How Do I Choose the Best Journal for My Paper?

HOW DO I CHOOSE THE BEST JOURNAL FOR MY PAPER? Which journal is the best one in scholarly publishing for my paper? This video lists the decision points when making this decision.

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TRANSCRIPT:
How do I decide the best journal for my paper?

Hi there, I am John Bond from Riverwinds Consulting and this is Publishing Defined.

Today I am to going to be discussing how to choose a scholarly journal for you to submit your paper to. A bit about me: I’ve been in scholarly publishing for over 25 year and as Chief Content Officer for a major medical publisher oversaw the publishing of over 20,000 peer reviewed articles.

So, you have collected your data and information or completed your study. You have written your paper. Now what?

Prior to deciding, make sure you have had the paper read and critiqued by your colleagues and associates. Consider very carefully their feedback and make the changes where you see fit. Remember to give it one more very close check for grammar, spelling, format and style before moving on. Now you are ready.

In starting to consider where to submit your paper, create a chart or list of the options under consideration. Include the journals you read and receive; and the ones you respect. Ask your co-workers and colleagues what journals best fit the topic of your paper and have them weigh in on their opinions on the publications.

In your chart, list these journal names and their urls. Most journal website will have an About section that will list the Mission or Aims and Scope of the publication. Read them and see if they align with your content and article format. Add to the chart the journal’s frequency; that is monthly, bimonthly, quarterly.

Closely review the Information for Authors published for each Journal, likely at their website. This is the best guide to see if your article is a fit and will save everyone time. Read it very closely. Not just their mission but also the specifications for format and types of articles that are interested in.

Also, if a journal has an Impact Factor, it may be listed at their website. If not, sometimes searching the web for that journal’s current Impact Factor will give you an answer.

List whether the journal is subscription based, or sent to members of a Society, or an Open Access publication. Sometimes a journal may be more than one of these. If it is Open Access, check out the APC or Author Processing Charge and include the amount, if any. The more widely the journal is available, for example an Open Access publication, the more your article will get downloaded and read.

Next check on where the journal is indexed. For instance, in medicine or nursing, being included in Medline or CINAHL are essential. Check for your area of specialty to see if the journal is covered in your key abstracting and indexing service.

Once again, go the website and ensure articles are included online in addition to in the paper version of the journal. Are they posted online at acceptance or only when a print version appears?

What may be listed at a website is the average time a paper takes to get from submission to decision and then the time it takes to get from acceptance to being published. If your topic has a sense of urgency to it, this time can be a critical decision. These times may not be publicly available.

On occasion, the acceptance rate or rejection rate from the previous year may be listed. This would be a key piece of data as well.

Search your topic over at a journal’s website to see if they have published any articles on it over the past two years. Most journals are looking for new or novel takes on existing topics and you might want to see what they have recently published.

Finally, submit to just one journal at a time. I know it is tempting to reduce the wait time and send out to many journals or publications, but etiquette (and ethics) demand one at a time only.....