Research Guides: Identify Journals for Publication: Identify Journal Options: Step by Step

First Search Steps

Two good first steps to identify journal options are to:

Review the journals on your references list.
Search subject databases that you and others in your discipline commonly use. Try searching for your article's title or keywords to find similar articles, and review the journals where they were published.

VCU Libraries Databases

Use Journal Matching Tools

Use matching tools to get journal recommendations based on your article's title, abstract, keywords, reference list, and/or full text.

Publisher-Neutral Tools

Manuscript Matcher (Web of Science)
Based on words in the title, abstract, and (if supplied) on the reference list, Manuscript Matcher generates a list of journal titles. To access Manuscript Matcher, you will need to login to your existing Web of Science or EndNote account or create a free account if you don’t have one already.
JANE (Journal/Author Name Estimator)
JANE is free online tool you can use to find articles that are similar to your article's abstract, title, or keywords. JANE compares the information you enter to millions of documents in PubMed to find the best matching journal

Note: JANE relies on the data in PubMed, which can contain papers from predatory journals, and therefore these journals can appear in JANE's results. To help identify high-quality journals, JANE now tags journals that are currently indexed in MEDLINE and open access journals approved by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Publisher-Provided Tools

Elsevier Journal Finder
Recommends up to 50 of the most relevant Elsevier journals for your article.
IEEE Publication Recommender
Searches over 190 periodicals and 1,800 conferences.
JSTOR Text Analyzer
Uses the full text of your article to search for similar content in JSTOR.
Springer Journal Suggester
Searches over 2,500 Springer and BioMed Central journals.
Wiley Journal Finder
Recommends Wiley journals that may be relevant for your research. Note: this tool is still in a beta testing phase.

Find Open Access Journals

Many publisher websites and journal indexes allow you to search or filter for open access journals. Other ways to find open access publishing options include:

VCU Libraries Open Access Publishing Fee Support
VCU Libraries and VIVA, Virginia’s academic library consortium, have agreements with some publishers that provide VCU authors with full coverage for open access publishing fees.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
A centralized list of peer-reviewed open access journals. To be included, journals must apply and demonstrate their adherence to DOAJ's criteria for inclusion.
Open Library of Humanities
The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) is a peer-reviewed open access journal platform for the humanities. OLH is funded by an international library consortium, including VCU Libraries, and has no author publishing charges.
PLOS (Public Library of Science)
PLOS publishes peer-reviewed open access journals in the areas of life science, health science, and sustainability science. It also published the journal PLOS ONE, which publishes research in over 200 subject areas across science, engineering, medicine and the related social sciences and humanities. Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, negative and null results are all in scope.

Narrow Your Options

Once you have a list of journal options, compare them against your publishing needs. Which most closely align with your criteria?

Another way to narrow your options is to determine which journals have published the most articles about your specific topic or approach and which are currently publishing research similar to yours.

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.