Publishing Your Research

Image credit:  University of Winnipeg Library

Fit, Impact and Quality: Things to Consider Before You Submit

Fit:

Subject area: Does the disciplinary and topical focus of this journal align with your research?

Audience: Who would be most interested in your research, and are they reading this journal? Consider whether your research is more specialized, or of interest to the field as a whole, or interdisciplinary.

Methodology/article type: Is your research qualitative, quantitative, theoretical, or empirical research? Is it a case study, a data paper, a review article, a protocol? Check if the journal publishes this kind of research.

Turnaround time: If you’re in a hurry to publish, you may want to find a journal that has a faster review period. Typically, you can only submit to one journal at a time.

Funder policies: Your funder might care about where you publish and what the publisher will let you do with your article (such as deposit it in an open access repository). This might influence where you choose to publish your article.

Impact:

How does the journal impact the scholarly community?  The best known type of measurements are "citation based impact metrics."  These are usually calculated using factors such as the number of times a journal is cited during a specific time frame.  This could be a 2-year or 5-year citation window.  

Learn more about Journal Impact Factors:

Lariviere, V., & Sugimoto, C. R. (2018). The Journal Impact Factor: A brief history, critique, and discussion of adverse effects. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.mga.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsarx&AN=edsarx.1801.08992&site=eds-live&scope=site

Quality

Consider how the journal relates to standards set by the scholarly community.  One quality standard many may be familiar with is Peer Review.  

Acknowledgement: Rochelle Lundy and Julia Hon, University of Washington iSchool class of 2018.

What is Peer Review?

Peer review is the process through which professional abstracts, proposals, grants, manuscripts, and practice are examined by a team of qualified reviewers who determine the quality of the work product in relation to current knowledge in that field (Smith, 2006; Southgate et al., 2001).

Greiner, P. A. (2011). Peer review. In H. R. Feldman, Nursing leadership (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.mga.edu/loginurl=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/spnurld/peer_review/0?institutionId=3733

Traditional peer review

Single blind peer review: The author is not aware of the identity of the reviewers, but the reviewers know the identity of the author. Bias may be a risk.

Double blind peer review: Neither the author nor the reviewers know each others' identities. This process mitigates bias, but has been criticized for lacking transparency.

Emerging peer review

Open peer review: The identities of authors/reviewers are known to all participants (and sometimes reviews are published along with the work).

Transferable peer review: The journal's editor can suggest that articles not recommended by reviewers be submitted to another journal in the publisher’s portfolio along with the review.

Acknowledgement: Rochelle Lundy and Julia Hon, University of Washington iSchool class of 2018.

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