This is an exercise designed to calculate the number of active, scholarly peer reviewed journals as listed in Urlich’s on December 1, 2011, and to estimate the total number of academic periodicals of all types, as these may be reflected in revenue estimates of scholarly publishers. Calculations are based on Ulrich’s Advanced Searches with the search terms listed, and a process to deduplicate titles (e.g. a journal with a print and an online version is listed twice), by adding together the number of print titles and electronic-only.

Questions and answers

1. How may active, academic / scholarly, peer reviewed journals?
26,746 (estimated). Based on Ulrich’s search for active, academic / scholarly, peer reviewed journals (total 53,097), deduplicated by adding up entried for print journals (under format = 23,442) and electronic-only 3,304
2. How many active, academic / scholarly periodicals (journals or other types)? 47,845. Calculations from the following table:
Ulrich’s search terms #
active, academic / scholarly, peer-reviewed journals 26,746

Academic / scholarly, not journal
active, academic / scholarly magazine 994
active, academic / scholarly monograph series 18,152
active, academic / scholarly proceedings 1,146
active, academic / scholarly newsletter 807
Total academic / scholarly, not journal 21,099

Total active, academic / scholarly periodicals (journals and non-journals) 47,845