1. Is Your Article Relevant to the Journal?

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1 Selecting a Scholarly Journal Selecting a peer-reviewed journal can be tricky business if you re new to the field, and even if you re not! The journal you choose determines: 1. If you get published 2. Who your audience will be 3. What your article will look like In this module, we will walk you through a set of questions to help you choose a scholarly journal. 1. Is Your Article Relevant to the Journal? 1. Journals tend to be focused on a specific discipline, methodology, or even more specific topic within a discipline. 2. Even if your article is strong, if it is not relevant to the journal, it will be rejected possibly in three days, possibly in one year. 3. Some journals focus on theoretical papers while others are more applied or clinical. Some journals will publish more exploratory work, while others require rigorous evidence-based papers. 4. Expand your search for journals to multiple disciplines. Most disciplines have a few top journals that everyone searches, but looking outside your disciplinary journals could demonstrate the relevance of your work to many disciplines. Just be careful that you don t publish in such an obscure place that it buries your paper.

2 2. Who is the Audience? 1. Skolits, Brockett, and Hiemstra (2011) identify two main audiences that peer-reviewed journals target. These are: a. Researchers who are looking for rigor b. Practitioners who require practical knowledge 2. Other audiences might include people concerned with a specific topic or issue, such as policymakers looking for information about climate change. 3. The geographical audience is another important consideration. If the people that you want to target are located in French speaking Gabon, then an article printed in English will be of little use. With that being said, journals in English will reach the widest audience and will reflect more strongly in your curriculum vitae than articles written in other languages. 3. Where is the Journal Indexed? 1. Is the journal indexed in major databases? The databases that index the journal will affect the readership because they make your article searchable by keywords, title, and author. 2. For example, if your article is indexed by a large database such as JSTOR or Web of Science it s going to be much more searchable than if it were only available through the journal s website. 3. See Penn State Libraries page on databases to learn more. 4. What is the Journal s Reputation? 1. A journal s impact factor is one of the best ways to assess its reputation. An impact factor represents the extent to which articles in that journal are cited. You want your articles to get into journals with high impact factors, and you want to be cited often. Other researchers citing you will validate the importance

3 of your research. For example, the journal Science has a 2014 impact factor of The 2014 impact factor for Conservation and Society was Based on the impact factor Science is a more reputable journal. This does not automatically mean it is a better place to publish. Conservation and Society is much more field specific and conservation biologists will likely find your article more easily there than they would in a broader journal such as Science. It goes back to whom you want your article to reach. 2. Words of caution: Certain types of articles get cited more often and therefore inflate the impact factor of a journal. Review papers and methodological papers tend to be cited often. On the other hand, journals that are very specific to a topic or geographic region may have low impact factors even though they publish high quality articles. 3. Find out who is on the editorial board. The editor and editorial board have a hand in encouraging new submissions and attracting new authors. So, if the editorial board is composed of an impressive list of researchers, then you can expect the articles that the journal puts out to be high quality. 4. Also, the editor and his/her board are the gatekeepers to the journal and they will either send your article through for peer-review, or send it back to you without a peer-review. The editor and board sometimes provide expert advice on submission content as well which can be extremely helpful to you as an academic writer. See a little more about editorial boards from Elsevier. 5. Be wary of publishing in new journals at the beginning of your career. Since these are not established yet, your article could be removed from databases if the journal becomes discontinued. Find out who created and is supporting to journal to get a feel for its viability. 6. Another method to assess reputation is the H index. H index quantifies an individual author s impact by measuring how often a set of his/her articles is cited.

4 7. If the journal publishes authors with high H indices, then you can assume that the journal is a reputable place to publish. 8. The University of Illinois created a useful PowerPoint about H index. 9. Lastly, talk to professors and graduate students in your field to find out what the reputable journals are. 5. Who has Access to the Journal? 1. How many libraries subscribe to the journal? If universities and/or libraries don t subscribe to it, your readership will be quite small. Individuals can also subscribe to the journal independently. 2. Is the journal online and in print, or solely online? Many journals are transitioning to being solely online. Each access point has its benefit and drawbacks. For example, journals that publish solely online have a global reach, but are limited to those with internet access. 3. Is it open access or do you need a subscription? Open access journals make research available to individuals or organizations that might not be affiliated with a subscribing institution. Open access is important if you are trying to reach a non-academic audience. But, some journals charge the author to make their article open access. 6. Where do Your Colleagues Publish? 1. Have a conversation with the principal investigator of your research project about which journals might be appropriate for the submission of your article. He or she might have additional things for you to consider that are specific to your field or topic that we do not cover here.

5 7. What are the Length and Formatting Requirements? Selecting a Scholarly Journal 1. Find this out early so you can format your article to the specifications from the beginning. It s easier than going back and making changes. 2. What is the total permissible word length of the article? 3. Do they allow tables and figures? 4. What about photomicrographs or continuous color figures? Is it published in color or black and white? 5. Which reference style must you use? 8. What is the Acceptance Rate? 1. The acceptance rate tells you the number of articles that are accepted in relation to how many submissions the journal receives. This website from the University of Michigan lists a number of places you can find journal s acceptance rates. 2. The acceptance rate for a journal is related to its reputation because of the number of submissions the journal receives as well as its standards for quality. 3. If a journal s acceptance rate is very low, you need to make sure that the quality and relevance of your article are excellent to improve your chances of acceptance. Only the best quality articles that fit the editor s vision for the journal will be accepted. This can make it challenging early in your academic career, but if your article meets these criteria and this is the journal that you want to publish in, go for it. 9. Are there Fees? 1. Submission fees are applied when you submit your article for review, so even if the journal does not publish your article you will pay a fee. These fees are usually less than $100 and fund the review process and administration costs.

6 2. An acceptance fee is administered once an article is accepted and can be in addition to a submission fee or be the first fee that you encounter. 3. Page and/or printing charges could be the next fee in the process. Printing (especially color printing) is expensive, so these fees help to ease the cost. Each page can cost up to $250 each, and color figures up to $1,000 each. 4. Publication fees have the widest range. According to the American Journal Experts these can range from $8 to almost $4, Some journals reduce fees if the first and/or last authors are members of the professional organization. 6. These can range anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. 7. Some journals charge by the page or for color figures. 8. Make sure that you look into this before you submit, and talk with your advisor/lab supervisor about funding. If you are publishing an article that comes from a larger ongoing research project, sometimes the lab or other funder will pay fees. 9. See what the American Journal Experts have to say about fees. 10. What is the Time to Print? 1. Frequently, journals will list a date submitted and a date accepted on articles that they publish. You can check out these dates in their previous issues to calculate how long their review process usually takes. 2. You might also want to consider whether the journal has an online component and if this will be published before the print issue.

7 Sources and Additional Resources: 1. Penn State University Libraries: Citation and Journal Measures 2. Springer, Tips for Authors 3. A Guide to Getting Published 4. Taylor & Francis, How to Choose a Journal 5. Map & Compass, Writing and Publishing 6. Finding a Journal 7. Finding Journal Acceptance Rates the University of Michigan 8. Skolits, G.J., Brockett, R. G., HIemstra, R. (2011). In Rocco, T. S. & Hatcher, T. (Eds.), The handbook of scholarly writing and publishing. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.