Journals

You can find a tutorial on how the Open Folklore website can be used to discover and access Open Access folklore journals here.

The journal literature in folklore studies is rich and variegated. In it, one can encounter everything from entertaining jokes and tall tales to rigorous analyses of complex global social problems. Folklore studies–and its journal literature–is worldwide in scope and touches upon nearly all aspects of the human condition. The work of folklorists–much of it gathered and conveyed to the world in the field's scholarly journals–should be of value to anyone interested in the lives of individual communities, the nature of specific expressive forms, and the significance of particular cultural practices. It should also be of use to everyone interested in humanity, and the human condition, in general. Since the 19th century beginnings of their field, folklorists have combined a deep curiosity about the rich particulars of specific ways of life with a comparative concern for both human difference and the commonalities bridging different peoples, places, and times.

If you are new to the world of scholarly journals, welcome. You may find the Wikipedia article "Academic Journal" a useful primer.

If you are new to the field of folklore studies (a.k.a. folkloristics), you are invited to visit the website of the American Folklore Society. The American Folklore Society is a partner in the Open Folklore project and a scholarly society representing the field in the United States.

Some crucial journals in the field are available by subscription or through fee-based services such as JSTOR and ProjectMuse. These titles include:

An extensive list of these restricted-access journals is available from the Indiana University Folklore Collection here.

A growing number of current folklore studies journal titles are published in free or open access formats that makes their content available online without subscription or access costs. Interested readers can access these titles directly from this website via the links given here. These titles include:

In the history of folklore studies, there have been many significant titles that have ceased publication but that remain very important as archives of valuable scholarship in the field. Some of these titles have not yet been made available in accessible digital form, but the Open Folklore project and its partners are working to make more of these historical titles freely available. This work is being accomplished in a variety of ways, as is illustrated by the titles enumerated--and linked to--here:

The Open Folklore project is collaborating with publishers and rights-holders to make additional folklore studies journals freely available. If you publish a current folklore studies journal or manage the affairs of a legacy journal in the field and would like help to make it freely available online, we would love to work with you. Contact information for the Open Folklore project is available here.

The journals section of Open Folklore will be re-curated annually. Please forward recommendations via the contact information available here.

If you would like more information on the wider effort to make more of the scholarly literature freely (i.e. at no cost) and openly (i.e. without most copyright restrictions) available online, you may benefit from the Open Access Overview compiled by Peter Suber. It provides an introduction to the core issues in this area and offers links to a wider range of additional resources.