J is for Journal

I'm aware of a few round-ups of journals for geologists, but none for those of us with more geophysical leanings. So here's a list of some of the publications that used to be on my reading list back when I used to actually read things. I've tried to categorize them a bit, but this turned out to be trickier than I thought it would be; I hope my buckets make some sense.

Journals with mirrored content at GeoScienceWorld are indicated by GSW. 

Peer-reviewed journals

• SEG Geophysics — GSW — RSS, or subscribe to a specific topic! — Old school. Subscription only.
• EAGE Geophysical Prospecting — RSS — Kinda old school. Subscription only.
• CSEG Canadian Journal of Exploration Geophysics — recently revived after more than a decade off the shelf. Support Canadian geophysics and submit your manuscripts! All of the archives are freely accessible (though not 'open').
• EAGE Near Surface Geophysics — no RSS — Subscription only. Niche.
• AAPG Bulletin — GSW — RSS (doesn't work for me) — has lots of articles relevant to interpreters.

Technical magazines

• First Break — indispensible news from EAGE and the global petroleum scene, and a beautifully produced periodical to boot. No RSS feed, though. Boo. Subscription only.
• The Leading Edge — GSW — RSS — SEG's classic monthly that You Must Read. But... subscription only.
• Recorder is brilliant value for money, even if it doesn't have an RSS feed. It is also publicly accessible after three months, which is rare to see in our field. Yay, CSEG!

Other petroleum geoscience readables

• SPE Journal of Petroleum Technology — all the news you need from SPE. It's all online if you can bear the e-reader interface. Mostly manages to tread the marketing-as-article line that some other magazines transgress more often (none of those here; you know what they are).
• CWLS InSite — openly accessible and often has excellent articles, though it only comes out twice a year now. Its sister organisation, SPWLA, allegedly has a journal called Petrophysics, but I've never seen it and can't find it online. Anyone?
• Elsevier publish a number of excellent journals, but as you may know, a large part of the scientific community is pressuring the Dutch publishing giant to adopt a less exclusive distribution and pricing model for its content. So I am not reading them any more, or linking to them today. This might seem churlish, but consider that it's not uncommon to be asked for $40 per article, even if the research was publicly funded.

General interest magazines

• IEEE Spectrum — RSS — a terrific monthly from 'the world's largest association for the advancement of technology'. They also publish some awesome niche titles like the unbelievably geeky Signal Processing — RSS. You can subscribe to print issues of Spectrum without joining IEEE, and it's free to read online. My favourite.
• Royal Statistical Society Significance — RSS (seems to be empty) — another fantastic cross-disciplinary read. [Updated: You don't have to join the society to get it, and you can read everything online for free]. I've happily paid for this for many years.

How do I read all this stuff?

The easiest way is to grab the RSS feed addresses (right-click and Copy Link Address, or words to that effect) and put them in a feed reader like Google Reader. (Confused? What the heck is RSS?). If you prefer to get things in your email inbox, you can send RSS feeds to email.

If you read other publications that help you stay informed and inspired as an exploration geophysicist — or as any kind of subsurface scientist — let us know what's in your mailbox or RSS feed!

The cover images are copyright of CSEG, CWLS and IEEE. I'm claiming 'fair use' for these low-res images. More A to Z posts...