Choosing where to publish

It is very important to choose appropriately the journal where you want to publish your research.The most important characteristic scientific journals must fulfil is that they carry out evaluation processes. To make your choice, you must consider this and other criteria: importance based on the subject, information about the editorial board and the reviewers, databases where it is indexed, etc. The following resources at your disposal can help you:

 

Interesting resources

  • Think. Check. Submit: helps researchers identify trusted journals and publishers for their research, promote integrity and build trust in credible research and publications.

                                 Think Check Submit

  • Edanz Journal Selector: allows you to search for journals by different criteria and offers information of interest for each title: Web of Science and Scopus bibliometric indicators, APC prices, CC licenses, embargoes, etc.
  • Quality Open Access Market: shows the evaluations made by the researchers about the service they have received from the journals.
  • JANE, Journal/Author Name Estimator: The Find journals option allows you to search by title and/or by the abstract of the document and retrieves titles of journals included in PubMed publishing similar articles.
  • DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals): directory that indexes and gives access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. All titles included must pass a rigorous evaluation process.
  • Web of Science: subscription platform that includes the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database, which allows you to search for journals of the different disciplines in open access and with Impact Factor through the "Open Access" filter.
  • Scopus: subscription database that offers the Sources option, enabling the search for open access journals based on the subject. To find open access journals with CiteScore indicator, use the filter: “Display only open access journals”.
  • Typeset: online tool that enables formatting following international journals recommendations. It also offers citation styles guides, short articles with tips for writing a good summary or cover letters, avoiding predatory publishers, selecting the most suitable journal to publish, understanding why articles are rejected, etc.

 

Publishers’ journals finding tools

Specific tools that publishers offer within their web platforms to help researchers. Normally they request you to enter the title and abstract of the paper to find scientific journals that could be best suited for publishing:

 

Predatory journals

Predatory journals are those that publish research articles without applying quality standards such as peer review. These are some key indicators to be able to differentiate them:

  • Spam: researchers are troubled with unsolicited or bulk spam emails in English inviting them to publish.
  • Inconsistent titles: most magazines include words like "American", "British", "European" or "Swedish" in their titles, but they are actually from other countries. Often the title is too long and contains words like "Global", "World", "International", "American", "British" and "Canadian".
  • Lack of transparency of fees: it is not easy to know how much and how to pay. The publishing fees are not clearly stated, ranging from $ 50 to $ 1.500.
  • Suspicious editorial advice: they do not provide information on the members of the editorial boards or show the duplicate names of the editorial board of some other journal
  • No trace in the databases: the publisher claims on the web that its journals are indexed in many prestigious databases, but this is not the case.
  • The journal's website could be a replica of a well-known journal: it has an unprofessional look with spelling and grammar errors.
  • The percentage of publications is not specified or is difficult to find.
  • Indexing and impact factor: The journal does not follow the standards of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the  World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
  • The journal is not open access: the transfer of copyright is requested.

 

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