Top Tips for Finding the Best Journals for Your Research Paper Publications

So, you have just completed your research paper. Many months of designing your study, collecting data, writing your findings, and refining your draft have finally paid off. You’re ready to share your discoveries with the world. The only barrier that stands between you and this goal is the choice of the best journal for your research paper publication.

While many practitioners relax during this phase and do not pay sufficient attention to it, this is one of the worst mistakes you can make. The choice of the right journal is a crucial decision that directly affects your study outcomes. A wrong journal can easily mean a rejection six months after due to the reported lack of fit with its audience.

Journal selection is both an art and a skill that can be taught. Instead of relying on your intuition and insight, we suggest a number of practical steps you can take to remove the guesswork and ensure superior publication outcomes.

1. Assess Your Goals

The success of your publication depends on the match between your study and the selected journal. Prior to opening a directory of reputable magazines, ask yourself several honest questions:

1. What is the potential impact of your findings? Does your study make a field-changing breakthrough, an incremental advance of knowledge in some sphere or a contribution to a relatively narrow niche?
2. How broad is your study’s appeal? Will it be interesting to readers from related disciplines?
3. How strong is your methodological rigour? Does your study design support all claims made by it?
4. Are you working against the clock? In many areas, such as PhD research, time is of the essence, which means that you must publish your work before a certain date.

This is a step requiring complete honesty and ego suspension. There is nothing wrong with publishing a relatively niche study in a specialised journal. Alternatively, a breakthrough publication may require a generalist one, such as Nature.

2. Start Asking Around

A simple database search can leave you with a list including dozens of potential publication candidates. However, this is just the first step. Here are some additional tricks to reduce your list to 5-10 options.

1. Check the journals you frequently cite in your own work. Chances are, they will also be compatible with your study’s focus.
2. Ask your colleagues. Your peer researchers, your supervisor or users of an academic subreddit such as r/AskAcademia may be aware of the current status quo and quality journals with the lowest rejection rate.
3. Order a professional consultation. Specialised agencies offering PhD academic writing services usually possess long-term expertise and may be a good source of insights in this sphere.

3. Set the Bar

Many researchers primarily look into the Impact Factor when choosing the ‘best’ journal for publication. Keep in mind that a high-impact journal frequently rejects up to 90% of all submissions and may have long review periods. This means that you can find yourself starting your publication journal all over again six months down the road if you follow this path.

The impact factor is usually calculated by measuring average citations over a two-year period. With that being said, this may not always be meaningful for spheres with slow citation accumulation. This does not mean that the Impact Factor is meaningless. You just need to also consider additional indicators by using:

CiteScore – includes a three-year window and multiple document types.

Eigenfactor – removes journal self-citations.

Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) – weights the prestige of the journals citing specific publications.

By appraising multiple factors instead of one, you can make sure that your journal of choice is actually effective at delivering your findings to your target audience.

4. Explore Rejection Rates and Peer Review Policies

As noted above, many high-profile journals reject 70%+ of all submissions. While this does not imply that you must only target low-profile ones, you need to fail fast to quickly try alternative options. Enter peer review policies.

If your journal of choice reports the average turnaround time for a first decision exceeding 8 weeks, this may look like a red flag. Double-blind review policies and other complex procedures further increase your chances of waiting several months and not even receiving a proper review of your rejected submission.

If you are on a tenure clock, take this into account and look for journals with transparent and simple review policies and accommodating acceptance rates.

5. Avoid Predatory Publishers

Even if you have extremely tight deadlines to meet, accepting the invitations of journals offering unbelievably fast peer review and publishing terms for a hefty fee will not be a wise decision. These ‘facilitators’ are largely fraudulent and rarely live up to their promises. Here are some red flags:

• The offered journal is not indexed in DOAL.
• The journal claims to have an Impact Factor without being listed in JCR.
• The cited editorial board members are not available via email or have no idea about being on this journal’s board.
• Peer review terms are unbelievably short (e.g., 5-7 days).

Use Think.Check.Submit. or similar resources, to recognise and avoid known predator journals.

6. Run Background Checks

When you set your eyes on a particular journal, run several checks to ensure a good fit:

• Read several recent issues to see whether they offer a sufficient number of figures and overall length to accommodate your article.
• Check for publications with similar methodologies.
• Write emails to several editorial board members to estimate their responsiveness.

The last check is underused in academia. However, you can save yourself months of failed efforts by directly approaching the person(s) in charge. They can offer valuable information about such areas as current publication delays, article compatibility or overall speed of problem-solving.

7. Create a Submission Cascade

Finally, some pro tips:

1. Send your article to multiple journals consecutively (e.g., a high-ranking journal, a mid-ranking journal, and a ‘safe backup’ journal with high acceptance rates). This creates a cascade effect where rejection from a single journal simply means that you move to the next journal on the same day.
2. Look for ‘portable peer reviews’. This system allows you to ‘transfer’ academic manuscript reviews between journals to avoid recurrent ‘review rounds’. If you are rejected from one journal, you simply move to another journal within the same ‘publisher network’ while skipping the review round altogether.

Getting your publication right is a challenging task. Keep in mind that your goal is to get your findings across and not to seek prestige. Send to multiple journals, conduct your preliminary research, and focus on the journals that are interested in you and are ready to say ‘yes’.