Choosing a journal to publish your research can be stressful, especially if you are new to the publishing process. The Medical Center Library has a few tips to get you started.
Decide Early
Our first suggestion is to decide where you are going to submit your article early in the writing process. Even better, decide where you might publish as you are planning your research study! You will want to make sure the journal is a good fit for your research and understand what their expectations are for your research and the manuscript.
Some journals only publish specific types of articles and often will have specific reporting requirements that you need to consider early on in the writing process.
- Will you need to register a protocol?
- Will you need to make your data available in a data repository and if so, do you need to organize the data in a specific way?
- Do you need to secure funding for publication costs?
Audience & Discoverability
When thinking about where to submit your article, a few things to consider are your audience, and the discoverability and reputation of the journal.
- Audience: Who do you want to read your article? How accessible is the journal? Is it behind a paywall or is it open access? Think about where your peers are publishing.
- Discoverability: To make sure your audience can find your article, consider how discoverable it is—where will your article appear? In PubMed (free to search), or in Web of Science or Scopus (large citation databases but behind a paywall)? Where the journal is indexed will determine who sees it.
- Reputation: Authors are also very concerned about the reputation of a journal. Most people automatically seek out journals with high Journal Impact Factors but we ask you to instead consider journal quartile rankings which are normalized to the research category (e.g., Surgery, or Endocrinology & Metabolism). This way you can compare journals within and across subject areas.
Using Tools
There are tools available to help you find a home for your manuscript!
- Journal finders: Copy and paste your title and abstract into a journal finder tool, and it will match your text and give you a list of potential journals. Some tools are journal agnostic, such as JANE (Journal/Author Name Estimator), while others are publisher-specific (e.g., Elsevier Journal Finder).
- Search in databases: Another great option is doing a search in PubMed, Web of Science, or Scopus to identify journals on your topic. Web of Science and Scopus have great visualization tools that will show where the research is being published.
Investigate Journals
Finally, once you have a list of potential journals, you need to check their websites to find out more about each one. Questions to ask include:
- Who is the journal’s target audience?
- What type of manuscripts do they publish? (Reviews? Primary studies? Editorials?)
- What is the scope of the journal (do they publish on your topic?)
- Who is on the editorial board?
- What is the journal's publishing model? (subscription-based or open access?)
- Are there publishing costs? (article processing charges or APCs)
- Who retains the copyright to the manuscript?
Want to know more?
- Please see our Getting Published LibGuide for guidance on open access options at Duke, how to make a poster, or create a visual or video abstract.
- We also offer free online classes to get you started, including how to write an abstract, Journal Selection for Authors, and Understanding Creative Commons Copyright. Register here.
- Still have questions? Contact the Library for assistance! Email: medical-librarian@duke.edu