College Student Personnel (CSP): Recommended Journals

"CSP journals often (but not always) have a practitioner lens, which are not ranked as highly as other academic journals, but they are relevant to the field."

-Amy Hirschy, Associate Professor

Although one way to determine a journal's significance is its Journal Impact Factor, it's important to remember that ranking is not synonymous with relevancy. The following is a listing of relevant and often utilized education publications that may be of interest. Electronic versions of these journals can be accessed by using the above WorldCat search bar for UofL's online catalog. Physical copies may also be located in Ekstrom's 2nd Floor Current Periodicals Department or via the Robotic Retrieval System (RRS).

• American Educational Research Journal
• Black Issues in Higher Education
• Diverse Issues in Higher Education
• Educational Research Review
• Equity and Excellence in Education
• Journal of College Student Development
• Journal of Diversity in Higher Education
• Journal of Higher Education
• NASPA Journal
• Research in Higher Education
• Review of Educational Research
• Review of Research in Education
• Sociology of Education

Check the "Top Journals in..." section of the Researching Journals guide. Within each topic, we've provided the top ten journals in various fields and the UofL databases that index them best.

OR

Use Journal Citation Reports* to determine the ranking of journals.

Search for your topic area. Select the closest Category OR browse the Categories list linked at the top of the page and then choose from the list of categories. 

The default order is by the most recent Journal Impact Factor (JIF). If the JIF is not available, you can order journals by Journal Citation Index (JCI) ranking.

Journal Impact Factor (JIF)

A functional approximation of the mean citation rate per citable item. A Journal Impact Factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published one or two years ago have been cited one time.

Journal Citation Index (JCI) ranking

Based on citations from all documents in the three previous years to articles published in the previous three years. The JCI is normalized for document type, publication year, and category. The average JCI for any category is 1. A JCI of 2 indicates that a journal is receiving twice the expected number of citations for the average journal in the category.

In general, science-related journals are more likely to include a JIF; while arts-related journals tend to have a JCI ranking.

*Journal Citation Reports is an example a more traditional method for measuring scholarly impact. However, it is not without controversy, nor does it always accurately reflect scholarly impact. Increasingly, researchers use a combination of traditional and alternative metrics (including amount of views, social media discussions, non-traditional citations, and recommendations) to measure the impact of a scholar or published article. 

BrowZine is an app for tablets and desktops that allows you to keep up with the latest articles in scholarly journals. You can create a personal bookshelf and save articles to read later.

From your desktop computer, simply go to:

Mobile instructions:

1. If you've loaded BrowZine previously using the Open Access Library, delete that app.
2. Download BrowZine: go to either the App Store or Google Play. Search for BrowZine and download it.
3. Access BrowZine: Tap on the app icon to open BrowZine. When you open the app for the first time, you'll see a list of schools. Select University of Louisville, then enter your ULink ID and password.
4. Start browsing! You can browse by subject or use Titles A-Z to find a specific title.