In this chapter, we share our view of how we can conceptualize journals more broadly, but also online journals more specifically, as meta-texts, that is as texts with presuppositions about the texts/articles they publish and about the textual practices involved in publishing. Our aim is to interrogate journal publishing practices as discursive, embodied, and material textual practices which get performed within local and trans-local contexts. To do so, first we briefly introduce the reader to the notion of text and (digital) textuality. We then discuss key concepts with regard to journal texts, including authorship, readership, mode, and context by drawing from notions which originate in functional linguistics, linguistic anthropology and ethnography, dialogic theory, and post-structuralist theorizing, while providing examples from journal publishing practices. Such notions include intertextuality and entextualization, addressivity, multimodality, roles of writing, and power asymmetries which are textually mediated in local and trans-local aspects of context. Our discussion will unfold on two levels, the one concerning texts like articles and the other concerning journals as meta-texts, as defined above. In conclusion, we argue that reflexive awareness of such semiotic and performative aspects of journals as meta-texts can enhance more transparent journal publishing practices.