Technological advancement is dawn for so many aspects of the world among them medical research is one. As the evidence keeps on increasing with the ages the journals which ought to publish them are also increasingly making it confusing for the researchers as to in which one to publish their research work.
Why select a journal carefully?
- Selecting a peer-reviewed journal that will present your research and conveys it to the right audience, also helps in your career advancement and reputation is very much important.
- Reduces the chances of our work rejection.
- To have a better increment in a citation by Visibility of published work.
In this post let’s understand the important aspects that need to be considered before choosing a journal for research.
1. Specialty journal
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- Specialty journal:
Identifying a journal that portrays or matches your subject matter is very much important. This is the most common yet avoidable reason for journal rejection.
Readership and target audience: If your research topic is Multidisciplinary Choose a journal with a broad base to increase the target audience. If it is related to a Speciality or has technical content better to go with a specialty journal. Talk to your peers to know how wide the journal among peers is.
(Tip: Read through the journal’s aim and scope in websites and a few recently published articles)
- Avoiding predatory or cloned journals:
2.a: Predatory journals:
These are open-access medical journals that publish articles online with little or no peer review, low academic standards, and little credibility. You can get the list of predatory journals from Beall’s list of predatory journals. (https://beallslist.net/)
Tip: (Make sure to check the last date of the list update which is represented at the end of the list).
2. b: Cloned journals:
Web pages are a counterfeit mirror of an authentic journal that exploits the title and ISSN of legitimate journals. (International Standard Serial Number)
(Tip: Always check the ISSN number mentioned in the journal website with the databases in which the journal is included. For example: To check in PubMed go to the NLM catalog, Type the ISSN number and see whether the journal is original or cloned based on the logo and website depicted in the PubMed NLM catalog.)
- Peer-reviewed journals:
These are the journals that have an evaluation process in which journal editors and other expert scholars critically assess the quality and scientific merit of the article and its research. Articles that pass this process are published in the peer-reviewed literature.
Academic databases like Medline, Science Direct, and Embase. etc contain peer-reviewed literature.
- Indexing:
Indexing is an ordered list of cited articles, each accompanied by a list of citing articles. The citing article is identified as the source and the cited article as a reference.
NMC accepted indexing: Scopus, PubMed, PubMed Central, Embase, Web of Science, DOAJ.
(Tip: Always check the ISSN number mentioned in the journal website with the databases in which the journal is claiming as indexed. For example: To check in PubMed indexing go to NLM catalog, Type the ISSN number and you can see whether the journal is Currently indexed, claiming to be indexed or Indexing services have been stopped)
- Open access journals:
These journals must make their full content available online, including text, images, and figures, without financial cost to readers. The goal of OA should be to increase access to research and to allow more contribution opportunities for publishing by junior authors and developing countries.
- Publication charges:
Check the publication on the website and any societal concessions if available. Pose these questions, whether it is falling in your budget or not?
(Tip: Some journals offer university or institutional concessions, find out if the journal of your interest is providing them).
- Turnaround time:
2.a: Peer review period: How many issues does a journal give annually? Monthly issues will have less peer review time than biannual or annual journals.
2.b: Publication delay: If your journal is published online before print as soon as accepted, go for it.
- Impact factor:
The impact factor (IF) is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year.
It is used to measure the importance or rank of a journal by calculating the times its articles are cited.
More about this on our blog, (https://coguide.in/making-sense-every-researchers-obsession-impact-factor/ )
- Cite score:
Cite Score is a simple way of measuring the citation impact of sources, such as journals. The Cite Score numerator and denominator both include the same five document types (articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters, and data papers) for consistency. Only Scopus will give cite scores for the published work.
- NMC-approved indexing:
DOAJ, Scopus, PubMed Central, Medline, Science Citation Index, Expanded Embase, and Citation index these are the NMC-approved indexing for publishing your research work.
| 10-point checklist for choosing a journal: | |
| 1 | Does the article subject match with the journal content? |
| 2 | Does the journal accept the article type you intend to submit? |
| 3 | Is the journal read by your target audience? |
| 4 | Is the journal included in subject-specific data bases? |
| 5 | Does the journal have an online edition? |
| 6 | Does the Journal impact factor in line with our requirements? |
| 7 | Is the journal regarded as a prestigious one in its field by peers? |
| 8 | Turnaround time of the articles submitted? |
| 9 | Publication charges? |
| 10 | Length and structure are the same as your manuscript? |
For further information or queries join our discord channel “Research Publication” https://discord.gg/f2zPv8Yr
Blog contribution by
Dr. Siva Priya
Mentor at coGuide