How to Select Journals for Publication?

By Raquel Horlick

Step 1- Create a shortlist of titles

Consider the following when developing your shortlist:

• Which journals do you cite regularly?
• Where are your colleagues publishing?
• Have you received calls for papers?
• Try a journal selecting tool (see Tools)
• Who is your audience: international, local, general, specific?
• Do you want to publish open access (see Open Access Publishing)?

Step 2- Refine your shortlist

Consider the following to narrow-down your journal options:

• Read the journal's aims, audience and scope
• Review the journal's peer-review policy
• Review articles to assess their quality (see Predatory Publishers)
• Determine your author rights (do you keep copyright)
• Search for the journal impact factor (see Scholarly Impact)
• Look at rejection rates
• Determine costs
• Find the turn-around-time for submission to publication

Step 3- Make your decision

Final things to take into consideration:

• Support with promotion
• Confirm journal isn't considered predatory (see Predatory Publishers)

Common reasons for rejection

• Manuscript doesn’t match Journal scope 
• Author guidelines aren’t followed 
• Lack of interest or need for the research
• Doesn’t add anything insightful
• Issues with empirical work 
• Questionable conclusions
• Excessive language errors
• Plagiarism 
• Improper format 

Kumar, K. (2019). Publication support services: How to avoid journal rejection? https://www.cognibrain.com/tips-for-how-to-avoid-journal-rejection/ 
Suiter, A. M. &  Sarli, C.. C., (2019). Selecting a journal for publication: Criteria to consider. https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/becker_pubs/61 

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Matchmaking tools

• JANE (Journal/Author Name Estimator)

  Allows researchers to enter the title and/or abstract of their paper to find the best matching journals, authors or articles.

• Elsevier Journal Finder

  Enter title and abstract of your paper to easily find journals that could be best suited for publishing. JournalFinder uses smart search technology and field-of-research specific vocabularies to match your paper to scientific journals.

• Endnote Manuscript Matcher

  journal matching feature suggests the top candidates for your manuscript. Just choose the publications you want, and start the process for submitting your work to the most credible, high-quality journals that match your topic and references.

• Taylor & Francis Journal Suggester

  Helping you find the best home for your research article

• Open Journal Matcher

  This tool matches a draft abstract with the best-matching open access journals.

Finding impact factors

• Journal Citation Reports 

  Best Bet!!. Allows evaluation and comparison of journals using citation data from over 7,000 scholarly and technical journals. Search impact factor by category, journal or ISSN.

• CiteScore metrics from Scopus

  Comprehensive, current and free metrics for serial titles in Scopus.

• SCImago Journal & Country Rank

  The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database

• Google Scholar Journal Metrics

  Provides the h5-index h5-median of publications in different areas of research.

• CWTS Journal Indicators

  CWTS Journal Indicators provides free access to bibliometric indicators on scientific journals. The indicators have been calculated by Leiden University’s Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) based on the Scopus database

Journal directories

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

  DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.

• Ulrichsweb: Global Serials Directory 

  Detailed, comprehensive information on serials published throughout the world. (Formerly Ulrich's Periodicals Directory)

• COPE - Committee on Publication Ethics

  "COPE provides advice to editors and publishers on all aspects of publication ethics and, in particular, how to handle cases of research and publication misconduct"

• Web of Science Core 

  Interdisciplinary database includes: Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index Expanded, and Social Sciences Citation Index, Journal Citation Reports. Includes citation searching (see how many times a paper has been cited). Coverage: 1976 - present. NOTE: Use your Web of Science/Endnote username and password or create a new username and password to access InCites, Journal Citation Reports, and/or EndNotes from Web of Science.

• Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association

  A a trade association that was established to represent the interests of Open Access (OA) publishers globally in all scientific, technical and scholarly disciplines.

• Sherpa/Romeo

  Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.

• NLM Catalog

  Confirm if Journal is indexed in PubMed or MedLine

• JournalGuide

  A growing journal database across all academic fields Search, filter, sort, and compare journals from more than 46,000 titles

• ISSN Portal

  ISSN look-up

Read full Libguide here Steps to choosing a journal - Selecting Journals for Publication - Library Guides at Tulane University