LibGuides: Research LibGuide: Publishing Your Research

Where to publish my research output

This page introduces some useful tips and tools to select a suitable journal to publish your article.

What to consider and how to find a journal

What to consider when you want to publish a paper:

1. What journal will best meet your goals in sharing your research? Who is your target audience?

Are you aiming to improve patient care by influencing practitioners?
Are you sharing cutting edge research with fellow researchers or seeking a broader audience?
Do you want to reach a local audience or an international audience?
Are you expected to publish in a prestigious high impact journal?

2. What journals would be suitable for your paper?

What journals have published on similar topics? Where have papers you have read and referenced been published?
What are you publishing? Is it a clinical case study, primary research or a review article?
What is the journal's average time period to publish a paper?
Are you aiming to publish in an open access journal?
Make sure the journal's aim and scope matches your manuscript research subject
Look at the types of articles that the journal publishes to make sure it matches the article you want to submit
Read the author information thoroughly to ensure your manuscript meets all the requirements.
One piece of research might yield several papers, each focused on a different audience, on different aspects of the topic or stages of the research. Consider where you are aiming to publish early in the process of designing your research project.

3. Be aware of predatory publishing practices

Being able to recognise common characteristics of predatory publishers can help to avoid them.
The Committee on Publication Ethics' (COPE) discussion document introduces issues, and analyses potential solutions around predatory publications.
Identifying predatory academic journals and conferences - a UNESCO fact sheet raising awareness of predatory publishing practices.
The ThinkCheckSubmit.org site provides a checklist of features that can help authors identify trustworthy journals and publishers.
BMJ Editorial: Predatory journals: what can we do to protect their prey?

Western Sydney University - Develop a publishing plan

The Publishing Process

Journal selection tools

Journal selection tools are listed below.

1. Title and abstract matchers allow authors to upload the title and/or abstract of their paper to find the best matching journals.

2. Tools that compare the characteristics. impact and metrics of journals, for example Scimago, Google Scholar Metrics, DOAJ and the ERA list of journals.

1. Journals selection tools - title/abstract matchers

J.A.N.E. (Journal Author Name Estimator) Biosemantics
Enter your article title and/or abstract of the paper in the box, and click on 'Find journals', 'Find authors' or 'Find Articles'. Jane will then compare your document to millions of documents indexed in Medline to find the best matching journals, authors or articles.

JournalGuide
JournalGuide is a free tool created by a group of software developers, former researchers, and scholarly publishing veterans at Research Square. JournalGuide goal is to bring all sources of data together in one place to give authors a simple way to choose the best journal for their research. Data sources include major industry data sets, public resources, information submitted directly by journal editors, and even real-life publishing experiences submitted by authors like you.

PubMed PubReminer
PubMed PubReminer helps to determine the journal to submit your work to, by viewing the journals associated with your title.

Edanz Journal Advisor
Enter your abstract or article description in the Journal Selector to find journals that publish in related areas. Currently matching to over 28,000 journals.

Taylor and Francis Journal Suggester
Help identifying Taylor & Francis journals suitable for your paper.
Elsevier Journal Finder
Uses smart search technology and field-of-research specific vocabularies to match your paper to journals published by Elsevier.
Wiley Journal Finder
Enter your title and abstract and the system will create a list of potential Wiley journals for you to consider.

2. Journal selection tools - to assess journal quality, ranking and metrics

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals. Search or browse by subject area. Information about journals includes publisher name, keywords, language of publication, and whether the journal has article fees.

Google Scholar Metrics - Health and Medical Sciences Category
Google Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Scholar Metrics summarize recent citations to many publications, to help authors as they consider where to publish their new research.
more...less...
To get started, you can browse the top 100 publications in several languages, ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics. To see which articles in a publication were cited the most and who cited them, click on its h-index number to view the articles as well as the citations underlying the metrics.

You can also explore publications in research areas of your interest. To browse publications in a broad area of research, select one of the areas in the left column. For example: Engineering & Computer Science or Health & Medical Sciences.

To explore specific research areas, select one of the broad areas, click on the "Subcategories" link and then select one of the options. For example: Databases & Information Systems or Development Economics.

Browsing by research area is, as yet, available only for English publications. You can, of course, search for specific publications in all languages by words in their titles.
Scholar Metrics are currently based on our index as it was in June 2022.

Scimago Journal & Country Rank
The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a publicly available portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.). These indicators can be used to assess and analyze scientific domains. Journals can be compared or analysed separately. Country rankings may also be compared or analysed separately.
more...less...
Journals can be grouped by subject area (27 major thematic areas), subject category (309 specific subject categories) or by country. Citation data is drawn from over 34,100 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers and country performance metrics from 239 countries worldwide. The SJCR allows you also to embed significative journal metrics into your web as a clickable image widget

This platform takes its name from the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator (PDF), developed by SCImago from the widely known algorithm Google PageRank™. This indicator shows the visibility of the journals contained in the Scopus® database from 1996.

Research Impact

Research is being increasingly judged on whether it has an impact in the real world rather than just publications in prestigious journals or multiple journal citations.