I keep journals in a separate library.
I put the Journal Name in Author and the edition identifier (volume no, date, whatever) in the Title. I tried various alternatives but this works best for me.
I have a Peoples Names column for Authors, and a TOC in the Comments.
It would be nice if I could 'label' the Author and Title columns as Journal and Edition - but I can live with it as it is
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Re Content Search
We use the OS (Windows & OS/X) to do content searching, from there its trivial to generate an 'author and title' list or csv to push into the Import List plug in. We want to include things in the search that are not in Calibre, such as email, web clippings, spreadsheets... etc.
BR