If your content describes something that was published in a journal, we strongly encourage properly tagging the journal name using the Journal Lookup Tool. Here’s why:
- These details are shared with journalists, as well as members of the public who discover your content, so it’s a good idea to include them for reporting purposes and context.
- Some journal publishers have dedicated embargoed or public news portals on EurekAlert!, tagging their journal on your content is the only way for your content to appear there, expanding its reach.
- Some journal partners use our Journal Collaborator Alert service, which prompts PIOs to opt-in to notify the journal partner’s press office when you submit content that feature their journals. Tagging the journal name correctly gives you the option, should you choose to share your release with them.
- Lastly, tagging the journal title in the appropriate data field allows us to keep our data clean for continuous platform improvements. For example, if we roll out a news alert to reporters based on journal titles in the future, only those releases that tag journal titles in the appropriate field will benefit from such a service.
The journal lookup tool helps PIOs properly tag a journal on their EurekAlert! news releases.
Our journal title database is powered by the CrossRef database and EurekAlert! staff has little control over how a journal name appears in there. However, if the journal name you’re looking for doesn’t exist in CrossRef, you may suggest it for our staff to review and add to our supplementary database for future tagging.
During the development of the journal lookup tool, we opted for an exact search method instead of the partial search method that most other search functions use. The rationale is simple: Many words, such as science, health, medicine, etc. appear in an overwhelming large number of journal titles. With a partial search method, if you type in the word “Science,” for example, intending to look for the journal Science, the system would return hundreds of journal titles from which you would then have to scroll through dozens of alphabetically sorted pages to locate the journal, far too laborious for how most PIOs use our submission system.
With an exact search method, however, the trick is knowing exactly how a journal title appears in CrossRef. If you’re not certain of the exact title of the journal as it appears in CrossRef, using a wildcard will help.
Check out the video tutorial and step-by-step instructions below.
- Locate the Related Journal Name field on the Additional Information page, and click the magnifying glass icon to the right of it.
- Look up the journal name by typing it into the search box and clicking the magnifying glass.
- Journal names may be searched for several ways. Options are:
- The exact, complete journal name. Sometimes, this means including “The” at the beginning of the search query. (e.g., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; The Lancet)
- Wildcard search. Use part of the journal name followed by an asterisk (*). (e.g. Science Translational* –> Science Translational Medicine)
- In some cases, the acronym the journal uses. (e.g., JAMA)
- The name of the publisher.
- In the search results, check the box next to the journal title you want to tag. Then click the Select button to tag the journal.
- If you have exhausted your options and cannot find the right journal name, type the journal’s official title (you might have to look it up!) into the search box exactly as it should appear. Check the “Not Listed” box next to it, then click Select.
The wildcard feature, which uses part of the journal name and an asterisk, retrieves all journal titles that contain the terms(s) used in the search query. This method comes in handy when the journal name contains punctuation, such as ampersands (&), colons (:), and apostrophes (‘), because these marks can be spelled out or formatted in a way makes looking up by the exact journal name not return the desired result.
In cases where the journal title cannot be found and is submitted as a suggested journal name, EurekAlert! editorial staff will verify and add the journal to our database for future tagging, as warranted.