Which journals?

These guidelines will help you determine which journals to publish in. You could also consider writing conference papers or poster presentations, book reviews or reports. Refer to Resources for more information on publishing. You may also wish to consider publishing in conference proceedings

• Look at potential journals
• Use your network
• Research your list of journals
• Other considerations

Look at potential journals

Think as broadly as possible when looking at potential journals. Going beyond your research interest will help. You might consider the:

• broad area of academic interest
• specific academic field
• specific types of method and methodology
• level of inquiry (postgraduate, work in progress, completed studies)
• particular industry or professional group
• publication speed
• availability of an electronic version (more relevant to science than arts scholars)

Will publication in an open access journal be valued less by the scholarly community than publication in a traditional print journal?

You may be concerned about the reputation of electronic journals and hesitant to submit your work to new model, electronic-only publishers. Although ISI Thomson Scientific (citation databases and journal citation reports) is only just starting to include open access titles in its indexes, so far such titles are well cited. (See Trends in scholarly publishing.)

SHERPA (UK-based) is developing open access institutional repositories in a number of research universities. This site also hosts the Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving service, which you can use to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.

If you publish in an electronic journal you can then link to your article from your homepage (Networking in the research community online workshop > Electronic networking) (student username and password required). You may also arrange with the journal to link back to your homepage from the article.

Looking for the 'top 10' journals to publish in or for well-cited articles?

Refer to the Library’s Citation and journal metrics guide

Use your network

Who would you like to associate with professionally? Which journals do they publish in?

Ask your supervisors, other staff and peers about who publishes where and journals significant in your field. Most authors publish in journals:

• frequently used by the authors they have cited
• listed in the bibliographies of articles they have cited
• recommended by their supervisors, colleagues or peers
• listed in the webpages and catalogues of key publishers in the area

For more information on networking, go to Networking in the research community online workshop (student username and password required).

Research your list of journals

The Library online workshop Where could I publish? is your best approach to researching journals. This workshop will help you select journals by:

• identifying and locating peer reviewed journals
• defining and calculating the journal impact factor as a measure quality
• locating journal impact factors from a number of sources

Please note: on-campus workshops are also offered.

You can also visit journal websites to research them in more detail. Skim read back copies of a journal for:

• topical debates, subject areas, questions
• reputation and status
• methodological perspectives, philosophical traditions, ideological biases
• information for authors
• readership and distribution (overseas, academic, professional, online)
• commonly published authors
• lists of reviewers
• upcoming special editions or calls for papers
• the selection process (peer review, turnaround, deadlines, ‘tracking process’)
• who is on the editorial board (ie referees or reviewers)

Other considerations

Does your article fit, or can it be made to fit, the journal’s interests?

You could adapt your article to the journal by:

• framing it in terms of topical debates
• citing authors already published in the journal
• situating it within the journal’s research context
• writing from the journal’s point of view and to its format

Contact the editor

Find out whether the editorial board think your article is suitable for the journal by sending in an abstract.

Information courtesy of Dr Wendy Bastalich and Dr Debra King, Learning and Teaching Unit