Writing is a skill but publishing in a suitable journal is a key to success in scientific writing. It was noticed that many first-time authors write a paper for publication in an academic journal, but are not sure where to submit it or which journals should you consider and how do you pick the right one.

Considering that there are thousands of journals out there, this decision can seem daunting, especially to a first-time author.

In this article, I explain how to go about choosing an appropriate journal for your paper using few steps

Steps used in the selection of a suitable journal

Step 1. Preliminary list of journal

The first step is to compile a preliminary list of journals that might be appropriate for your paper.

One option is to look at the literature cited in your manuscript and where those papers were published.

You can also conduct a search for papers in your field by using keywords from your research topic and note the journals in which they were published and in this way you should gather a good list of journals to start with.

You’ll likely have a mix of general interest journals with a wide readership and suitable journals with a smaller audience.

If your paper addresses a topic of broad interest, then you want to consider general interest journals, depending on other factors which I’ll get to in a moment.

If your paper, on the other hand, is highly technical and likely to be of interest only to specialists in the field, you should prioritize specialty journals.

Step 2. Check each journal requirement

Carefully read the aims and scope of each selected journal to make sure your paper fits. A mismatch between the topic of a submitted paper and the journal’s aim and scope is one of the most common reasons for rejection.

Often, the suitable journal will provide examples of appropriate topics that come under that journal For example see in the journal of Mountain research

In addition, you want to make sure the suitable journal accepts your type of article, which might be an original research paper, a methods paper, a review paper, or a brief note.

Usually, suitable journals list the types of articles they will consider as shown here. If not, you can always inquire.

You also want to make sure you can meet other journal requirements such as page charges or word limits. For example, if you have a 16,000-word monograph, it will likely be rejected by a journal with an 8,000-word limit.

At this point, you’ve hopefully narrowed the choices down to a handful of journals.

You should now scan the articles in each journal and decide if your paper will fit in.

The question you should be asking yourself is whether the quality of your paper is at least as high as those recently published in the journal.

Here, you should be looking at the relative importance of the questions addressed in the work, the rigor of the study, and the quality of the writing.

Making this comparison is likely difficult for a new author.

If you are uncertain about the relative quality of your paper, ask someone with experience to assess your paper.

Step 3. Consideration journal impact factor

Publishing in a suitable journal with a high impact factor can influence the visibility of your paper and that is something to be aware of.

The journal’s impact factor will also help tell you how high the bar will be when your paper is evaluated by the editors and reviewers.

Keep in mind that the journals with the highest impact factors reject 80 to 90 % of submissions.

Consequently, picking the journal with the highest impact factor is not always a good idea or even necessary to get your paper noticed.

Sometimes it’s better to pick a lower-impact, specialty journal with a readership that is more likely to be interested in your paper.

I should also mention that choosing a journal early in the writing process will save you time and effort in the long run.

How you structure the narrative, not to mention the formatting, will often vary with the journal.

Having a specific journal in mind from the beginning will help you tailor your paper for your target audience.

Step 4. Make sure the journal you select is a suitable journal

Check that selected journal indexed by major platforms such as Web of ScienceorPubMedand that the editorial board is composed of reputable people because it’s not as easy a process to choose a write an appropriate journal for your publication and most of the case your paper gets rejected due to the wrong journal selection.

If so, reassess your choices and resubmit your paper in a suitable journal.

This is all about this article and hopes these steps and information about a suitable journal help you in your literature search and research journal discovery before publishing in a suitable research journal, KRS is an online learning platform, which brings novel articles from time to time, stays connected.

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