AbstractConcepts and techniques used in contemporary social network analysis are applied to a network of journals based on citation. By means of procedures drawing on the notion of structural equivalence, a set of blocks or positions, containing journals, are delineated. These blocks have a very close correspondence to a categorization of the journals based on their aims and objectives, supporting the idea of treating the journals of a discipline as a status‐role relational system. By means of the reduced image of the network, a highly centralized and hierarchical structure appears. Some hypotheses concerning the structure and operation of journal networks are advance