LibGuides: Selecting a Publication: Selecting a Publication

Finding a place to publish

Search databases for articles and journals in your subject area
or

Search WorldCat for books to see what is being published in your subject area

The tools below can you help you find and compare publications.

Cabell's Directories
Journal information designed to help you prepare a manuscript for publication. Each entry describes the type of review process, acceptance rate, time required for review, journal metrics, and more. Disciplines covered include Business, Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Education, Library Science, Life Sciences, Health Management, Nursing, and Psychology.

Springer Journal Suggester
Using your manuscript title and abstract this automated tool will match you up with a Springer journal based on keywords
JANE (Journal Author Name Estimator)
Geared toward the biomedical community, this automated tool uses your manuscript title and abstract to suggest journals.
Co-factor Journal Selector
Allows you to search for a journal based on peer-review and open-access policies in addition to subject and selectivity.
Elsevier Journal Finder
An automated tool that searches for an Elsevier journal for your manuscript based on title and abstract.

Evaluating Journals for Publication

To start your evaluation, look at issues of the potential journals, other books/papers in the series, or other content published by the publisher. Scan tables of contents and check their Information for Authors or Submission pages as you ask yourself...

What is the publication’s scope and target audience?
Is the publication peer reviewed or refereed? If so, is it blind peer-review?
Who else is publishing in this journal/book series/etc. (what universities, what researchers, what disciplines)?
Where can I find the journal (i.e. where it is indexed)?
Who is the publisher? A commercial publisher, a scholarly society, etc.?
What is the journal or books' rank or impact in the field?
What rights will I retain as the author if I publish here? (find more info on the Copyright guide)
Who will be able to find and read my article? Will it have a wide reach? (find more info on the Open Access guide)

Predatory publishing is a term for low-quality or scam publications. Berger and Cirasella describe these publications as, "primarily fee-collecting operations—they exist for that purpose and only incidentally publish articles, generally without rigorous peer review, despite claims to the contrary. Of course, low-quality publishing is not new. There have long been opportunistic publishers (e.g., vanity presses and sellers of public domain content) and deceptive publishing practices (e.g., yellow journalism and advertisements formatted to look like articles)."

Think Check Submit
A checklist for determining if a journal is reputable.

Directory of Open Access Journals
- This link opens in a new window
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. An example of a whitelist of quality publishers.

This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License by Carolyn Caffrey Gardner and Dana Opsina.