Choosing the right journal for publishing a scholarly article is a critical decision for academics and researchers. The publication outlet can shape the visibility, reach, and influence of your work. This post discusses several factors to consider when deciding where to publish your journal article, and how we at Acadia Editing Services can help you navigate this process.
Which journals are relevant?
Ensure that the journal you submit to aligns with the subject matter and scope of your research. Go to Google Scholar and search for articles that use the keywords you’ve selected for your paper. Find the articles on your topic(s) that have been published most recently. Which journals published those papers?
Start with a list of three or four of these journals. Then go to each journal’s homepage to find more information about their reputation and submission guidelines.
What is the journal’s reputation?
Consider each journal’s impact factor and reputation in your field. Higher-impact journals may reach a wider audience and have a more significant influence. However, they will also attract more competition. If you’re a graduate student or junior faculty—particularly one who is on the job market or up for tenure (or will be soon)—we can’t underemphasize the importance of timing in getting your work accepted.
If you have a time crunch, don’t try to publish in the most prestigious journal in your field! Think of choosing a journal as being like choosing a college to attend: have an aspirational option, a realistic target, and a “safety” choice. Be sure to balance the element of time with your considerations of the journal’s requirements.
If you’re not sure how to choose a journal, let us know! We offer a journal recommendation service in which we research publication options for your paper and send you a report detailing the reputations and requirements of three journals. Contact us for more information.
What is the journal’s target audience?
Think about the intended audience for your research. Is your work more suitable for practitioners, scholars, a specialized niche, or a general academic audience? Is there a particular subfield whose scholars you want to read your work? What about a particular geographic region?
For example, when I was a professor, I studied the effects of campaign advertising and, in particular, differences between men and women candidates and voters. Our relevant audiences included: political scientists, scholars of election campaigns, election practitioners (i.e., campaign managers and media people), communications scholars, gender scholars, people interested in American politics and elections, and people who study election campaigns abroad. This meant that we had to choose among several journals, such as Political Communication, the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties (JEPOP), the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, and American Politics Research. Sometimes you think a journal is a good fit, but it turns out that the editor isn’t interested. That’s just part of the process. Make an educated guess and see what happens!
(BTW, when considering the journal’s audience, you should also check if the journal is indexed in relevant databases and search engines. This affects how easily your work can be found and cited.)
What is the journal’s review process?
Poke around the journal’s website. Some publications will report the “time to first decision.” This is how long (they say) it takes for the editor to get feedback from the reviewers and issue a decision: Reject, Revise and Resubmit (R&R), or Accept (this one almost never happens).
Take this information as a data point, but be sure to talk with colleagues in your field to see if they’ve had any experience with the journals you’re considering. Some editors are very professional and organized and make sure their reviewers return their decision promptly; others, well . . . not so much. The only way to know is through word of mouth. Don’t be afraid to ask around!
What are open-access journals?
Open-access journals provide broader access for readers (allowing people to read their articles for free on their website), but they also charge authors publication fees. These fees (sometimes called Article Processing Charges) can vary significantly (often into the thousands of dollars!). Your institution may cover them, but typically it’s best to go with a journal that doesn’t require you to pay these fees (especially if you’re just starting out).
A subscription-based journal requires that you belong to an institution with a subscription to their journal (or, more likely, the database where the journal is listed, like JSTOR, EBSCOHost, etc.). You, the reader (or your institution), have to pay to access these “gated” articles, but there’s no charge for an author to publish in them.
What are the journal’s submission guidelines?
Carefully read and follow the author guidelines and formatting requirements of the journal. When you’re on the journal’s home page, look for a link that says something like “Author Guidelines,” “Submission Guidelines,” or “Information for Authors.” Usually this will open a very long webpage that describes the detailed requirements for things like:
- what to include on your title page,
- how many keywords you should include,
- the maximum word count of your abstract and article,
- how to report conflicts of interest and funding sources,
- how many section headings you can use and how to style them,
- what citation style to use, and
- how to submit tables and figures.
Some journals are even more specific and require you to download their template. Once you do, you have to import all of your text into the file and ensure that everything uses the specified formatting styles in Microsoft Word.
This is where hiring an editor can be really helpful. You’ve done the research and written the paper; what’s left is just the nit-picky administrative stuff. Why spend hours stressing about all of these details when you could be move on to your next paper, finish all that grading, or sip a Mai Tai on the beach?
What are your publishing and career goals?
Ultimately, when deciding where to submit your paper for publication, consider the impact of your choice on your academic career. While it’s important to publish in reputable journals, it’s also necessary to get your work out there in a timely fashion. If you need to show a job search committee or tenure committee that you’re a productive scholar, you don’t want to aim too high and risk losing months (or more!) to repeated review processes that end in rejection. When you’re new to publishing, target an outlet that’s manageable and has a good reputation for reviewing quickly and making a decision, rather than leaving you hanging. Then, prepare the article and submit it!
One last piece of advice before I close: It’s important to remember that getting your work published is HARD. Getting rejected and reading criticisms of the writing that you poured your heart and time into can be really tough. But it’s NOT personal. A rejection of your paper is NOT a rejection of YOU as a scholar. The more you go through the submission process (and the job market), the more you will realize that it is a finicky beast. There’s a reason why Reviewer 2 gets made fun of all the time.
Still, feedback is ALWAYS about the work and not about YOU! So if you get a rejection, by all means, wallow for a bit, have a pint of your favorite ice cream, and then get back to it. When you finally get that acceptance, it will feel SO GOOOOOD!!!
In the meantime, contact us and let us know how we can help you decide on a journal and get that paper under review. With a little guidance from us, you’ll discover that the process isn’t as complicated or intimidating as it seems.
Happy writing!
P.S. Our fall promotion is almost over! Contact us before October 31 and mention this blog post to receive 10% off your next editing project.