Microwave astronomy Optical astronomy Radio astronomy UV astronomy X-ray astronomy Astrophysics Gravitational astronomy Black holes Interstellar medium Numerical simulations Astrophysical plasma Galaxy formation and evolution High-energy astrophysics Hydrodynamics Magnetohydrodynamics Star formation Physical cosmology Stellar astrophysics Helioseismology Stellar evolution Stellar nucleosynthesis Planetary science Also a branch of electrical engineering Pure mathematics Applied mathematics Astrostatistics Biostatistics Academia Academic genealogy Curriculum Multidisciplinary approach Interdisciplinarity Transdisciplinarity Professions Classification of Instructional Programs Joint Academic Coding System List of fields of doctoral studies in the United States List of academic fields Abbott, Andrew.
Chaos of Disciplines. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-00101-2. Oleson, Alexandra; the Organization of knowledge in modern America, 1860-1920. ISBN 0-8018-2108-8. US Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences. Classification of Instructional Programs. National Center for Education Statistics. Classification of Instructional Programs: Developed by the U. S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics to provide a taxonomic scheme that will support the accurate tracking and reporting of fields of study and program completions activity. Complete JACS from Higher Education Statistics Agency in the United Kingdom Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification Chapter 3 and Appendix 1: Fields of research classification. Fields of Knowledge, a zoomable map allowing the academic disciplines and sub-disciplines in this article be visualised. Sandoz, R. Interactive Historical Atlas of the Disciplines, University of Geneva
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