Writing for Publication: Part 4

Office of Graduate Studies Author

12/22/2016 Added

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Part 4 of an 8-part Writing for Publication workshop presented by Dr. Brian Waters

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[00:00:02.394]Let's move to the next part of the workshop
[00:00:04.890]and talk about strategies
[00:00:06.167]for selecting journals for submission.
[00:00:11.797]Okay, so one easy way to do this
[00:00:15.038]is when you go back to your office or desk,
[00:00:18.605]just gather up the articles, five or 10 articles
[00:00:22.419]that are most important to your current project
[00:00:25.794]and just flip to the back
[00:00:27.463]to the references cited in these articles
[00:00:30.582]and make a tally of which journals
[00:00:32.957]are being cited in those articles,
[00:00:35.612]so if you see three or four journals being cited
[00:00:40.016]over and over and over again,
[00:00:41.798]that gives you some important clues
[00:00:43.637]that those are the predominant journals for your topic.
[00:00:48.138]So, that's an easy way to start zeroing in
[00:00:51.553]on where you want to publish.
[00:00:55.596]Once you have this list of potential target journals,
[00:00:59.742]you can go to their website and browse
[00:01:02.892]the recent issues of these journals,
[00:01:05.501]look at three or four recent issues
[00:01:07.939]and just go through most or all of the papers
[00:01:13.920]that are published in those issues
[00:01:15.976]and see what types of papers they are publishing
[00:01:19.333]and you can also see the speed of publication,
[00:01:23.060]so you can look at when the paper
[00:01:25.049]was submitted and when it was published
[00:01:27.326]and you can see some journals are faster.
[00:01:30.212]Some journals are more slow
[00:01:32.333]and that's information that you can use.
[00:01:38.766]Also, when you have your potential target list of journals,
[00:01:46.016]you should go and read the aims and scope,
[00:01:48.579]so this is where the publisher tells you
[00:01:51.480]what they want to publish.
[00:01:53.381]They tell you what types of papers they want.
[00:01:56.346]They tell you the target audience they want.
[00:01:58.640]They tell you the topics that they're interested in.
[00:02:04.045]For example, some journals will take review articles
[00:02:07.403]or methods articles or short papers.
[00:02:10.623]Some only take full original research papers,
[00:02:13.974]so you just need to know what types of papers they take
[00:02:18.003]and the appropriate research topics,
[00:02:20.053]so that's all found in the aim and scope.
[00:02:26.343]So, this is the home page of a journal in my field.
[00:02:30.959]This is the Journal of Experimental Botany
[00:02:33.795]and this is just a web capture screenshot
[00:02:37.234]and down here you see instructions to authors.
[00:02:41.570]Okay, so that's what I'm talking about.
[00:02:43.012]If you click instructions to authors,
[00:02:45.562]that will give you the aims and scope
[00:02:47.435]and all of their instructions.
[00:02:49.751]So, after clicking instructions to authors,
[00:02:52.122]you'll get a page like this
[00:02:54.174]and this goes on for a long ways.
[00:02:56.826]I'm not going to show all of it to you,
[00:02:59.194]but the first thing they talk about is the scope,
[00:03:03.064]so the aim of JXB is to publish
[00:03:04.922]the highest quality manuscripts that address
[00:03:07.407]questions of broad interest in plant biology.
[00:03:10.244]Then they go on to give you a lot more information
[00:03:13.146]about the types of articles they want.
[00:03:16.169]So, take a look at this and think.
[00:03:18.154]Does my article fit
[00:03:19.803]into the aims and scope for this journal?
[00:03:25.458]Okay, so once you've gathered that information,
[00:03:29.359]there's other information that you'll want to use also,
[00:03:33.268]so the aspects that you consider
[00:03:35.544]when choosing your target journal.
[00:03:38.218]I've already mentioned the type of article,
[00:03:40.616]a review, a methods, a short paper,
[00:03:43.394]whatever the case may be.
[00:03:45.878]Think about the target audience,
[00:03:48.254]so each journal has a target audience.
[00:03:52.633]Some of the journals have the same target audience.
[00:03:55.607]Some of them overlap partially, but not entirely,
[00:03:58.890]so think about the readers
[00:04:00.399]that you're trying to reach with your paper.
[00:04:05.769]The type of papers, in terms of methodology and approach.
[00:04:13.043]The time from submission to publication.
[00:04:15.341]Okay, so this is important information.
[00:04:18.426]So, maybe you need it published as quickly as possible,
[00:04:22.189]so that could help you decide.
[00:04:23.635]Or maybe you're not in as big of a hurry,
[00:04:26.246]but you want it in that specific journal that takes longer.
[00:04:32.982]Each situation is different,
[00:04:35.414]so that's something to consider.
[00:04:37.423]Is this a rapid journal
[00:04:39.087]or is this one that takes a longer time?
[00:04:42.652]One that you've probably heard about
[00:04:44.702]is the impact factor or other metric for the journal,
[00:04:49.093]so this is also something to consider,
[00:04:52.328]so let's talk about this in more detail.
[00:04:54.259]Impact factor and other metrics.
[00:04:59.229]So, the impact factor.
[00:05:02.802]Okay, this is all directly from the website Thomson Reuters.
[00:05:07.824]These are the publishers that determine impact factor.
[00:05:12.409]They index journals in all different disciplines
[00:05:16.830]and then they keep track of how much each article is cited
[00:05:21.291]and then they tally all this together
[00:05:23.424]to create an impact factor.
[00:05:26.679]Another consideration to take in mind
[00:05:28.930]is whether you're going to publish open access or not,
[00:05:34.233]so the cost to publish.
[00:05:37.657]Do I want to spend money to publish this paper or not?
[00:05:42.648]So, what is open access?
[00:05:44.640]Let's talk about that briefly.
[00:05:48.006]So, publishing in journals,
[00:05:50.575]there are a few different models now.
[00:05:53.626]We have the traditional model.
[00:05:56.362]This is where the author does not pay
[00:05:58.483]the journal to publish the paper.
[00:06:00.826]You submit the paper.
[00:06:02.445]They accept it, they publish it,
[00:06:04.974]but only subscribers of that journal can access the article,
[00:06:11.303]so the exposure of the article is limited to subscribers.
[00:06:18.630]There's a second model called the gold open access model
[00:06:23.573]and so in the gold open access model,
[00:06:25.911]the author has to pay the journal,
[00:06:28.824]so you have to pay to have your paper published,
[00:06:32.564]but then the journal makes the published article
[00:06:35.151]available to anyone for free.
[00:06:37.553]You don't have to have a subscription,
[00:06:40.777]so you're basically paying the subscription for the readers
[00:06:44.688]by going with the gold open access
[00:06:46.839]or any form of open access.
[00:06:48.485]There's also the hybrid model,
[00:06:51.614]so these are journals where you can publish it for free,
[00:06:56.271]but not make your article open access
[00:06:58.717]or you can pay and your article will be open access.
[00:07:05.929]So, you kind of need to decide before you submit
[00:07:11.595]do I want to pay or do I not?
[00:07:13.764]The journal will supply information for the cost to publish
[00:07:17.696]if it's open access or the hybrid model,
[00:07:19.996]so that will be in the instructions for authors.
[00:07:25.156]So, sometimes you have money built into the project
[00:07:29.550]to pay for open access, sometimes you don't,
[00:07:32.661]so that's a consideration.
[00:07:34.524]Now speaking of open access, you need to be careful
[00:07:37.806]when you're choosing an open access journal
[00:07:40.993]because now there are a lot of basically fake journals
[00:07:46.636]and there are a lot of these fake journals.
[00:07:49.645]Every day I get invitations to publish
[00:07:52.852]in these fake journals in my email
[00:07:55.730]and so what you should do is go to this website,
[00:07:58.287]scholarlyoa.com, or Scholarly Open Access,
[00:08:03.628]and look at Beall's list.
[00:08:05.820]So, Jeffrey Beall is a librarian in Colorado
[00:08:10.680]who's put together this list and he updates it every year
[00:08:15.715]of potential, possible, or probable
[00:08:18.555]predatory scholarly open access publishers,
[00:08:22.973]so these are publishers
[00:08:24.198]that basically will publish anything.
[00:08:26.558]It doesn't matter how bad it is.
[00:08:28.719]As long as you pay, they'll publish it
[00:08:30.944]and if you publish in these journals,
[00:08:32.987]it's not going to be considered valid in your field.
[00:08:37.782]It's going to hurt you more
[00:08:39.109]as an academic than it will help you.
[00:08:42.890]So, how many of these are there?
[00:08:44.629]So, in 2011, there were 18 publishers
[00:08:48.063]and you can see the numbers.
[00:08:49.514]At the beginning of 2015, there were 693,
[00:08:54.428]so there's a lot of them out there
[00:08:56.819]and these are publishers, so they have multiple journals.
[00:08:59.983]There are also standalone journals
[00:09:02.109]and at the beginning of the year, there were 507 of those,
[00:09:06.375]so there's thousands of these
[00:09:09.297]predatory journals that you want to avoid,
[00:09:13.350]so it's kind of like the wild west of publishing now
[00:09:17.761]and you have to really be careful
[00:09:19.560]and go with known journals.
[00:09:23.655]Okay, so with your discussion partners,
[00:09:27.096]let's just take a couple minutes
[00:09:30.639]and based on all of these factors we've talked about,
[00:09:34.649]for the next project that you will publish,
[00:09:37.219]what are your top two criteria
[00:09:39.837]for selecting a target journal?
[00:09:41.881]Let's just take about two minutes.
[00:09:43.234](slow music)
[00:09:45.436]Okay, so what did you come up with?
[00:09:47.439]What were your top criteria for choosing a journal?
[00:09:53.069]How many had impact factor?
[00:09:57.207]Yeah, okay.
[00:09:59.171]The highest possible impact factor, let's put it that way.
[00:10:02.078](students chuckle)
[00:10:03.159]How many had that?
[00:10:05.646]Nobody?
[00:10:06.479]You all changed your mind suddenly.
[00:10:09.025]What did you have?
[00:10:10.115](student comments)
[00:10:34.915]Okay, so let me summarize that
[00:10:36.790]for the group that couldn't hear.
[00:10:38.583]So, he was saying that his strategy would be
[00:10:41.649]to start at the highest impact factor journal.
[00:10:44.779]If it gets rejected, go down to the next one.
[00:10:47.679]If it gets rejected, go down to the next one
[00:10:50.488]and that's a valid strategy if you have time,
[00:10:53.770]if you have time to do that,
[00:10:55.793]if you want the highest possible impact factor,
[00:11:00.583]but maybe you don't have time to do that
[00:11:03.645]and you wanna go for a safe journal right away,
[00:11:06.590]so you might choose a lower impact factor for time.
[00:11:10.653]So, there's a lot to think about.
[00:11:12.224]There's not a one strategy fits all situations model.
[00:11:17.312]Okay.
[00:11:18.796]All right, so think about your current situation.
[00:11:23.177]What's important for publishing in your situation?

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Writing for Publication: Part 4

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