Selecting Journals for Publication

Consider the following when developing your shortlist:

• Which journals do you cite regularly?
• Where are your colleagues publishing?
• Have you received calls for papers?
• Try a journal selecting tool (see Tools)
• Who is your audience: international, local, general, specific?
• Do you want to publish open access (see Open Access Publishing)?

Consider the following to narrow-down your journal options:

• Read the journal's aims, audience and scope
• Review the journal's peer-review policy
• Review articles to assess their quality (see Predatory Publishers)
• Determine your author rights (do you keep copyright)
• Search for the journal impact factor (see Scholarly Impact)
• Look at rejection rates
• Determine costs
• Find the turn-around-time for submission to publication

Final things to take into consideration:

• Support with promotion
• Confirm journal isn't considered predatory (see Predatory Publishers)

• Manuscript doesn’t match Journal scope 
• Author guidelines aren’t followed 
• Lack of interest or need for the research
• Doesn’t add anything insightful
• Issues with empirical work 
• Questionable conclusions
• Excessive language errors
• Plagiarism 
• Improper format 

Kumar, K. (2019). Publication support services: How to avoid journal rejection? https://www.cognibrain.com/tips-for-how-to-avoid-journal-rejection/ 
Suiter, A. M. &  Sarli, C.. C., (2019). Selecting a journal for publication: Criteria to consider. https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/becker_pubs/61