For the area of mathematics, if you somehow managed to conflate an entire branch of study with a mere periodical, see Discrete mathematics.
Academic Journal
This is about Discrete Mathematics, the academic journal. One might assume the title is self-explanatory, but apparently, clarity is a luxury we can't afford. It operates within the sprawling, often bewildering, field of mathematics, a discipline that, much like life itself, offers more questions than answers. The primary language of publication is English, a concession to global standardization, I suppose. It's edited by Douglas B. West, a figure of some renown in these circles, who presumably has the unenviable task of sifting through countless submissions.
Publication Details: This journal has been gracing the academic landscape since 1971—a testament to its endurance, or perhaps simply to the persistent demand for more papers. It's published by the North-Holland Publishing Company, a name that carries a certain weight in the publishing world, for those who care about such things. The frequency of its appearance is a rather relentless 24 issues per year, a pace that suggests a conveyor belt of new research, or a desperate attempt to keep up with the ever-expanding universe of discrete problems. As for its influence, its 2020 impact factor was a modest 0.87, a number that means precisely what you think it means in the grand scheme of academic metrics.
Standard Abbreviations: For those who prefer their information distilled into cryptic codes, the journal adheres to the ISO 4 standard abbreviation, appearing as Discrete Math., alongside other esoteric designations like those found in Bluebook and NLM systems. Such abbreviations, while convenient for librarians and database architects, rarely illuminate the actual content.
Indexing: The journal, predictably, is abstracted and indexed across a multitude of services, ensuring its digital footprints are scattered far and wide. These include the CODEN DSMHA4, the rather universal ISSN 0012-365X, an LCCN of 72621801, and an OCLC number: 471516939. These identifiers, of course, exist to help you locate it, should you ever genuinely need to.
Discrete Mathematics stands as a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal, which, for the uninitiated, means that its articles have been scrutinized by other academics—a process as fraught with human bias as any other, but one we collectively pretend ensures quality. Its focus is, rather obviously, the broad expanse of discrete mathematics, along with its closely intertwined relatives: combinatorics, graph theory, and their myriad applications across various fields.
Established in 1971, it has been steadfastly published by the North-Holland Publishing Company since its inception. The journal serves as a repository for various forms of academic contribution, accepting everything from concise "short notes" that presumably get straight to the point, to comprehensive "full length contributions" that explore topics with exhaustive (or exhausting) detail, and even the occasional "survey articles](/Survey_article)" which attempt to summarize swathes of existing research, often with varying degrees of success. Beyond its regular issues, the journal dedicates a portion of its annual output to special issues, each meticulously curated around a specific, often niche, topic. While it began its publication journey with a commendable multilingual approach, accepting articles in both French and German, it has since succumbed to the inevitable tide of academic globalization, now exclusively accepting English language submissions. The current editor-in-chief is Douglas West, affiliated with the University of Illinois, Urbana, a man who clearly enjoys the ceaseless pursuit of mathematical rigor.
History
The journal's inception in 1971 marked another entry into the ever-growing catalogue of academic periodicals. Its very first published article, a historical tidbit for those who collect such things, was penned by the legendary Paul Erdős. This particular mathematician, a titan of prolificacy, went on to publish an astonishing total of 84 papers within the pages of Discrete Mathematics alone. One can only imagine the sheer volume of his output, a testament to a life entirely dedicated to numbers and connections, perhaps a little too dedicated for some.
Abstracting and indexing
To ensure its contents are discoverable by those few who genuinely seek them out, Discrete Mathematics is rigorously abstracted and indexed across a comprehensive suite of academic databases and services. This includes the venerable ACM Computing Reviews, the somewhat less catchy Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, and the rather broad Current Contents under its Physics, Chemical, & Earth Sciences umbrella. For those with a particular bent towards operational challenges, it's also found within the International Abstracts in Operations Research. Naturally, it's a staple in the essential Mathematical Reviews and the European counterpart, Zentralblatt MATH. Additionally, its presence extends to PASCAL, the influential Science Citation Index, and the ubiquitous Scopus, among other repositories designed to categorize the relentless march of human inquiry.
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the metric that attempts to quantify the influence of academic publications, the journal registered a 2020 impact factor of 0.87. This figure, derived from the number of citations received by articles published in the journal, is often used, somewhat controversially, as a proxy for a journal's relative importance within its field. It's a number, nothing more, but one that academics often treat with a reverence usually reserved for deities.