Choosing a journal

Before you start planning a
publication, it's important that you're clear on what you're
trying to achieve through this. Are you writing to
share your exciting findings with the world? Are you hoping that a
particular group of practitioners apply them? Are
you perhaps thinking about your next postdoc position or
commercial applications? There is no right or wrong answer, but
it's important that you're clear on what matters the most of you
at this particular point.

These are the five key areas to
consider when you're planning a publication. Scope, prestige
timescale, costs and language. We will go over each one in turn
in this video.

Scope is the first
consideration, and perhaps the most crucial. Does the Journal
published research in your subfield. A good way to get
started in thinking about this is to consider reference list of
the article you're writing. Where have you found similar
research? You should also check
out the general guidelines online, because they were always
specify what they're looking
for. And also look at previous
issues of the same Journal. Do
the articles then match the
sort of thing you're writing
about? Finally, think about
your audience wants to read in
your aims. You would have
thought about the sort of
people you are trying to
reach, so make sure that you
were reading the Journal
you're considering. If you
can, why not ask them about it?

The next consideration is
prestige, and this takes us into
slightly controversial
territory. You will quickly get
a sense of what journals are
well respected in your field,
and senior colleagues are a
really good source of
information on this. On the
other hand, a generous prestige
is not necessarily a badge of
quality for your article, and
you shouldn't be dazzled by big
names. There are several metrics
that can be used to measure the
quality of a Journal. Perhaps
the most common is Journal
impact factor, which is
essentially the average number
of citations for articles in
that Journal. However, there are
very many limitations in using a
single number to assess the
quality of a Journal. Metrics
can vary widely between
disciplines, and they can be
gained, and they don't give you
the full picture of what that
Journal offers. If you are
interested in finding out more,
there is information
specifically on metrics
provided. Ultimately, you
should never rely on a single
indicator in assessing
prestige, but rather use your
professional judgment. Does
that general publish high
quality research? Will the
right audience read it? And so
on. This approach matches what
the University of Cambridge is
committed to do by signing Dora
the decoration on research
assessment, through which we
responsibly in assessing
research.

Time scale is another important
consideration. Journals vary
considerably in how long they
take to peer review a manuscript
and publish it. And if you're
about to apply for the next postdoc position, getting
your paper out there sooner
might be really important to
you. At other times, you might
consider other things. For
instance, you might submit your
manuscript to a more prestigious
Journal, which might reject it
and send you back to the drawing
board, although with very useful
reviewer's comments. This is
usually a good strategy, but
not if you're in a rush to
have your article published.

One good way of finding out
how long a Journal will take
to publish your article is to
look at their website. Here
for example, plant and soil
include some statistics that
say it takes 37 days or from
submission to first decision
and 151 to acceptance.

You can also rely on the
experience of your peers and
this could be face to face from
people you know. But there are
also websites such as SciRev to
allow people to leave reviews for
journals, a bit like
TripAdvisor. So if I search for
a Journal here
I can see that five people have
reviewed Language and they tell
us that in their experience it
took about Seven months for the
first review round and 17 1/2
months for the total handling
time. This is useful
information so you could come
and look up journals you're
leave reviews of your own.

You should think about the cost
of publishing your article.
Now some Journals don't charge
authors, but rather charge
readers through their
traditional subscription model.
Other Journals do charge article
processing charges to the
authors and then make the
article free for anyone to read
or Open Access.

The APCs can vary from between a
few 100 pounds all the way up to
a few 1000 pounds, and this is a
perfectly legitimate business
model that many high quality
journals have adopted. Although
you should be aware of a small
number of predatory publishers
that are best avoided.

Unrelated to Open Access,
publishers often charge for
things like color pages or
additional length to a
submission, and you can think
about whether or not you need to
take on those costs. For
instance, could you use patterns
instead of colors in a graph?

If there are costs to publishing
your article, then think about
where you'll find the budget.
Some grants allowed for
publication expenses to be built
in, so check your grant
proposal or ask your supervisor
if that is the case for you.
In addition, under a limited
set of circumstances where
conditions apply, an there are
block grants administered by
the office of Scholarly
Communication that may be able
to help cover the article
processing charge. Go to open
access.com.ac.uk to find out
more, and most importantly,
always deposit your articles in Symplectic Elements as soon
as they are accepted by a
publisher, so that we can
check whether their eligible
for a block ground, and we can
also help you distribute that
more widely.

And finally, language. We don't
write for ourselves, but to be
read so think back about which
key audiences you are trying to
reach and what language are they are
most comfortable with. In
some research areas, English
is the obvious choice, but
that's not always the case.

If you choose to write in a
language other than English think about what journals
will accept submissions in
that language, and whether you
have the skills to use it,
consider engaging your copy
editing service if you're not
completely fluent in the
language of chosen.

The key message of all this is
that you should be trying to
make the publishing process work
for you. Be clear about your
aims from the start and look for
publishers that will help you
achieve them. Don't feel
pressure to follow the crowd,
although seeking advice from
those with more experience is
always valuable.