Identify Journals for Publication

Is the article the result of grant-funded research?

• Be sure to check funder policies for article sharing requirements, and select a journal that will allow you to comply. For example, the NIH, NSF, and many other federal government agencies have public access mandates for articles resulting from grant-funded research.

Are you prepared to share research data associated with your article? 

• To support research transparency and reproducibility, an increasing number of journals encourage or require authors to share data and other materials underlying their articles.

If you identify multiple journals with the right general scope for your article, how do you identify the best option? Questions to consider include:

Which journals have published the most articles about your specific topic or approach, and which are currently publishing research similar to yours?

• When comparing journal options, do a keyword search across all of a journal's issues to see how often they have published on the specific topic of your article, and note how recently they published these articles. Two journals can have the right general scope for your article, but one might have published more recent articles or more articles overall on your specific topic.

How important is the journal's average turnaround time from submission to publication?

• See if the journal is included in the journal database Cabell’s, which includes average time to review and time to publication (as long as journals choose to share this information).
• Check the journal website for this information, and contact the editor with questions.
• If all else fails, check multiple articles on the journal’s website to see if they include date information that can give you an idea of the average turnaround time. For example, some journals share the dates articles were received, revised, accepted, and/or made available online.

Where is the journal indexed and what kind of readership does it have?

• Review the journal's website to find information about where the journal is indexed, or which databases include the journal. If you cannot find this on the journal website, check the databases that you and others in your discipline commonly use to see if the journal is included.

Do you want to make the final published version of your article open access immediately upon publication?

• If so, you will need to look for fully open access journals or journals that offer an open access option. While some open access journals have no author-facing publishing charges, some do (including journals with open access options).

Do you want to be able to share freely accessible versions of your article online?

• Many journal publishers now allow authors to share certain versions of their articles online, with some restrictions. For example, authors may be allowed to share their "accepted manuscript" (the version that includes all peer review revisions but does not yet have final copy editing and layout design) on their departmental websites and in not-for-profit repositories either 12 or 24 months after publication.