Where do I publish? Being strategic with your publications
Research, which contributes to society's body of knowledge, is communicated in a variety of ways. Scholarly communication through peer reviewed material is a necessity. "The peer review and evaluation system is utilised to protect, maintain, and raise the quality of scholarly material published in serials [journals]. Publications subject to the refereed process are assumed, then, to contain higher quality content than those that aren't." (Ulrich's International Periodical Directory).
Points to consider in addition to the peer review process are identifying high impact journals, which database indexes the publication and publication circulation.
- there is a requirement or expectation to publish
- to raise your research profile
- increase the visibility of your research
A publication's reliability, integrity and quality needs to be considered when identifying where to publish. Evaluate publications in terms of the following attributes:
- peer review
- citation analysis indicated by impact factor
- international editorial board
- international circulation
- international author base
- coverage by an abstracting indexing service
Ali, S. (1996) Library Review, Vol 45, no.1, p41
There are a number of databases and websites that may assist you with identifying and evaluating a journal in which to publish. Journal Citations Reports (JCR) is the most reputable tool, but does not cover journals in the arts and very few journals in the humanities. The tools listed below, provides you with specific resources to assist with journal identification and evaluation.
Journals in JCR Science and JCR Social Sciences have been through a rigorous selection process including peer review. Journals listed in JCR are often referred to as high impact journals; each journal has an impact factor which ranks the journal within each subject category.
What is an impact factor?
The impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. Via a ranking system the impact factor enables evaluation and comparison of journals in the same subject category using citation data.
Although this is a universal tool used by academics and researchers, there are limitations:
- it favours English speaking countries and regions
- it does not include every journal published
- journals containing a high number of review articles have a higher impact factor
- some of the subject categories are broad while others are very specific
- impact factors from different subject categories can not be compared
Use the JCR guide or contact the Research Training Librarian for assistance.
Ulrich's is a major source of information about journals. Ulrich's indicates if a journal is peer reviewed and where it is indexed/abstracted and circulation details for some journals. While Ulrich's does not provide information on journal ranking it does link to journals which are listed in JCR. Identify relevant journals by searching keyword or subject.
Use the Ulrich's guide or contact the Research Training Librarian for assistance.
The Journal Quality List uses a variety of sources, for exampleRAE, Financial Times, British Journal of Management, to rank 900 plus journals in Economics, Finance, Accounting, Management, and Marketing.
The DEST Register is a list of journal titles that have been assessed by DEST as satisfying the peer review requirements for the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC). Many of the titles in the DEST Register are not listed in JCR or Ulrich's. This list is static and is not being update by DEST.
When submitting an article for publication check the journal's instructions for authors. These may specify text formatting, length of abstract and other publication requirements. Instructions for authors are often available from the journal's homepage. Ulrich's provides journal homepage URL's.
Research Online is an open access digital archive promoting the scholarly output of the University of Wollongong. Once you have published your work, staff and research students are encouraged to include a copy in Research Online to:
- make your publication freely available to researchers worldwide, usually through a Google search
- increase your research visibility and increase your publication's citations
- receive monthly notification of the number of downloads for your article
- showcase your research output
- connect and collaborate with other researchers in the field
Preprint and eprint servers are sites where documents are available either before publishing or as an alternative source to the formally published version. Some may not be published in any other form. Note that some journals do not allow publication in preprint servers. Sherpa provides a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.
Updates on issues relating to scholarly information.
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