Core periodicals are academic definitions of a certain kind of periodicals and a classification of periodical grades.

Core journals refer to the main journals of a certain discipline, which contain a lot of professional information, are of high quality, can represent the development level of professional disciplines, and are valued by readers of this discipline.

There are a large number of journals in China. As academic journals, we must have a reasonable selection system and evaluation criteria. Therefore, core periodicals are academic definitions of a certain kind of periodicals and a classification of periodical grades.

Core journals are determined by the libraries of several universities in China according to the citation rate, reprint rate and abstract rate of journals. The accreditation standards of core journals are also formulated by some university libraries, and the evaluation and access standards of each school library are also different. At the same time, there are many core journals, such as Nantah core, Peking University core, science and technology core, humanities and social sciences core and so on.

Characteristics of core journals:

1, concentration: refers to a small number of core journals that concentrate most of the high-quality papers in a certain discipline. 1934, British philologist Bradford revealed the law of document accumulation and dispersion, which laid the foundation for the research of core journals. Therefore, centralization is the most basic feature of core journals.

2. representativeness: refers to the papers published in a group of core journals of a certain discipline, representing the latest level and development direction of the discipline. This feature is determined by the centralization of core journals. Because a number of core journals concentrate most of the high-quality papers of a certain discipline, they naturally represent the research level and development direction of the discipline, and every progress in discipline research is basically reflected in the papers published in these core journals first. By tracking the papers in these journals, we can stand at the forefront of the discipline and keep up with the pace of discipline development.

3. Disciplinarity: It means that the core journals are always associated with a certain discipline, and the core journals of a certain discipline are the core journals about the literature of that discipline. If it is placed in a journal of another discipline, it is generally no longer a core journal. However, due to the rapid development of science and technology, the intersection and infiltration between disciplines are more complicated, so in some cases, a few journals may be the core journals of multiple disciplines, and it is normal for the core journals of a discipline to include some journals of related disciplines.

4. Authority: It means that the determination of core journals needs to be recognized. In the process of determining core journals, in addition to applying bibliometrics principles for screening, it is also necessary to absorb the opinions of representative subject experts to make up for the deviation caused by lack of subject knowledge. Its research methods must be recognized by subject experts, and its research results must be appraised by subject experts. Therefore, the authority of research institutions and the recognition of research methods of core journals are very important, otherwise the application results of core journals will not be recognized and it will be difficult to play their due role.