Choosing the right journal for your journal article
With so many journals to choose from, selecting the right one for your journal article can be a daunting prospect. It is tempting to rush this process and go with the journal that will publish your work the quickest, but that isn’t always the best option. I have pulled together a few important factors to consider and help you on your way to choosing the best journal for you.
How do I start?
One of the best ways to get started when choosing a suitable journal is to collate a list of potential journals first. Compile this list by looking at journals relevant to your topic, journals that you have used in your own work, or by asking supervisors, colleagues, mentors or peers for recommendations.
Once you have your initial list, you can refine it by looking at past editions of the journals to see if your article would fit or if there are any similar papers; checking the publication processes, submission requirements and aims and scope; and finally, assessing the quality of the journal.
Patrick Dunleavy (2016) suggests five key considerations when choosing your journal:
The scope of a journal (including factors such as age, size, audience and internationality)
Its review processes
Whether it is open or closed access
Coverage, scale and style issues (such as article length, language, authors, referencing style)
The journal’s dissemination and impact (including JIF and altmetric scores)
Should I base my decision on citation metrics?
One way you can make a decision about the quality of a journal is through citation metrics. Think.Check.Submit (2022), established to help provide guidance to authors on publishing, explains that metrics provide a quantitative measure of the quality of a journal’s research output, with different metrics being used in the case of journal articles.
Citation metrics are widely used and can measure different things. They might measure the quantity of academic attention received by a research output, or of a journal, with a common metric being the number of times an output has been cited.
Some people recommend that you publish within sources with a high Journal Impact Factor (JIF), a commonly-used citation metric, but this is also contentious with the accuracy of such metrics being questioned (see Dunleavy, 2016).
In addition to the JIF, Think.Check.Submit (2022) highlights journal-level metrics or alternative metrics (altmetrics) as other forms of citation metrics. Journal-level metrics indicate journals with high research outputs and altmetrics look at the attention received by a research output from various online sources outside of academic sources, including blogs and social media.
Are there any journals I should avoid?
It is important when selecting a journal to avoid predatory, deceptive or fake journals. These tend to charge potential authors a fee but do not provide the services that they are supposed to, such as peer review, which can result in publications of questionable quality. Grudniewicz et al. (2019: unpaged) explain that predatory journals tend to present false or misleading information. It may be, for instance, that:
A predatory journal’s website or e-mails…present contradictory statements, fake impact factors, incorrect addresses, misrepresentations of the editorial board, false claims of indexing or membership of associations and misleading claims about the rigour of peer review.
The Think.Check.Submit campaign website explains that authors have also been known to be charged fees for withdrawing their article once they have realised their mistake in submitting to a predatory publisher.
As predatory publishers may contact authors directly, offering swift publication, it can be tempting to submit your work to these sources, especially where you are keen to get your publication portfolio underway. It is worth remembering, however, that the quality of these publications is often poor with the absence of peer reviewing, negatively affecting the reputation of those who publish within the journals. Furthermore, if you publish your work in a predatory journal and try to retract it without success, you will not be able to submit your work elsewhere.
The Think.Check.Submit website provides a useful list of things to watch out for when trying to identify predatory publishers: https://thinkchecksubmit.org/resources/
How do I choose a reliable journal?
When looking for a trustworthy journal to publish within (and when trying to avoid predatory publishers), look for journals which provide the following:
Publishing practices and processes that are transparent: You should be able to easily locate information on their publishing practices, including the stages of editorial process, the peer review process and any fees.
The author’s rights in relation to copyright: The journal should make the author’s rights explicit and they should make clear the type of licence used.
Industry initiative membership: Most reliable journals are members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Open access association membership: If a journal supports Open Access, it should be listed on the Director of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or be a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers’ Association (OASPA).
Explicit fees: All fees for authors should be easy to find on the website and they should be clearly explained.
Details of peer reviewing process: There should be clear details about the process of peer review, along with guidelines for authors and peer reviewers. Promises of a very short peer review process may be an indication of a predatory publisher.
Reliable editorial boards: Editorial members and the Editor-in-Chief should be listed and should be experts in the field whose details can be easily checked and verified.
Contact details are easily accessible: Telephone number, email and address should be easy to find.
No spelling or grammatical errors: Check the website and any emails that you have received, as well as other journal articles published in the journal, for any spelling or grammatical errors. These could be an indication of a predatory publisher.
You could also take a look at some of the journal’s previous publications and run a check on the name of the journal in electronic databases to see if it comes up.
I need more information. Where can I look?
Dunleavy, P. (2016) ‘Submitting to a journal commits you to it for six weeks to six months (or longer)’ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/11/10/choose-your-journal-carefully/our journal
Elmore, S.A. and Weston, E.H. (2020) ‘Predatory Journals: What They Are and How to Avoid Them’ Toxicologic Pathology. 48(4) 607-610.
Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D. and Lalu, M.M. (2019) ‘Predatory journals: no definition, no defence’. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03759-y
Perlin, M.S., Imasato, T. and Borenstein, D. (2018) “Is predatory publishing a real threat? Evidence from a large database study”, Scientometrics, 116, 255-273.
Think.Check.Submit (2022) ‘Metrics’ https://thinkchecksubmit.org/resources/metrics/