Scholarly Communications and Research

There are several factors to consider when deciding where to publish your work. Often, one's mentors and others in their field are the first point of consultation. If you already have a journal in mind, view its stylistic conventions and author guidelines and modify your manuscript accordingly.

Librarians are happy to meet with you to review any journals you have shortlisted as well as make suggestions.

There are tools that suggest journals to you based on your abstract and title. While helpful, please use these with caution as suggestions are often limited to a particular publisher and are therefore biased. While reputable publishers act fast and remove any predatory journals they may be hosting, it is always worth reviewing a journal itself.

• Elsevier - Find the right journal for your research

• Wiley - Find journals that match your mansucript

• Taylor and Francis - Journal Suggester

• EndNote Match (powered by Clarivate, Web of Science) - Manuscript Matcher
  To install EndNote, which is a reference management tool with enhanced capabilities, on your UDST computer, please submit a request for pre-approved software via the IT Help Desk.
  To search Web of Science journals without a manuscript, view the Master Journal List.

• JANE (Journal Author Name Estimator)
• Springer Nature - no longer suggests journals, but one can browse their journals and search by keyword

Scopus is a "comprehensive, multidisciplinary, trusted abstract and citation database."

Their "sources" feature allows one to view information about the publications indexed in Scopus. Here is how to use it:

Visit the Scopus Sources page

Make sure "Subject Area" is chosen.

Enter the subject area of your choice to view the top journals in that area

Click on an individual source title to view more information about the source

If searching a new subject, remember to clear filters first

Some may prefer to publish in a journal that is indexed in Scopus in order for them to receive a Scopus author profile, among other perceived benefits.

What are megajournals?

"Megajournals" are relatively new in the scholarly publishing world. These open access journals publish articles in a wide range of subjects. PLOS One, which publishes thousands of articles per month, was the trailblazer of this development. Like traditional journals, articles submitted to these journals go through rigorous peer review.

The primary difference in the review process is the objective editorial criteria used for acceptance or rejection of a potential article. Reviewers ensure that the research is scientifically sound and ethical, but do not weigh the importance or relevance of the work. This allows a much higher acceptance rate. It also allows the acceptance of some types of articles that are normally rejected, most notably negative results, replication studies and protocols.

For more information on megajournals, read Open Access MegaJournals - Have They Changed Everything? by Peter Binfield, the co-founder of PeerJ and previously the publisher of PLOS One.

- Scholarly Publishing: Open Access Megajournals, George Washington University

Below are a few popular megajournals.

Nature Communications "is an open access, multidisciplinary journal dedicated to publishing high-quality research in all areas of the biological, health, physical, chemical, Earth, social, mathematical, applied, and engineering sciences. Papers published by the journal aim to represent important advances of significance to specialists within each field."

Scientific Reports "is an open access journal publishing original research from across all areas of the natural sciences, psychology, medicine and engineering."

PLOS ONE "accepts research in over two hundred subject areas across science, engineering, medicine, and the related social sciences and humanities. Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, replication studies, negative and null results are all in scope." The journal also publishes reports and protocols.

Heliyon "is an all-science, open access journal that is part of the Cell Press family. Any paper reporting scientifically accurate and valuable research, which adheres to accepted ethical and scientific publishing standards, will be considered for publication. As such, the journal also publishes manuscripts reporting negative/null results, incremental advances, and replication studies."