Publishing your Research: Finding and Choosing a Journal

New!

Due to TRU's membership in the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) and a new transformative "read and publish" agreement with SAGE, TRU researchers, faculty, and students may publish their articles as Open Access with no article processing charges in over 900 SAGE Choice Journals.

TRU Library is a member of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN). Because of this membership, authors publishing from TRU receive a discount on their article processing charge (APC) from several publishers. Check the list available at the link below when publishing to see if a discount applies. Note that for several publishers, authors must self-identify as eligible for the discount.

• Where have similar articles been published? Search a discipline-specific database to see where related articles have been published.
  • Use TRU Library's A-Z Database List to find databases in your discipline.
• Find high quality, peer-reviewed Open Access journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
• Use the Library's Publication Finder to find journals in your discipline. You can access this from the Journals tab from the library homepage.
  • Limit your search results to Resource Type - Journal to find only journal titles, not ebooks.
• Search JANE (Journal Author Name Estimator): JANE searches for the 50 articles or journals that are most similar to your abstract or keyword.
• Use Journal Citation Reports to find top journals in a field.
  • Use Browse by Category to find a category, then click on the # of Journals to get a list of highly cited journals.
• Your colleagues, instructors and advisors are excellent resources to help you identify journals that are appropriate for your article.

Factors to Consider

• Availability: how can this journal be accessed? Is it expensive, or is it Open Access?
• Readership: who reads this journal?
• Prestige: is this a respected journal in your field?
• Subject scope: is your paper relevant to the journal?
• Acceptance rate:

Your colleagues, instructors, and advisors are excellent resources to help you identify potential journals. You may also want to consider submitting to one or more of the journals that you read in the course of your research.

A Call for Papers is a method used by publishers to gather articles, conference presentations, and book chapters for potential publication. While many calls for papers or presentations are from legitimate publishers, an increasing amount are from questionable publishers. See Predatory and Questionable Publishers to learn more.

On SHERPA/RoMEO, you can search for a journal to find out its OA policies. This is useful if you are required to (or would like to!) publish Open Access.

The following are factors to consider when choosing a journal:

• Peer-Review Process. What is the peer-review process? Is it clearly stated on the website?
• Editorial Team. Are the editors experts in the subject area? Are they actually editors, or are the names just listed?
• Author Fees. Are the author fees clearly stated before submitting an article?
• Copyright. Is copyright information clearly stated? See the tab Author Rights for more information.
• Research Misconduct. Will the journal take action against academic misconduct such as plagiarism or data fabrication?
• Ownership. Is it clear who owns the journal?
• Website. Does the website have high ethical and professional standards?
• Journal Name. Is the name unique and not attempting to mimic another journal in the field? Does the title reflect the journal content?
• Access. Is it clear how readers can access the article? Is it subscription-based or Open Access?
• Publishing schedule. Is it clear how often issues of the journal are published?
• Database coverage. Is the journal indexed in reputable citation databases? Some examples include Web of Science, Sociological Abstracts, and Directory of Open Access Journals.

This information adapted from OASPA's "Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing." Click through for additional factors to consider.

Refer to the tab Predatory and Questionable Publishers for information about recognizing predatory (questionable) publishers.

Open Access (OA) refers to materials that are available online free of charge and of licensing restrictions. More and more academic journals are moving towards various OA models instead of journals that charge subscribers (from individual academics to university libraries) steep fees.

Benefits of choosing a journal that is OA include:

• More readers: individuals unaffiliated with a library may not have access to expensive subscription journals, but they would have access to an OA publication. Additionally, some large institutions are cutting back on their journal subscription packages.
  • More readers means that your work could be cited more often and further the conversation.
• Grant requirements: peer-reviewed articles arising from Tri-Agency funding must be freely available within a year of publication. Publishing in an OA journal fulfills this requirement.
  • Did you know? Depositing a version of your article in TRUSpace fulfills this requirement as well!

Remember: Open Access does not equal predatory! Read more about predatory/questionable publications here.