Research journals and practitioner journals

A topic in research methodology

Researchers are encouraged to disseminate their research, both to others working in the same field, and to practitioners (e.g, teachers) or policy makers where research results may have implications for practice or policy.

Research journals and practitioner journals

There is no absolute distinction, but some journals are intended primarily as a means of communicating research results to the research community (and students of a discipline) and others are primarily concerned with sharing good practice within a community of practitioners, and include article about research with implications for practice. Research journals should not be seen as superior to practitioner journals / professional journals (or vice versa), but as these have different purposes and readerships, they will have different procedures and publication policies.

Some common differences:

Readership, and consequences

Research journals are primarily means of communication between those working in a field. Readers needs to be able to critique research to be convinced about its quality and to check the interpretation of results. They therefore expect articles to have full methodological details using technical concepts and terms, and supported by a detailed literature review.

Practitioner journals are primarily intended as a means of sharing of good practice (and discussion of concerns) of a professional community. Readers are interested in relevant research results, but are more interested in what was found out and implications for practice than technical details of the research and its background. Short articles with illustrations and examples 'cases' are often preferred. Long reference lists are not usually acceptable – just a few key references and/or suggestions for further reading.

Editorial policies

Research journals seek to publish high quality research in a field. If they receive many submissions on a topic, this suggests that this is where the research community currently has a lot of interest and activity, and so publication decisions are made on quality criteria, not on a desire to balance topics.

Practitioner journals often seek to have a wide spread of topics in an issue, and across a series of issues. The readership is assumed to want to read about a range of different topics, not a god many very similar articles on the same topic.

Authorship of articles

There are strict ethical guidelines on authorship of articles in research journals. Research articles are written by the research team, or members of it – those with first hand knowledge of the study*. The authorship team is those who have substantially contributed to the work (regardless of who does the writing-up).

* A recent development in some field for 'ghost writers' to be employed to write-up studies to release investigators for lab./field work is generally seen as poor practice and counter to normal research ethics.

Articles about research in practitioner journals may be written by someone other than the researchers – such as journalists and editors.

Editorial decisions

Research journal editors should make decisions to publish based on a peer review process leading to a recommendation that work has sufficient quality and originality to warrant publication. (Read about the concept of peer review.) Most articles are submitted to research journals unsolicited. Occasionally, such journals may invite authors to write on specific topics, but usually publication is still subject to peer review.

Articles may be submitted to practitioner journals unsolicited, but some such journals also commission many articles. Publication decisions reflect quality of the article (i.e., not primarily the underlying research) whether it is well written, 'punchy', likely to have impact/invite correspondence. Sometimes authors are paid for their work!

Editing of articles

Publishers of research journals usually have a light level of copy editing – only seeking to correct and clarify language issues, but not usually looking to polish style. Generally the authors have the final say on the form of words published. (Read about the author's right to the integrity of their work). Figures are provided by the author as an integral part of the manuscript and are only usually allowed where directly relevant to the text and 'called out' (cited) in the text.

Editors of practitioner journals may edit articles for style, or even to fit on the page! Language may be simplified, and cuts may be made to keep the article concise. Images may be used to accompany the image – colourful images that attract the attention of the reader may be used, and authors are often not involved in decisions over the images chosen.