Find Your Target Journal
You’ve conducted your study, analyzed and interpreted your findings and written the publication manuscript. Now you will publish your findings. Choosing “the right” journal is important. As discussed in my blog, the reason for “Outwrite Rejection,” or “No, we can’t publish this” is usually because your study is outside the journal’s aims and scope or not of interest to its readers.
Create a shortlist of target journals. Which journals you read? Where do the leading authors in your field publish? Consider the journals in your reference list, and discuss the journal choice with colleagues and coauthors. If you presented your work at a conference, check whether the sponsoring society has a journal.
Search databases like PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar Find peer‑reviewed journals that have published work similar to your s. Use article metadata – title, author, institutional affiliation, publication year, language, and keywords – to search, and It’s OK to use your AI assistant to find journals with papers related to your topic. Metadata searches are “word finders” and can miss relevant journals if the search terms you use do not exactly match what you are looking for. AI is a “smart” assistant that infers context from spoken or plain text instructions and interprets the intent behind your question. I like to think of AI as a droid that’s more capable than Siri, Alexa, or Hey Google – something closer to C3PO or R2‑D2, those Star Wars movie characters.
After finding some potential journals, check their websites to confirm their aims and scope align with your work. For an international readership, choose a journal with a global audience. For specialists in a particular scientific or medical field, select a journal that has a focused, rather than a general or multidisciplinary audience. Decide whether your manuscript is aimed at clinical practitioners or at researchers, and whether it is applied or theoretical. Look for an indexed, peer‑reviewed journal that is well known and widely read by the audience you want to reach. After you’ve found a journal, carefully review the information for authors. That section describes the article types the journal publishes and provides detailed instructions for writing your manuscript and preparing it for submission.
Check the journal’s acceptance rate. Is it highly selective? Does it accept a large percentage of submissions? Is competition for space so intense that sending your paper there might be an inefficient use of time? The current acceptance statistics are usually posted on the journal’s Internet site. If not, email the editor. You can also email a brief description of your manuscript to the editor-in-chief to see if there is an interest in reviewing it for publication.
Expect 9 to 12 months from submission to publication. That depends on how long the peer review process takes, how soon to receive a decision after submitting your revised manuscript, and how soon after acceptance the article is published.
Many journals have an online edition, which lets them publish faster than traditional print. Many accept supplementary material that is available online. If the journal open access you will pay a publication fee, but that may be covered by your institution, your research grant, or another funding source. Journal ranking data like the ISI Impact Factor or PageRank may be important to you, but focus on finding a widely read, indexed, peer‑reviewed journal whose readership matches your target audience and will be interested in your work. Good luck with your search.