Academic Publishing: Selecting Journals

1. Who is your audience?

You may be trying to reach peers in your discipline, but you may also be interested in reaching policy makers, practitioners, or a niche group in your field. Think carefully about who you want to reach, and how it’s most effective to do that. There are a range of journal types and formats (society journals, review journals, data journals, etc.) that you can choose from to most effectively reach your desired audience.

2. What are your priorities?

What is most important to you as you look to publish your work? Consider your timeline, journal reputation, and open access options. Do you want to focus only on high impact journals, even if they only publish twice a year? Or are you on a tighter timeline and want to prioritize journals with shorter acceptance times and rolling publication? Is it important that your work be open access, or is it okay for it to be published behind a paywall?

3. How much does it cost to publish?

There can be costs associated with publishing, and these very from journal to journal. Article Processing Charges, which are often required by open access journals, run into the thousands of dollars. There may also be page charges, color figure charges, and copyright clearance charges associated with publishing. Always know how much it will cost before you submit to journal.

Once you have explored your answers to the questions above, you can select some target journals. Talk to your peers and colleagues about potential journals, look at journals you frequently cite, and consider journals associated with professional societies and organizations in your field.

Aims & Scope

One of the most common reasons for rejection is a mismatch between the manuscript and the aims and scope of the journal. Read the aims and scope carefully, and look at the titles, abstracts, and authors the journal has published for the past 6 to 12 months.

Timelines

Publishing an academic article can take anywhere from a few months to a few years. Check how many issues the journal publishes per year. If the information is provided, check the submitted dates versus the published dates. Some journal also advertise their average time from submission to acceptance. Beware of journals that promise a very quick turnaround time. Quality peer review takes time to complete—if a journal is guaranteeing fast publication, steer clear.

Visibility and Quality

The higher quality a journal, the more visible your work will be. Come indicators of quality include the use of DOIs, complete metadata for articles, full text of the article available on the journal website, and fully accessible PDFs. You can also search in your preferred disciplinary databases to check if a journal is discoverable in those collections. If a journal states that they have an impact factor of some kind, make sure you verify its truth and understand what it means.

Writing a good presubmission inquiry can help you find the right journal for your paper faster. They can help you save time by not needing to reformat your manuscript as often as you go through submission to new journals. Presubmission inquiries should be a brief email and include a clear, concise summary of your paper.

Keep in mind that not all journals accept presubmission inquiries, and a positive response on a presubmission inquiry doesn’t guarantee acceptance. Below are some examples of what publishers look for in presubmission inquiries.

• Nature guidelines
• Company of Biologists guidelines
• Cell Press guidelines