It's often useful to limit searches/guides to resources that can be used in an academic setting. These rules may help you to do that. They'll work best for those in biblical and/or theological studies. Those studying on Ministry courses may find them less helpful. They're based on books in my own library, so aren't complete. If there are things you think I've missed, or got wrong, please let me know, and if I agree I'll update the rules accordingly.
If you want to add your own titles, you can just tag them with 'academic', and they should show up in these collections.
In my library, the resources below comprise of about 22% of my library. I would expect the proportion to be a little higher, so they probably err on the side of caution, and aren't comprehensive. Nevertheless, they hopefully give you a good head start.
Academic journals
Like all these rules, you may want to adapt this to suit your own preferences. I've excluded journals written before 1970, as often articles this old no longer reflect current scholarship. That part of the rule is easy to delete or change if you wish.
type:journal (series:("Ashland Theological", "Bible and Spade", "Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics", "Bibliotheca Sacra", "Bulletin for Biblical Research", "Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research", "The Bulletin Series of the Near East Archaeological Society: New Series", "The Churchman", "Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal", "Evangelical Review of Theology", "Ex Auditu", "Faith and Mission", "Filología Neotestamentaria", "First Things", "Grace Journal", "Grace Theological Journal", "Harvard Theological Review", "Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies", "Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament", "Journal of Biblical and Pneumatological Research", "The Journal of Biblical Counseling", "Journal of Biblical Literature", "The Journal of Cuneiform Studies", "Journal of Hebrew Scriptures", "Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages", "Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society", "Journal of Theological Interpretation", "Master’s Seminary Journal", "Near Eastern Archaeology", "Review and Expositor", Semeia, "Southern Baptist Journal of Theology", Themelios, "Trinity Journal", "Tyndale Bulletin", "Westminster Theological Journal", "Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly") pubdate:>1970, mytag:academic)
Academic dictionaries
This rule includes theological lexicons as well as encyclopaedias.
type:(Encyclopedia, Lexicon) AND (((series:("The Encyclopedia of Christianity", "IVP Dictionary of the ??? Testament", "Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament"), title:("The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary","Augustine through the Ages","Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible", "Dictionary of Biblical Imagery", "A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature", "Dictionary of Christianity in America", "The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew", "Dictionary of Daily Life in Biblical & Post-Biblical Antiquity", "Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible", "The Dictionary of Historical Theology", "Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Second Edition", "Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters", "Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics", "The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism", "The Encyclopaedia of Judaism", "Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity", "The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement", "The Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament", "A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature", "The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament", "The New Bible Dictionary", "New Dictionary of Biblical Theology", "New Dictionary of Theology", "New International Dictionary of ??? Testament Theology", "The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible", "The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church", "The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament", "Theological Lexicon of the ??? Testament") OR (author:Liddell AND title:"A Greek-English Lexicon")) ANDNOT title:("Zondervan Dictionary of Biblical Imagery", "The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged")) OR mytag:academic)
Academic monographs
This rule is based mostly on academic publishers and to a lesser extent on series. But you could also modify it to include academic authors. I've included two authors to demonstrate this. It's not practical to include all academic writers, so we should just add those who often publish academic work in non-academic presses.
-type:(bible-commentary, journal, magazine, bible, dictionary, encyclopedia,lexicon, media, devotional,interactive) -series:"Logos Mobile Education" ((author:("Evans, Craig A.", "Dunn, James D. G.", "Wright, N. T."), publisher:("American Academy of Religion", Apollos, "Biblical Archaeology Society", Bloomsbury, Brill, Continuum, Eerdmans, Eisenbrauns, "Fortress Press", Hendrickson, "Jewish Publication Society", "Mellen Biblical Press", "Mohr Siebeck", "Pickwick Publications", "Pontifical Biblical Institute", "Sheffield Phoenix Press", "Society of Biblical Literature", "St Vladimir's Seminary Press", "T&T Clark", "Wipf & Stock", Academic, University), series:("Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology", "Ancient Christian Writers", "Classics of the Radical Reformation", "The Classics of Western Spirituality", "Contours of Christian Theology", "Great Books of the Western World", "Lexham Methods Series", "The Loeb Classical Library", "New Studies in Biblical Theology")) pubdate:>1950, mytag:academic)
Academic Commentaries
I suggest you simply use my Technical Commentaries rule, rather than create a new rule here.
All academic resources
You might find it helpful to create one additional collection that contains all the collections listed above.
Please note that complex collections like this are calculated on startup, and re-calculated every time the library is updated. They'll add a small amount of time to start up (perhaps 1-3s each), and a similar amount to the "Updating library catalog" that occurs when you edit your library or add/remove books. Other than that, they shouldn't slow Logos at all.
