Library: So You Want to Publish an Article...: Narrowing Journal Selection

Determining Publication Criteria

Ask yourself some of these questions to help guide your journal selection:

Do you want or need your article to be peer reviewed?
In which databases would you like your article to appear?
Do you want to publish open access?
How important is journal impact factor or ranking to you?

Should I Consider Open Access?

Benefits:

Copyright remains with the author
Research funders have guaranteed access to the results
Anyone can read the article for free
Wider accessibility can increase impact

Challenges:

Cost of publishing shifts from readers to authors (The Library is unable to financially support authorship)
Unscrupulous actors exploit the open access model

Finding the Right Journal

Use some of these prompts to help guide your journal selection process and then use the resources listed below to discover if these journals meet your determined criteria.

Some good places to start include:

Journals you read regularly
Journals recommended by a colleague
References from a literature search on a similar topic
Database you want to be indexed in

Manuscript Matchers

EndNote: Manuscript Matcher
Accessed from the EndNote desktop, online or toolbar in Microsoft Word, this tool utilizes Web of Science to match your manuscript title and abstract to a list of up to 10 journals that may be best suited for your research.
NOTE: Manuscript Matcher requires an EndNote account. EndNote is a paid subscription not provided by the Advocate Health - Midwest Library.
Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE)
This tool provides suggestions for where to submit a paper. It utilizes data from Medline via PubMed to match your paper title and/or abstract to list of the publications that may be best suited for your research.
SPI-Hub
Vanderbilt University created the Scholarly Publishing Information Hub (SPI-Hub) to help identify journals for possible publication. Journals can be found by name or by topic.

Journal Directories

Directory of Nursing Journals
The Nurse Author & Editors and the International Academy of Nursing Editors (INANE) have created a searchable database of journals that have been vetted to be reputable.
Directory of Open Access Journals
This independent database contains over 16,500 peer-reviewed open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities. Journals must meet criteria that follow the best practice in scholarly publishing.
NLM Catalog
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has a catalog to access bibliographic data for over 1.4 million journals, books and other materials referenced in the NCBI database.

Free Journal Ranking Tools

Journal rankings can help show the impact and quality of a journal. They can also influence where authors publish. However, keep in mind that these rankings can be subjective.

Eigenfactor Metrics
Created from a 2007 academic research project, this searchable database provides a web interface where users can track changes in influence over time.
Google Metrics for Health & Medical Sciences
Using five-year h-index and h-median metrics to gauge journal visibility and influence, this dashboard will provide the top 20 journals in most medical specialties.
SCImago Journal & Country Rank
Using scientific indicators from the Scopus database, this portal allows users to compare and analyze journals.

Journal Editors' Call for Papers

Journal editors will sometimes send out a call for papers on a particular topic for an upcoming special issue or theme. We created a search in PubMed to look for these notices and it is linked to the RSS feed below. It is not comprehensive, but may give you some additional ideas about where to send your manuscript. Additional results can be found at our RSS search feed on PubMed.