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(Volume: 2, Issue: 9)
How to choose a journal for the research manuscript?
Journals have a crucial role in disseminating a beneficial scientific finding to the research community, triggering up further research in that domain. However, there exist ample number of journals, letting one to be confused of which journal to opt for publishing his/ her research. So, are there any factors, which can influence the journal’s choice?
Let’s have a glimpse at it…
Aims and Scope
The first important factor that a researcher must ensure is: “Does my research article meet the journal’s aims and scope?” Usually, most researchers receive the journal’s very first comment as ‘out of scope’. Publishing an article, which is irrelevant to a journal’s aim or scope, does not promote research integrity. Moreover, the article is left at the hands of researchers, who are totally from a different research domain that they might not show interest for further research. In the worst case, publishing an article to a journal with different aims or scope might lead to paper retraction!!!
Abstracting and Indexing
Visibility and usability of research, in addition to career advancements, is what actually a researcher aims at. However, the trustworthiness and the quality of research being published in a journal will be confirmed, only when the journal is being indexed in databases or repositories, which are largely accessed by the researchers, the scholars and the institutions. Most researchers of today desire to publish in journals being indexed to the abstract and citation databases like, the Clarivative’s Web of Science or the Elsevier’s Scopus. In spite of the fact that both the databases offer access to plenty of scientific resources, they make a little difference in the time they take for indexing the journals, the ease of access and inclusion of regional journals. So, the second factor that are researcher needs to ensure in choosing a journal is: “Which journal indexing is appropriate for publishing my research?”. While making a selection of the journal indices, a researcher must also consider the following:
Does the journal index have an impact on the trustworthiness and the quality of the research article?
Which journal indexing is preferred by the funding agencies or the associated academic affiliation?
Is there a specific need to go for Scopus indexing, as most Scopus- indexed journals fall under the Web of Science platform?
Whether the articles published by the journals are consistently indexed in the databases?
Hence a researcher should check the abstracting and indexing of the journal, before making the choice. The researcher might also choose a journal with Impact Factor (IF). IF is an index to analyse and measure the mean citation count that the scholarly articles in an academic journal receive annually, in relation to the number of publications received in the immediately preceding two or five years. Upon selecting a cluster of journals with IF, the researcher can prioritize them based on their IF metrics for improved visibility of the article, provided that their aims and scope are one and the same. However, this prioritization is for submitting the article to another journal, only after a chosen journal rejects it.
Ignore Non-predatory Journals
In the current years, the researchers have become a prey to the predatory journals. The predatory journals are deceptive journals, which neither bother about the research quality nor the research integrity and publish research articles, without proper reviewing by experts. These journals corner the money being paid as Article Processing Charges (APC) and does not consider the ethical standards of publishing the research. In fact, it might end up in the paper to be retracted. Hence, the researchers should majorly opt for the journals, which are subscription-based or being published by refereed publishers. However, it is not a matter of fact, if the journal imposes a fee for extra pages or colour. There are ways to identify the non-predatory journals from the predatory ones. The Inter Academy Partnership (IAP) report, entitled “Combatting Predatory Academic Journals and Conferences”, states that the non-predatory journal will own a reputed index like, Web of Science or Scopus. Moreover, it will be listed out in DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) and will be a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics). For further assistance, a researcher could also use the journals from University Grants Commission Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (UGC-CARE), Cabells Predatory Reports or from the list of journals provided by their own institutions.
Choice on publishing option
Most of the current journals provide an option for the researchers to publish their research, namely, the subscription- based and the open access option. In the former publishing option, the article is freely published. However, the journal owns the copyright of the published article and the readers are asked to pay a subscription fee to have access. On the contrary, the open access option imposes an APC on the author. Yet, the author owns the copyright and the readers can access the article freely. So, an author has to decide the following to make a choice on the journal: (i) Is there any funding preferences to opt open access; (ii) Am I ready to pay the APC? and (iii) To whom does my article be visible- to the readers of a specific domain or to whoever attempts to read it?
Hence, The Research Seer’s Rationale on “How to choose a journal for the research manuscript?” is:
“Choose a journal of right indexing to pitch your research rightly”
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