Library Guides: Writing (Publishing, Research &amp; Data) for the Health Sciences: A Guide: Finding Appropriate Journals

Finding Appropriate Journals

Have you recently written a paper, but you're not sure to which journal you should submit it? Start here:

Transformative Open Access Publisher Agreements
Information and guidance on publisher waivers for Tulane authors' open access article publishing fees.

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BMJ Author Hub: Get your research published, discovered and cited.
Sections include: Before you submit, Writing and formatting, After submitting, Promoting your paper…
JANE (Journal/Author Name Estimator),
A tool that compares your title and/or abstract to citations already in Medline and recommends potential journals in which to publish.

Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Available years: 2003-2018. Find impact factors for journals using InCites Journal Citation Reports.

Journal Metrics from Elsevier -SCOPUS
Explains journal metrics: Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), The Impact per Publication (IPP), SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)
Journals Recently Accepted by NLM for Inclusion in MEDLINE
Periodically updated with new journals added to MEDLINE/PubMed.

Ulrichsweb: Global Serials Directory This link opens in a new window
To identify and find periodicals, such as scholarly journals, magazines. Provides publisher information and information on rights and permissions. Links are available for online titles and also to publishers. Search for "information for authors".

Instructions to Authors in the Health Sciences

Instructions for Authors in the Health Sciences
These pages provide links to Web sites which provide instructions to authors for over 6,000 journals in the health and life sciences. All links are to "primary sources" - that is, to publishers and organizations with editorial responsibilities for the titles.

Open Access

Open Access journals are journals that provide free access to their content online. Open Access journals are peer-reviewed just as Toll Access (subscription) journals are but they use business models that do not require users to pay for access to the content.

Some journals that are open access are primarily for profit and require authors to pay fees for publishing. Determine if the journal/s require peer review prior to paying a publishing fee. Check to see if the articles in the publications are indexed by major databases. Do the journals published have impact factors or other indicators of quality, such as the published articles being cited by others in the discipline?

San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA),
Initiated by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) together with a group of editors and publishers of scholarly journals, recognizes the need to improve the ways in which the outputs of scientific research are evaluated.

Tulane University - Publication support with publication fees

Supporting Impactful Publications (SIP)
This program assists in covering fees to support open access options for high impact peer-reviewed publications for Tulane scholars serving as corresponding authors who do not have grant or other funds available to cover them. This program is funded and coordinated by the University Office of Academic Affairs and Provost with additional financial and other support from the Tulane Libraries.

Open Access Controversy: Predatory Publishing - Beware!

Predatory Journals (University of Arkansas, Office of Scholarly Communications)
Videos, FAQs and tools to determine if a journal is reputable. Advice on how to avoid predatory journals. (August 2022)

The quality of medical literature is increasingly threatened by irresponsible publishing, leading to rising retraction rates, irreproducible results, and a flood of inconsequential publications that distract readers from more meaningful scholarship. "Predatory publishers" offer rapid publication with loose peer review, exploiting a system in which faculty seek longer bibliographies to achieve academic promotion. -- Predatory Publishing: An Emerging Threat to the Medical Literature. Acad Med. 2017 Feb;92(2):150-151

Predatory Publishers : A Guide (Learn how to evaluate the quality of journal publishers) /
Howard-Tilton Guide
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Raquel Horlik and Eric Wedig
Readers beware! Predatory journals are infiltrating citation databases.
Int J Public Health. 2019 Jul 24. -- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31342093
Scientific Authors in a Changing World of Scholarly Communication: What Does the Future Hold?
Am J Med. 2019 Aug 13. - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31419421
Harvey HB, Weinstein DF. Predatory Publishing: An Emerging Threat to the Medical Literature. Acad Med. 2017 Feb;92(2):150-151.
PMID: 28121685 - Full text available in Ovid.
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The quality of medical literature is increasingly threatened by irresponsible publishing, leading to rising retraction rates, irreproducible results, and a flood of inconsequential publications that distract readers from more meaningful scholarship. "Predatory publishers" offer rapid publication with loose peer review, exploiting a system in which faculty seek longer bibliographies to achieve academic promotion. In this Commentary, the authors highlight some of the evidence that this problem exists and suggest actions to address it. Recommendations for protecting the medical literature include preventing predatory journals from being indexed by the National Library of Medicine; encouraging academic promotions committees to ensure that they prioritize value over volume of publications and that faculty understand that priority; excluding publications from predatory journals on curricula vitae and requiring that retractions are included; developing sanctions for repeated retractions or duplicate publications; and convening an expert panel to better elucidate this problem and determine strategies to combat it.
Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too). Gina Kolata. New York Times April 7, 2013
Opinion: Academic Publishing Is Broken. Michael P. Taylor, The Scientist, March 19, 2012

Locating Refereed (Peer-Reviewed) journals in Ulrichsweb.com

Ulrichsweb.com (Ulrich's Periodical Directory) may be used to identify "scholarly" journals. The icon of the referee's shirt indicates that the journal is peer-reviewed. If the icon is not present, the journal is not peer-reviewed. "As used in the Ulrich's knowledgebase, the term refereed is applied to a journal that has been peer-reviewed. Refereed serials include articles that have been reviewed by experts and respected researchers in specific fields of study including the sciences, technology, the social sciences, and arts and humanities."

Ulrichsweb: Global Serials Directory This link opens in a new window
Detailed, comprehensive information on serials published throughout the world. (Formerly Ulrich's Periodicals Directory)

Limiting to peer-reviewed articles in Ebsco

The peer review process: Prior to publication, other scholars in the field critically assess a draft of the article. Peer-reviewed journals (also called refereed journals) only publish articles that have passed through this review process.

Some online databases offer options to locate peer-reviewed journals:

•You may limit your search to "peer-reviewed"
•You may be offered an option to select scholarly articles after you conduct your basic search

Rudolph Matas Library of the Health Sciences

Writing (Publishing, Research & Data) for the Health Sciences: A Guide