Junior scholars often mention they find the maze of journal titles bewildering. The following is a partial list of journal titles, organized alphabetically, alongside a few tips to help you get started:

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

• Search tip: I use the following major keywords to identify subdisciplines: all branches, applied, archaeology, biological/physical, cultural/social, folklore, linguistic, medical, methods, and paleontology.
• Search tip: If the journal spans additional disciplines, these fields are noted, such as: biology, critical analysis, 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."
• Search tip: 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.

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. Search tip: Sometimes you will need to type in journal name and the word "journal." Because maintaining working links is time-consuming, I only link to publications published by AAA.

In addition to matching your manuscript to a prospective journal's scope, I recommend you also look at where a journal is Abstracted and Indexed, in order to get a feel for the scholarly reach. Typically the more services that index a given journal, the more likely it is that the articles within will be located and read by a wider audience.

Finally, it is critical as an author to understand the reputation of a journal. At one extreme are "predatory" publishers, whose journals have no scholarly reputation; at the other end of the spectrum are elite journals, with low acceptance rates and high name recognition in the field. Jeffrey Beall assessed the following entities and found they offer little value to authors or users and charge authors fees for their putative service. These predatory publishers may include: Academic Journals, ANSINetwork, Dove Press, Insight Knowledge, International Research Journals, Knowledgia Review, Libertas Academia, Medwell Journals, Science Publications, and Scientific Journals International. 

Among the publishers who make legitimate investments and return value and services to their authors and readers, there is a baffling array of journals with an equally wide range of scholarly reputations. To help you assess the reputation of various journals, I compiled three 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 three rankings listed on the next page include:

• 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.
• Impact factor. I list the 2010 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 view Impact Factors as more significant. Humanities scholars and social scientists tend to use a variety of factors — sometimes the journal's peer review process and reputation, possibly alongside the Impact Factor — in evaluating journals.
• H index. The h index provides a newer ranking system, based on the citations tracked by Google Scholar. If a title has no rank, ("n/a"), the title could not be realiably searched (usually because of problems with disambiguation). The values listed here are from a search conducted in July 2011. 

Further notes about this list: Titles of the journals listed below published content in 2010. 

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.