TIPS FOR PUBLISHING YOUR RESEARCH, INCLUDING CHOOSING A JOURNAL AND DEALING WITH JOURNAL FEES

This page was originally aimed at people who are new to publishing academic journal articles, such as students publishing their first articles, or academics who mostly do teaching or non-research work but have some research to publish. However, there are some tips below that are useful for everyone, such as navigating open access journals with massive fees.

Assumptions in this article

I’m making an assumption that most of you will be dealing with peer-reviewed journals. There are non-peer-reviewed journals, but typically you would not want to go near these because they have issues with their reputation and publishing in them may lead to issues with your reputation.

I may say some things that are most relevant to university students and staff. However, academic articles can be written by anyone, so many of the lessons can apply more broadly. However, there may be some points that only apply to university people (e.g., universities having arrangements with publishers to cover costs).

You might consider journals once you’ve written most of your article, or you might consider it before you’ve run your study (e.g., if you’re doing a grant or research proposal). Or, you might have already submitted to one journal and been unsuccessful, and are determining the next best option. It’s much the same thinking either way - it’s more of a practical issue in terms of whether you’re writing an article with the journal in mind, in which case you might write specifically for that journal’s style, or if you’re adjusting an article that you’ve already written to fit the article better. Some things, like whether your article fits with a journal, can’t be easily fixed with a rewrite. Other things, like word count, can be adjusted to suit the journal’s rules.

List of things to consider

Here are some of the things to think about when choosing a journal. There is no one single most important thing - it will depend on your paper, your field, and your preferences as a researcher. Broadly, and not necessarily in this order, the things to consider are:

Fit:
1. Does your paper fit the scope of the journal? Consider things like the general topic of the paper.
2. Does your paper align with what the journal allows? Consider things like study types, number of words, etc.
3. Is your paper up to the standard of the journal?
Journal reputation
1. How does the journal look in terms of things like impact factor, quartile ranking, etc?
2. Are there any reputation issues with the journal, the publisher, editors? This could include whether the journal (or publisher) is seen as predatory.
Cost and publishing model
1. Is there a cost for publishing in the journal, and is this something you can cover?
2. Do you want to publish open access or in a subscription journal?
3. Are there other ways to get your work out there?

Summary of what’s below

Summary for fit: When considering a journal, think about whether your paper fits the scope of the journal, Read the info on the journal webpage and in the instructions to authors. Consider where other similar papers have been published. And be realistic about whether your paper is up to the standards of the journal, especially for prestigious journals.

Summary for journal reputation: Journal reputation is a tricky thing! It’s usually quite subjective and can’t be summed up with a single number. It can incorporate metrics like impact factor, Citescore and quartile rankings, which can be used to compare journals within a field (but not across different fields). It’s not just about the metrics, though. Certainly avoid potentially dodgy journals (e.g., predatory ones). Consider who the editors are. If you’re not sure if the journal is legitimate, you can check the Think Check Submit website.

Summary for cost: Either your reader pays to read your article (and fewer people will read it - the subscription model), or you have to find a way to pay for it (the open access model). Fees for open access are very high, a few thousand dollars per article, but there are other ways to pay for it. There are also ways to get your article in front of people without them paying, even if you use the subscription model, such as preprints and author accepted manuscripts. Check what you’re allowed to do with each journal on the Sherpa Romeo website.

NOW ALL THE DETAILS

Let’s expand on each of these. I’ll draw on a few journals in my area (gambling research) to help work through some of these issues. For example, here’s the website of the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, which is one that we publish in quite often.

FIT

Does your paper fit the scope of the journal? Look at the website above for the Journal of Behavioral Addictions. You’ll see that it is a pretty specific journal - it wants to consider addictions related to behaviours like gambling, but less on things like alcohol or drugs. It’s interdisciplinary, in that you don’t necessarily need to come from (say) Psychology, and it considers a few types of papers, but mostly focusing on research reports and reviews. It’s also completely open access, which I’ll discuss more below.

But if we look a little closer at the instructions for authors (link is top left, just under Submit Your Manuscript), we can see a bit more detail about what the journal prefers. For example, there’s a strong preference for experimental or observational designs, rather than cross-sectional designs, and ideally not convenience sampling. These are a preference, not necessarily a hard and fast rule. However, what this should tell you is that if your paper is cross-sectional and uses convenience sampling (as many studies do), then this might not be the best journal for it.

The main takeaway from this is that it’s not just about whether the journal publishes the kinds of topics that you study, but also whether the study you’ve done fits what the journal wants. Not all journals have statements like this.

Many journals are more broad. If you’re a researcher with a background in Psychology, like me, and you’ve done a cool study in Psychology, then something like the Australian Journal of Psychology might be a good home for your article. (There are similar ones in other countries.) Looking at the page for this journal, it will accept a wide range of Psychology research. I’ve sometimes found that if I try to publish something on gambling in journals like this, it can be rejected because gambling is seen as too niche. So, by all means try! But, if you get feedback like this, perhaps look towards journals that are more relevant to your field. Something like the Journal of Gambling Studies, for example.

If you’ve already written your article, or if you’re submitting a proposal, one good way to consider whether your article is likely to fit a journal is by looking at where other similar papers have published. If you’re borrowing methods from another paper, then it’s a fair assumption that the journal that published that article might also consider yours. Or, look in your reference list to see if you’ve got lots of articles from a particular journal, and potentially aim there. Of course, if you’re borrowing a method from a paper in another area (e.g., alcohol) and using it in a gambling study, I wouldn’t submit my article about gambling to a journal that publishes about addiction.

Now a big question - is your article up to the standard of the journal? Some journals are seen as more prestigious than others (more on this in a moment). It might be hard to admit this, but I think we probably all recognise that some of our papers are better than others. This might come down to things like the strength of the design (not all questions can be done with solid designs like experiments), the quality of the measures used, and how well you’ve written it up. If this is one of your early papers, it will be hard for you to see this, so talk to a colleague or supervisor for advice. We can’t all publish every paper in the very best journal. So, be realistic about which ones you might go for. This is mostly because it’s very likely to lead to rejection, and we do want to be mindful of the time of editors and peer reviewers. You may be pleasantly surprised sometimes, but you’ll appreciate this consideration when you review or act as editor.

Summary for fit: When considering a journal, think about whether your paper fits the scope of the journal, Read the info on the journal webpage and in the instructions to authors. Consider where other similar papers have been published. And be realistic about whether your paper is up to the standards of the journal, especially for prestigious journals.

JOURNAL REPUTATION

I mentioned something about prestigious journals above, so let’s explore this idea a bit. The general idea is that not all journals are equal in terms of the papers they accept. Some are very very picky. For example, publishing in Nature is usually seen as being pretty impressive - and there are a handful of others in this league.

But, even without considering these very prestigious journals, there are generally higher and lower ones within a field. This is a pretty subjective thing, but there are some metrics that exist that can help you to determine which might be a better home. I want to stress that metrics aren’t everything and there is more to consider, which I’ll outline a little further below.

Common metrics include impact factors and quartile rankings. There are a bunch of others, too. But, let’s keep it simple and look at these two.

An impact factor is a measure of whether a journal is publishing papers that have impact, as measured through citations. Specifically, the measure counts how many times all papers published in that journal within the last two years have been cited, averaging them. The idea is that if a paper has impact, then it should be cited a lot. And if a journal publishes more papers that are cited a lot, the journal will have a higher impact factor. Impact factors are updated each year, and can sometimes fluctuate quite a bit.

There are some issues with impact factors. They are not comparable between fields - some fields move more quickly than others. For example, developing a mathematical proof takes a lot longer than running a small experiment in Psychology. This would mean that mathematical papers that might end up being highly influential may not get lots of cites within the two-year window considered for impact factor, whereas a less influential psychology paper might get more within that period, just because psychology papers probably come out more quickly. There are also some less-than-ethical editorial practices that can be used to increase impact factors. At the very best, it’s a guide.

Here are some impact factors of journals, with most in my field, but with Nature included to give you a sense of a very high one. These are current as of August 2024:

Nature: 50.5
Journal of Behavioral Addictions: 6.6
Journal of Gambling Studies; 2.4
Addiction: 5.2
Psychology of Addictive Behaviours: 3.2

Looking at this, we might consider Journal of Gambling Studies last out of the ones in this list. But, it would depend a lot on the actual paper and whether it does fit into any of the other journals based on what they prefer. For example, if I had a paper that was more Psychology-based, then Psychology of Addictive Behaviours might be a better fit, but if I was doing a study on, say, the geographical location of gambling venues relative to harm in the community, then the Journal of Gambling Studies might be a better fit (or one of the others).

One more thing - not all journals have impact factors, especially newer ones. Below, I’ll talk about predatory journals who will often lie about their impact factor. That’s different to a journal that is new and hasn’t yet developed the track record required for an impact factor.

There are various alternatives for impact factors, like the Source Normalised Impact Factor (SNIP), which aims to show how a journal performs in its field. A SNIP of 1.0 means that the journal is right on average for the field. Above 1.0 is above average. The idea is that since journal impact factors differ a lot across research areas, the SNIP tries to standardise this. Another alternative is CiteScore, which looks at citations in the current year for papers published over the last four years, which aims to be a bit more stable, because impact factors can fluctuate quickly over time.

Another ranking is quartiles. To see these, go to this site.

Search for the journals you’re considering. Note that it is quite sensitive to typos - if I spelled “behavioral” with a u (“behavioural”), then it will say it can’t find any journals with that name.

Click on the journal you want and scroll down. You’ll see a figure that looks like the one below. This figure shows how the journal has changed over time, with the different colours referring to different quartiles. A higher quartile is better. Green indicates Q1, yellow Q2 and so on. If you’re not sure, you can hover over a square and a little black box will pop up, like in the image below.

Note that this journal has rankings in a few different fields - Clinical Psychology, Medicine (miscellaneous) and Psychiatry and Mental Health. Note the rankings are slightly different for those early years (2013, 2015), because the quartiles refer to rankings within a field. So choose the line that is most relevant to your field.

This journal is pretty good! It’s one reason why I choose it - but also, it does tend to publish the kinds of articles that I do, so it’s a good fit in that regard.

Below is another one, for a journal called Addiction Research and Theory. This is also a pretty good journal in my field, and you can see that it’s only listed in one area because it has more a focus in that specific area. Currently, it’s a Q2 journal (yellow), but it has been alternating between Q1 and Q2 for the last few years.

Now, I would hesitate to publish here. It also has a not-too-bad impact factor for my area (1.9). But, what has happened with these metrics is that they have become something that is considered when ranking academics (e.g., for jobs, for promotions, for awards). So, while I don’t like the idea of using these metrics as purely objective measures of a journal (and the academics that publish in them), it is the reality of what happens. If I have the choice between the two, and if my article fits both, then for metrics my decision would be Journal of Behavioral Addictions over Addiction Research and Theory. That said, we also need to consider cost. More on this below.

predatory journals and publishers

Some journals and publishers have bad reputations because they are seen as predatory. We’ll talk about publishing models more below, but the idea is that sometimes authors pay up front for papers to be published. This has led to some unethical practices, such as accepting papers without going through full peer review, or accepting any paper on the basis that the authors will pay for it.

Once you’ve published, you’ll start to receive lots of emails like the one to the right. This comes from an email address of x@peerreviewedjournals.com, which aims to get you to think that they are peer-reviewed, when they are probably not. Also note that the journal name is very similar to a legitimate journal. This one is Journal of Addiction Research and Therapy, which is similar to Addiction Research and Theory, above.

Let’s have a look at their website. A big emphasis on open access (often a big of a red flag), as well as some journal metrics. Also look for a very short turnaround time in terms of articles, which probably indicates they haven’t been properly peer-reviewed. We can see a Journal Impact Factor of 9.79, which is suspiciously high for a journal I’ve never heard of. The list of journal impact factors is from Clarivate, and I believe it’s behind a paywall. So you can’t search that. But, we could try searching the CiteScore (another metric) to see if this is just all completely made up.

Let’s go and search https://www.scopus.com/sources.uri for Citescores.

For Journal of Behavioral Addictions, I get a result with a Citescore. This is what you should see for a legitimate journal.

As you might have guessed, Journal of Addiction Research and Therapy shows up nothing. Yet they’re claiming a Citescore of 13.41.

Yes, it’s a scam to get some of that sweet sweet open access money. Be aware.

Golden rule - if you get an approach to publish in a journal, and if it seems fishy, it probably is. Don’t rule out all approaches - as you develop in a field, editors will approach you to publish in their journals. If you know them, or know of them, great, go for it!

There is a list of potentially predatory publishers and journals - see Beall’s List. Jeffrey Beall was a librarian who started making this list. He’s now retired, so the list can become a little out of date, such as if publishers change their name. But, it’s a good start.

Whether a journal is predatory can be a bit of a grey area. MDPI, for example, is often criticised but some of their journals appear to be OK See a discussion here. See the email to the right, which shows the kinds of emails that MDPI has become known for, inviting people to submit articles to their journals, even if the authors don’t publish in the research area of the journal.

Another example was the Hindawi brand, which was bought out by another publisher, who then under some intense pressure stopped using the Hindawi brand.

Over time, you will get a feel for different journals. I know that some journals take a longer time to enact peer review. For example, my experience with the Journal of Gambling Studies is that it’s not unusual for review to take more than a year, while other journals will turn it around much more quickly (sometimes weeks or just a few months). This tells me that if I have a journal that I want to get out quickly, say because it’s relevant to policy, then I wouldn’t go to that journal.

One more thing is that some academics can be quite controversial. If they are the editors on a journal, that might rule out the journal for some authors. This may be more important to some people, so if it’s important to you, have a look at the journal’s editorial board - it’s usually listed on their website.

While you’re checking the journal’s editorial board, look to see if it does contain some of the leaders in your field (often a sign of a good journal). Ideally, they come from a range of institutions. For journals specific to a certain country, they may all come from that country.

If you’re not sure if a journal is legitimate, the Think Check Submit website is very helpful.

Summary for journal reputation: Journal reputation is a tricky thing! It’s usually quite subjective and can’t be summed up with a single number. It can incorporate metrics like impact factor, Citescore and quartile rankings, which can be used to compare journals within a field (but not across different fields). It’s not just about the metrics, though. Certainly avoid potentially dodgy journals (e.g., predatory ones). Consider who the editors are. If you’re not sure if the journal is legitimate, you can check the Think Check Submit website.

COST

I’ve listed this last because while it’s very important, I did want to cover the other topics above first.

Different publishing models - how we got to where we are

To understand journal cost, we need to understand a little bit about the history of journals. Don’t worry, I’ll make it brief. Scientific journals date back to around 1665. At the time, this was a way to share scientific discoveries broadly. Journals had to be printed, bound, mailed to libraries, etc. Someone had to pay for this, and just like other books, libraries typically paid for them. If you wanted, you could also subscribe to a journal yourself, and you would pay to be sent a copy. That is, the reader pays (or the library) - via a subscription, or possibly per article. (Note: This money has always gone to the publishers, as far as I’m aware, and not to the authors.)

With things like the internet and email, it’s now much easier and faster to share information. We can just publish a PDF of an individual article online, rather than waiting for a whole journal (with multiple PDFs) to be ready. But, with the subscription model, the publishers own the copyright so this caused some issues. (But, see below where I discuss alternate ways of getting journal articles out.) There was also the general issue of science being behind a paywall - it’s not great that readers have to pay for it.

So now there’s open access, which means that it’s free for readers to download and read articles, and the copyright stays with the authors rather than the journal, so authors can post it wherever they want. This is great because it means that science is much more accessible to everyone, as it should be.

But, journals are for-profit IVERY for-profit), so someone still has to pay. This is usually the authors, and open access fees (sometimes called article processing charges), are usually in the thousands of dollars per article. Charges in the range of USD$3,000 per article are probably about average. Previously, journal publishers could rely on an ongoing revenue stream from subscription costs and people paying to download individual articles. With open access, they only get one payment per article, so it’s a big one, and that’s difficult for many authors to cover.

choosing a publishing model

Some journals are subscription journals, some are open-access only, and some offer both (hybrid models), and the authors can choose which they want to do. Look at the information for authors for details about what is available.

If you choose open access, you’ll need to be able to fund it or find another way to pay for it. If you’re a student or don’t have funding, then paying a few thousand dollars for an open access article is probably not possible. There are options, though. Some institutions have agreements with journals to waive open access fees in certain journals. Check with your institution. At CQU, we have a list of journals that will waive open access fees, although this is limited to a certain number of articles per year across everyone at CQU, so get in early. Also, some journals don’t charge fees for open access. This is common in some areas (I think it is in education for example). The term Diamond Open Access refers to journals that are open access but don’t charge any fees.

So if you don’t have funds, and want to go open access, you’ll need to find a journal that doesn’t charge, or one that has an agreement with your institution. It’s worth looking! Open access publications have more impact, because they’re more visible.

If you’re applying for a grant to do your research, some funders will allow you to build open access fees into your grant application. Check with them.

If you choose to go subscription, no worries! It’s cheaper for you, and there are other ways to get your paper in front of people. This is very common especially for students or people without a budget, when there are no open access options available, or if they’ve chosen a journal that doesn’t offer open access.

So how can you get your article out there? Most journals will allow you to upload a preprint. When you submit your article to a journal, while it’s undergoing peer review, you can also upload it to a preprint server like Psyarxiv. Most journals allow this, although there are a very small number who specifically do not allow it. And, once your article is accepted, you can have a copy of the “author accepted manuscript” on your website. This is not the PDF that the journal creates for you, but instead just a Word document (or your own PDF) of your article. This usually cannot be posted everywhere, but you can post it on your website, as I often do for non-open-access articles on my Publications page. Using a preprint, or posting the author accepted manuscript version, allows you to publish without cost to you, while still being able to make your paper available to people. I think that fewer people read them compared to open access publications, but at least it’s one way to get it out there if you can’t afford open access or find another way to get into an open access journal.

As above, remember that authors don’t get paid when people pay to read their article. So, if you want people like your family and friends, or colleagues or funders etc, feel free to send it to them. And, feel free to reach out to authors of other articles if their articles are behind paywalls and you can’t get them through your institution’s library. Often they’ll send it to you without you having to pay.

AUTHOR’S RIGHTS and copyright

I’ve mentioned above that different models allow different rights for authors. Basically, with subscription, you can’t post your paper anywhere (at least not during an embargo period of a year or more), but with open access you can post it anywhere. Some journals allow preprints, others don’t. There’s a handy website to help you with this. See Sherpa Romeo.

See below for the results from the Journal of Gambling Studies. This journal offers both models, an open access pathway and a subscription pathway. You can post preprints (submitted version), accepted versions can be posted in certain places depending on which pathway you’ve used, and the published version can be posted anywhere as long as you used the open access pathway.

Transfers

Something I’ve seen popping up more and more is that good journals might create “sister” journals. The idea is that if the main journal rejects your paper, they make it very easy for you to transfer to this related journal to give you another chance. Sounds OK so far, but my biggest problem with these sister journals is that they’re typically open access journals with high publication fees.

An example in my field is Addictive Behaviors. It’s a good journal, it’s been around since 1975. Solid peer review, strong editorial board, impact factor = 3.7, not bad. It offers open access (US$4,220 per article), but also the subscription model where the reader pays to get access. More recently, Addictive Behaviors Reports appeared. There’s a lot to like about the scope of this journal, in that they will publish null results (minimising publishing bias, as long as the methods are sound), replication studies, and other things that might not make it into other journals. It’s open access only, and it is cheaper than the main journal (US$3,140 per article). What I don’t like about the set up, though, is that it’s a way for publishers to say “Hey, your article isn’t good enough for this journal. You can publish it in this related journal, but only if you pay the fee.” That is, they’ll accept journals in the subscription model in the main journal, but if you want to publish in the related journal, you have to pay to do so. There’s a lot I like about the Reports journal’s scope, but I am very way of the open access only publishing model here. To be clear, I do really like open access and usually publish open access when I can. But, I am wary that requiring a big chunk of money up front from authors can be problematic.

Summary for cost: Either your reader pays to read your article (and fewer people will read it - the subscription model), or you have to find a way to pay for it (the open access model). Fees for open access are very high, a few thousand dollars per article, but there are other ways to pay for it. There are also ways to get your article in front of people without them paying, even if you use the subscription model, such as preprints and author accepted manuscripts. Check what you’re allowed to do with each journal on the Sherpa Romeo website.

There’s a lot of info above, sorry! But hopefully it’s useful information.