The professionalization of business, a relatively recent phenomenon, predicated on and defined by the formal study of a recognized body of knowledge about that profession rather than through apprenticeship and experience, has had a direct impact on the publication of business information in the United States. William Fisher's Business Journals of the United States surveys more than 100 business serials in separate profiles that, taken as a whole, provide a history of this type of publishing in the United States. The titles included here represent three types of publishers of business information: business schools or university presses and professional associations or societies, both categories basically products of the twentieth century; and commercial publications of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most of the titles are relatively new, having been in print for less than fifty years and most are still being published. Selected from the more than 7,800 available business titles, these journals, both popular and scholarly, depict a variety of publishers as well as the broad range of interests that make up the business community. Not included are business newsletters and house organs or company publications that will be treated in a forthcoming volume in the series.
Each entry is divided into two parts. First, a contributed essay highlights the development of the title and puts it into the context of business/management publishing. Factual data about the publisher's history, sources, where the contents of a title are indexed, and where appropriate, a bibliography of sources used by the contributors in preparing their essays, comprises the second part. The information, current as of January 1990, has been verified to the extent possible by both contributors and the editor. This survey of the development of a business press in the United States will provide students and scholars of business, business history, and business journalism an introduction to the variety of serial literature relating to business available in the field.
