Contents

Introduction 03

The Predatory Publishers 04

Choosing the Right Journal - Factors to Consider 09

Tools to find the right journal 17

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 2

 Introduction

P ut together six months to one year long wait times of journals with crazy high rejection rates and you
will know why it is so crucial for you to think through your decision of choosing the right journal.

As early-career researchers, this is one decision that will impact your career advancement, funding op-
portunities and professional reputation for years to come. Getting this wrong can be a huge setback for
your career. It is thus important that you carefully analyze each aspect of journal submission instead of
relying on only one resource as your holy grail, be it word-of-mouth, journal finder tools, or other re-
sources available.

In this eBook, we attempt to provide you with everything you need to analyze the quality, credibility,
author experience and the overall reputation of journals so you do not have to spend hours scouting for
tools and tips on multiple websites. Its all packed for you neatly in this one go-to document that you can
bookmark to refer in times of need. So lets get started.

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 3

 CHAPTER 1

The Predatory Publishers

P ublication in a good peer-reviewed journal is the ultimate goal for most research projects. Over
34,000 scholarly journals fall into this category and choosing the best journal for your work is like
finding the needle in a haystack already. But before we get to that, nowadays even a bigger problem looms
over our head: what if the journal you are submitting to is not legit? Its a genuine concern, considering
the amount of predatory publishers that have come up as an aftermath of the gold Open Access move-
ment.

Predatory publishers often game Google Scholar and Academia.edu systems to get access to recently
published papers and their authors. Many also set up seeming-legit websites and then send general call
for papers emails. Or sometimes they also send flattering and highly personalized emails to authors
specifically mentioning about one of their published works and how thats exactly the kind of thing their
journal or conference is looking for.

It is also common to receive unsolicited emails from such publishers to turn a paper into a complete
book, or to draw from your recently published journal article to present as a keynote at some obscure
conference. Most experienced authors understand the way the industry works way too well to fall for
such scams. But first-time authors are under a lot of pressure to start publishing soon and are also unfa-
miliar with the esteemed journals in their discipline. They are the ones who fall prey to such emails. The
promise of getting published within 4-6 weeks seems too tempting when youve heard others say that it
Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 4
 can take between six months and a year to get your paper published, which honestly sounds ridiculous
to any new researcher.

Earlier these emails were still easy to spot, but now scammers would even go to the extent of hacking a
legit journal (which is often in print and doesnt have an online presence), creating its counterfeit web-
site, and setting up an email account to send spam emails and pocket more money.

Red Flags to Spot Predatory Publishers

1. When in doubt, check Jeffrey Bealls lists to spot scammers - God bless Jeffrey Beall for creating
this popular list of predatory publishers and journals and the list of hijacked journals to make our
lives a little less complicated.

2. No standard identifiers, like ISSNs or

DOIs - Publishers whose sole purpose is
to scam people to make more money do
not have standard identifiers, like DOIs or
ISSNs. Some who actually do, often do not
know how to use them properly.

Spend some time googling the ISSN or

journal title for a few minutes and careful-
ly read through the results. You should be
Image credit: Wikipedia

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 5

 able to spot a scam pretty quickly. Sometimes a quick google check of the email ID from which you
received the message can also help find posts on forums where others have already mentioned about
the scammer.

3. The scope of the journal is too wide - Scholarly peer-reviewed journals often focus on a particular
niche under a broad discipline. For example, Mediterranean Politics published by Taylor and Francis
focuses on research related to international relations and contemporary politics in the Mediterranean
Sea and areas surrounding it.

But if the Aims and scope and About this journal pages of a journal suggest you can publish every-
thing about education or politics; or if the journal published by a publisher mentions a combination
of two or more unrelated fields together (for example - International Journal of Science, Humanities
and Business), run in the opposite direction.

4. No transparency about article processing charges or APS - Many international journals now charge
APS, especially when it is an open access journal. But mostly the fee is payable when the journal has
already gone through the entire process of getting your paper peer reviewed, copyedited, and typeset
for free, and have been accepted for publication.

An important distinction to make here is that all reputed journals, even if they charge APS, will reveal
the chargeable amount beforehand on their website. With predatory publishers however, even if they
mention about APS beforehand, they mostly do not reveal the exact amount upfront.

Another malignant practice is for such publishers to charge APS and still require authors to transfer

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 6

 and retain the copyrights of their work to the journal. Some even ask for it at the time of submission
of manuscripts.

5. Poor online presence - Dead links, gruesome grammatical errors, unlicensed images, too many ads
and misspellings are all indicators of a non-credible publisher website. If their brand image is not im-
portant to them, imagine what you can expect from them for your paper?

6. The journal is not well-indexed - Reputed journals are well-indexed and have widespread coverage
in the databases of library holdings, like Google Scholar searches, EBSCOHost and Ingenta and oth-
ers, since they are recommended by peer groups and are recognized for their good standing.

SCOPUS, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the International Bibliography of the Social
Sciences (IBSS), ISI (Web of Science), the Norwegian List, SSherpa-Romeo, WorldCAT, and ciELO
(in South Africa) are all well-known indexes.

While a library or Google Scholar is not counted as a database, you can always check DOAJ. Some
journals might list DOAJ index, but you must check the DOAJ list for the journals name to confirm
if their claim is true.

7. Officials of the journal use email addresses of a free email supplier like Gmail - Take this one
with a pinch of salt. Only because an editor mailed you from a Gmail ID doesnt mean it is a bogus
journal. Sometimes good journals hire independent editors or the journal itself might not be housed
under one university. In such cases, email providers, like Gmail or Yahoo prove to be a good alterna-
tive as you can avail great cloud storage at no cost.

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 7

 Unless you notice some other red flags along with this one, use your discretion in how you want to
proceed. A publisher with no online submission platform and only a gmail address to send submis-
sions is another warning sign.

If you still have any doubts that the offer you received in your inbox is a hoax, check out this list for
more details.

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 8

 CHAPTER 2

Choosing the Right Journal -

Factors to Consider

S ubmitting a manuscript to a wrong journal is one of the most common mistakes made by both early-ca-
reer and experienced researchers. Novice researchers exploring broader research subjects are some-
times unfamiliar with reputed journals in their field. Experienced researchers, on the other hand, become
too comfortable with publishing in the same journals over and again even when they can now find better
publication opportunities and reach a wider audience through open-access or electronic-only journals.

Hence, regardless the stage of your career, you will be revisiting the question of choosing the right jour-
nal multiple times during your career. The parameters you need to consider might change over a period
of time with the advancement in technology changing the way journals operate, but for now, you can
stick to these key points in 2017:

Aims & scope

Even remarkable, high-impact work can face rejection when the research topic doesnt align with the
scope of the journal. This can lead to unnecessary loss of time and motivation that could very well be

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 9

 avoided in the first place if authors take some time to study the aims & scope of the journal.

This information is often easily available on journals website. Reading through About the journal, Aims
& scope or similar sections can help you understand if the journal is a good match to submit your man-
uscript. For example - Nature Reviews Immunology website indicates that they accept in-depth cover-
age of all areas of immunology, from fundamental mechanisms to applied aspects. Sometimes journals
might also mention certain research types that are not accepted, for example, Food Research Interna-
tional doesnt accept studies that focus on optimizing the yield of the production process.

If you still have any doubt after reading aims & scope of a journal, go ahead and skim through abstracts,
table of contents, or even read some full articles (if you have the access) by the journal. This will give you
the confidence to know if this journal is the right choice for you.

Authors guidelines
This section will give you specific instruc-
tions on things like the journals preferred While most researchers shortlist journals after they have fin-
ished writing their manuscript, you can probably now see
layout, word limit (including and exclud-
why it might not be the best approach. Imagine cutting down
ing bibliographic information), referencing
4000 words of research paper to 2000, or reducing referenc-
style and more. Submitting to journal that
es from 65 to 40 because thats the limit imposed by your
doesnt accept your article type is a guar-
target journal! Reformatting the whole paper after you have
anteed way of getting your paper rejected.
finished writing is no fun. Keeping specifications of a journal
For example - British Journal of Surgery
in mind while writing will save you a lot of time and unneces-
doesnt accept case reports. sary trouble towards the end. Besides, having a target journal

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 10

 Poorly presented or proofread papers often in mind will increase your chances of acceptance as you
make reviewers and editors assume that will now have more clarity about the target audience, pur-
their research is also poor and are thus not pose and context of what you are writing.
worth publishing. It is important that the
research is also well-written. So authors whose first language is not English are especially recommended
to seek help from professional academic editing services, like Editage to make sure that their manuscript
meets the global standards of publication.

If the journal charges any submission fee or article processing charges, you will find it under this section
as well.

Time to publish
In an ideal world, journals should be as ac-
countable to authors as authors are to jour-
nals. But the real world operates differently.
Many of us have heard about that one friend
who is completely clueless about the status of
his manuscript that he submitted over a year
ago. Unfortunately, the tales of loss of time
due to submitting manuscripts to inadequate
journals are as old as time. Any mistakes made
in the journal selection process can slow down
the progression of your career.
As early-career researchers, you might have freaked out
when you got to know that it can take six month to a year to
get a manuscript published. But it is mostly the lack of un-
derstanding of how journals operate that makes it difficult
to imagine how publishing a paper can take so much time.
So, lets take a deeper look into how this works.
When you submit a paper, it is usually read by an initial
editor, who then assigns an associate editor who is knowl-
edgeable in your field of research. This editor is responsible
for finding at least two peer reviewers who agree to offer
feedback for your paper in the stipulated time frame, which

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 11


Good journals take a minimum of four
months to come back to you with a response
if your paper has been sent for a peer review.
If your paper has been rejected, you should
hear about it within 4-6 weeks after submis-
sion.
Reputed journals work hard to publish papers
within 9-12 months of submission. But high
profile journals do have longer wait times,
mostly because of the volume of submissions
they receive, and their rejection rates are also
higher.
takes 30 to 60 days. In many cases, reviewers are unable to
get back to the journal in time, which delays the process.
After receiving the reviews on your paper, the associate ed-
itor then has to take a decision about your paper. If your
paper is rejected, you will need to start finding another
journal. Otherwise, the editor might send back the paper
with recommended revisions, which can take another three
months. Once you submit the paper with changes, it will
again be sent to the editor for re-review. This takes a couple
of more weeks. The paper is then copyedited, sent back to
you for author checking, and typeset before it is published,
either online or in print. Any journal that claims it can pub-
lish your paper in six weeks is a scam.

Journal impact factor (JIF)

Journal Impact Factor (JIF) basically shows the number of citations received by journal articles in pro-
portion to the number of citation articles it published in the past 2-5 years. It has become the default
metric to assess the reputation and quality of a journal and is held in high regard by authors, institutions
and employers alike. Getting jobs, grants etc. is all a whole lot easier when you are a published author
in a high IF journal. To know about IF in more detail, you can check out this quick video by Clarivate
Analytics.

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 12

 Should you go for a journal that attracts a more
This debate, fortunately, has made the scientific communi-
appropriate target audience for your paper,
ty more aware. As a result, H-Index has now started to see
or the one that has better JIF? This is a com- more popularity in some countries to determine the quality
mon debate in the scientific community with of research contributed by an individual, not a journal. Swe-
mixed opinions. Some researchers strongly den is one country that has made the switch to adding more
recommend that you prefer your audience re- weightage to H-Index over IF to get grants and jobs in the
gardless of the impact factor of the journal as academia.
it significantly increases the chances of your
paper being evaluated by appropriate reviewers. Also, when your research is read by the right audience,
your paper gets cited more often which increases your H-Index.

Many researchers, however, question the recognition enjoyed by JIF in the community. The common
argument is that since IF doesnt reflect the quality of the research, it is not an appropriate determining
factor for an individuals work. For example - Einsteins work, The Electrodynamic Moving Body did
not get many citations when it was published, but it now gets around 1000 citations every year.

Some publishing practices by high IF journals add more to this debate. Review articles, for example, are
known to get higher citations than research articles. As a result, many journals publish more review ar-
ticles that help them maintain a higher JIF for years, without having to publish any solid research articles
for a long time.

In fact, it is important to note that in some core subjects, where the number of researchers are also low,
JIF will also be low. You must do a relative analysis of JIF in your particular field when choosing a journal.
In such cases, it is also recommended that you prefer journals that attract your target audience rather
than JIF.

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 13

 Thus choosing a journal solely based on its
JIF is not the best strategy. For new authors,
it is recommended to take a balanced ap-
proach in choosing the best journal. Few
researchers do this trade off by sending the
Besides JIF and asking senior researchers for recommenda-
tions, you can also check the editorial board members or the
sponsorship of a journal to evaluate its credibility and repu-
tation. Prestigious journals often have eminent researchers

data they want to publish fast to journals of their fied as their editorial board members. If the editors
are not involved or do not have any tie ups with the kind of
with average IF but the right target audi-
work you are working on, perhaps think twice before sub-
ence, and the most important data is sent
mitting your paper. At the end of the day, editors will be
to journals with high IF. But you can always
choosing peer reviewers for your work. It is best to go for
find your own way.
a journal where at least one editor has some knowledge of
your field of work.
It might seem tempting to go for the jour-
nal with the highest IF, but you must eval- Many times, good journals are also sponsored or owned by
uate your paper objectively to determine if prestigious societies of the field, which is again a good cred-
it truly has the potential to get published ibility indicator for the journal.
in a top-tier journal. This is especially im-
portant because since publication ethics
demand that you send your manuscript to only one journal at a time, submitting to a journal that has
lower probability of acceptance is a risky proposition. You might lose a lot of valuable time in waiting for
a response, and resubmitting it to other journals in different formats might take even more time.

Peer-review process
The whole idea of a peer review process is to validate the written investigative findings from an author

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 14

 group that are further assessed by a group of industry experts (referees) for relevance, novelty, and accu-
racy. These experts usually do not belong to the editorial staff of a journal and are normally not even paid
for their opinion. Any misleading or unproven findings are thus removed during this process.

A quality peer review process makes your papers more robust by pointing out gaps in your findings that
might need additional explanation. Reviewers offer feedback to make your paper easier to read and also
how you can make it more useful to add to the findings that are already published in your field.

The end goal of a peer review process is to decide if the findings of a manuscript are worth publishing.
The end responsibility of this process is born by the journals editor who may choose to agree or disagree
with the feedback of the reviewers. It is due to this stringent publishing process that peer reviewed jour-
nals enjoy great respect in academia and should be one of the most important things you should consider
when choosing a journal.

Well-indexed
Databases that index journals take into ac-
In todays day and age, publishing in print-only journals can
count several factors like the regularity of
seriously confine the visibility of your work. So be sure to
publication, review process, quality of papers check that your target journal does have a reputed online
published, journals reputation, and more. presence as well.
Well-indexed journals are thus thought to be
more prestigious, as we mentioned in the previous chapter as well. For example - academic biomedical
journals of the world can be found listed in the bibliographic database, NLM (Medline of the US National
Library of Medicine). You can search the database through PubMed. So you need to check, is your target

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 15

 journal indexed in Web of Science by ISI or Scopus? Is it indexed in the reputed databases of your field?
Indexed journals greatly improves the visibility of your research and consequently also the citation count
of your article.

Acceptance rate
As it might seem obvious, journals with lower acceptance rates are considered to be more prestigious
and meritorious. Up to 90% rejection rates is not unheard of for top-tier journals. For others, around 50%
rejection rate is the norm. Finding out acceptance rates of individual journals however is not easy.

There is no industry-wide accepted standard of calculating a journals acceptance rate. As a result, ev-
ery journal follows the approach they see fit. While some journals take the total number of manuscripts
received by them as the base, others consider the manuscripts they sent for peer-review as the base for
calculating the acceptance rate. There are also journals that do not maintain accurate data records for
this and only offer a rough estimate.

Moreover, for highly-specialised fields, if the number of researchers contributing to the area are pretty
low, the acceptance rates of journals tend to be higher. Sometimes acceptance rates of a journal might
also vary depending on the types of manuscripts. Case reports, for example, might get host of rejections,
whereas acceptance rates for research articles might be pretty good. Many journals or publishers men-
tion their acceptance rates on their website. Elseviers acceptance rate data is a great example here.

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 16

 CHAPTER 3

Tools to find the right journal

W ith umpteen number of journal choices, the number of tools available to find the right journal has
also multiplied over the years. While some tools that will help with initial shortlisting of the journal
choices in your category, there are others that will provide you with more granular information or data points
on several factors you would need to consider to pick a journal, like acceptance rates, quality of the peer
review process, etc. -- the information that might not be readily available otherwise. If you are a student, be
sure to check if your universitys library has any tie ups to gain no fee / discounted access to any of these tools.

Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) - Perfect for finding journals under a specific category, SJR measures the sci-
entific impact of scholarly journals based on both the number of citations a journal receives and the pres-
tige of journals from where they got the citations. H-index, number of documents published by a journal,
citations per article, and total citations per journal are some of the factors considered to calculate SJR.

Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities - Cabells information database help research-

ers find the journal that matches the content and style of their manuscripts. You can find all the
hard-to-find information you need to choose the right journal, like details about the review pro-
cess, acceptance rates of journals, and much more. It primarily covers areas related to Account-
ing, Psychology, Management, Education, Library Science, Marketing, and Economics & Finance.

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 17

 Elseviers Journal Finder - Although a pretty reliable resource to find journals, this popular tool proves
useful only if you are looking to submit your work with one of Elseviers journals. Add the title and
the abstract of your article to see a list of proposed journals that might suit your needs. The results
also provide details on journal metrics, like impact factor, acceptance rate, acceptance time, and more.

UlrichsWeb Global Serials Directory - Find detailed information of more than 300,000 journals listed
here. Evaluate the quality of journals by reading reviews, descriptions, table of contents, abstracting,
circulation counts, indexing databases and if it is listed by JCR. You might even find some information
related to acceptance rates.

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) lists the rankings of more than 8400 journals. You can use it to check
JIF, which is calculated by dividing the total number of articles by their annual number of citations. The
immediacy index shows the average citations in the first year of publication, which gives an idea about
the popularity of a particular field.

Google Scholar Metrics - This free alternative to Scopus and JCR ranks top 100 journals of different
categories. You can browse through the highly cited articles for each journal. It uses H-Index as its pri-
mary metric which increases the likeliness of finding influential papers, as opposed to finding journals
where few highly cited papers skew the data.

Is there anything that we left out? Help us add more value to the scientific community and make this the
go-to document for anyone looking to choose the right journal. Feel free to email your comments and
feedback to smriti@typeset.io

Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 18

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Choosing the Right Journal for Early-career Researchers 19