Scholarly Journalism
During the past 13 years, ASP Ins. has established, managed and published many scholarly journals in Iran, but according to domestic laws which do not permit the institutes other than universities and scientific associations to have scholarly journals and due to rapid changing of managers of these governmental organizations, the list of ASP Ins. journals has been always under rapid changes. But now, as the pressure of international organizations increases on Iran to observe the rules of the independence of editorial members of the journals, the role of publishers have increased and ASP Ins. tries more than before to implement the principles of transparency and best practice of scholarly journals.
There are different definitions for scholarly journals by different sources
An academic or scholarly journal is a peer-reviewed or refereed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research. Content typically takes the form of articles presenting original research, review articles, and book reviews. The purpose of an academic journal, according to the first editor of the world's oldest academic journal Henry Oldenburg, is to give researchers a venue to "impart their knowledge to one another, and contribute what they can to the Grand design of improving natural knowledge, and perfecting all Philosophical Arts, and Sciences."
A peer-reviewed scholarly journal is one written by experts in a particular discipline. After the author's peers (other experts in the field) have reviewed the article and given it a stamp of approval, the article is published in a journal. This approval of other experts adds a lot of credibility to the claims in the article.
According to olinuris.library.cornell.edu
Scholarly journals are also called academic, peer-reviewed, or refereed journals (Strictly speaking, peer-reviewed (also called refereed) journals refer only to those scholarly journals that submit articles to several other scholars, experts, or academics (peers) in the field for review and comment. These reviewers must agree that the article represents properly conducted original research or writing before it can be published.
Scholarly journal can also be called academic journal or very often peer-reviewed journal that includes original research articles, written by researchers and experts in a particular academic discipline.
There is one common point in all these definitions; being peer-reviewed that shows the importaance of this concept in publishing academic or scholarly journals. But now it is defenitely understood that for having appropriate peer-reviewing process some other thing must be observed; controling the money and charges. May be it is because of this that some researchers in the journalism believe that the scholarly journal is that the participating staffs (authors and reviewers) in its content production do not earn money from or paid for. As the concept of conflict of interests emerges in recent 2 decades, the appropriateness of this definition becomes more glorious. As money flow can deviate the peer-reviewing process and also the independence of journal editors (2 main criteria of ASP manifest), it is of our great commitments to care about it in all parts of scholarly publishing by referring to international standards and statements.