English Lit Journals

[Vertigo23]

Does anyone know of a resource that ranks lit journals?

[ecritdansleau]

This is an interesting question, to which my answer is, generally, no. If by lit journals you mean literary critical peer-reviewed publications, then there isn't some ultimate ranking system which decides what journal is the most prestigious of them all or something. This belies the fact that some journals are indeed more highly regarded than others.

The difficulty with ranking journals might be that journals carve out highly specified research niches, so it is difficult to say what is objectively better when there are so many different historical fields and points of departure for theoretical inquiry.

One of the broad(er) scoped journals I can think of is PMLA (which seeks to publish "essays judged to be of interest to scholars and teachers of language and literature") which is highly reputed. Perhaps others have suggestions too; as I said, I'm not an expert (yet).

Each journal has its own set of issues that it likes to address. Often, broader-scoped journals publish special topic issues that allow for a number of articles to address a set of interlinked questions/author/s. As a mere college graduate, I don't have extensive experience with literary journals, but some well-known journals that repeatedly come up for me (with interests in both literary and theoretical questions as well as twentieth century) include New Literary History and Modernism/Modernity. The Journal of Modern Literature. Critical Inquiry. Representations.

[runonsentence]

I'd echo the above: perhaps we can give you an idea of which journals are subjectively viewed with higher regard in the field if you give us an idea of what sort of area you're looking in?

[Podsnap]

I don't know of any "ranking" system either. However, if you're an MLA member there's an option on the sidebar of the MLA homepage that says "Search the MLA Directory of Periodicals." This is a search engine that lists a massive amount of journals and has information about their scope, submission requirements, notification time, acceptance rates, and other helpful information. I'm sure a lot of it is probably a bit out-dated but it can be helpful in searching for journals in your field and for getting some idea of what journals are particularly competitive, strict with requirements, and so on.

I think that "ranking" journals usually just entails doing research in your field, finding out where the most "important" or "significant" essays are published and following the bread crumbs to books, websites, the library, etc.