You have completed your research project and your next step is to decide where to publish your work. There are steps you can take to ensure you select a high-quality journal that aligns with your scholarly goals.

Basic Questions

Below are a series of questions you can use to compare several journals you are considering to publish your research.

1. Readership: What is the intended audience of the journal?

2. Scope: What is the focus and scope of the journal?

3. Peer Review: Is the journal peer-reviewed?

4. Relevance: Does the journal publish the kind of publication you intend to write? (i.e. journal article, book review, review, letter etc.)

5. Reputation:
   1. Consult Journal Citation Reports to find out the impact factor and where the journal is ranked in its category.
   2. Examine the list of editors for names you recognize in your field
   3. Avoid "predatory" journals by consulting our Guide on How to Avoid Predatory Journals.

6. Citation: Examine the journals that publish the articles you are using as a background information. Is the journal being cited by other researchers in the field?

7. Timeliness: Consider the amount of time it takes from submission to publication.

8. Cost: Will the journal charge for publishing?

9. Indexing: Is the journal indexed in PubMed/Ovid MEDLINE, Web of Science, CINAHL or other reputable literature database?

10. Accessibility: Is the journal content open access or not?

Journal Selection Tools

Even after considering the above characteristics, choosing a journal can be difficult. Below are some tools that can help. Most allow you to copy and paste keywords or your entire abstract and then suggest journals with similar publications: 

• Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE)
• Anne O'Tate (perform your search and then click Journals from the left menu)
• Edantz Journal Selector (works best with a sentence or full abstract; must register for more features)
• Elsevier Journal Finder (specific to Elsevier journals)
• Springer Journal Suggestor (specific to Springer journals)

Help

• Contact us:  hsl-rdas@virginia.edu