Publishing your Research: Atikara Hautaka | Journal Articles

When considering where to publish your research, you may ask yourself which journal will you aim for or which one is the best fit for your article? It's important to consider various factors, including:

• Are the implications of your research time-sensitive?
• Will this affect your choice of journal?
• Should you consider publishing in an open access journal?
• If the journal you're aiming for publishes both open and closed material, do you have the funds to pay an APC? And if not, are you happy to publish behind a paywall or does the journal policy allow for the author accepted manuscript to be made available through Research Commons?
• What is the citation potential of your journal, and its reputation/quality?
• What is its impact factor? Check our Measuring your impact guide for more information on metrics and statistics. 
• When thinking about accessibility/discoverability – Is the journal indexed?
• Will the main audience need to pay for access?
• Check copyright/Intellectual property – will you still be able to do what you need to with your work after it’s been published?
• Avoid predatory publishers.

There isn't a one-size-fits-all approach. Your publishing strategy will depend on your goals. Do you want to be published in a maximum impact journal with a wide audience. e.g. Nature, or a journal that may have a low citation rate but is known to be read by those with the most expertise. e.g. New Zealand Journal of Vocational Education Research? Would it be better to aim for a journal outside your discipline, or one with an interdisciplinary focus - introducing new knowledge and perspectives previously unexplored?

When you've selected your preferred journal, be sure to read the journal's home page and follow the guidelines for formatting and referencing.

There are two primary routes to make your research article open: open access journals (often referred to as Gold open access) and open access archives or repositories (Green open access):

Open access journals

Open access journals perform peer review and then make the approved contents freely available to the world. Their expenses consist of peer review, manuscript preparation, and server space. Sometimes it means that journals charge a processing fee on accepted articles, to be paid by the author or the author's sponsor (employer, funding agency).

Open access repositories

Open access archives or repositories do not perform peer review, but simply make their contents freely available to the world. They may contain unrefereed preprints, refereed postprints, or both. Archives may belong to institutions, such as universities and laboratories, or disciplines, such as physics and economics. Authors may archive their preprints without anyone else's permission, and a majority of journals permit authors to archive their postprints.
(adapted from "A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access" by Peter Suber).

Unethical Publishing Practices

Unethical publishing practices come in many forms. Examples include:

• Falsely claiming to provide peer review and meaningful editorial oversight of submissions
• Lying about affiliations with prestigious scholarly/scientific organizations
• Claiming affiliation with a non-existent organization
• Naming reputable scholars to editorial boards without their permission (and refusing to remove them)
• Falsely claiming to have a high Journal Impact Factor
• Hiding information about Article Processing Charges (APCs) until after the author has completed submission
• Falsely claiming to be included in prestigious indexes
• Short timeframes for publication

Journals and publishers which undertake these practices are typically labeled "predatory". It is common for these companies to approach authors via email, offering to publish their work in return for money. Predatory publishing has grown exponentially in the last 10 years.

How to Check

You can check if a journal has been identified as engaging in unethical practices by looking it up in the Cabells database. If it appears on the Cabells "predatory reports", there will be details of its violations.

Note: New journals are being classified as predatory on a very regular basis, and Cabells provide a list of journals that are currently under review for inclusion in the predatory reports. In addition, legitimate journals are occasionally mistakenly classified as predatory. It is important to scrutinize journals carefully whether or not they are classified as predatory. There are a large number of journals which are low quality but not, by definition, predatory.

Red flags

• Emailed invitations to submit, often poorly written
• Excessive use of flattery
• Misleading geographic information
• Insufficient contact information
• Unclear author fee structures
• Lack of "instructions for authors" information
• Poor quality material in existing issues
• No ISSN
• Poor or non-existent review or editorial processes
• Unrealistic time frames to publication

There are a number of useful resources on the web to aid in assessing the credibility of a journal. These include: 

Vanity publishing, not to be confused with self-publishing, is a term used to describe a range of borderline practices aimed at getting authors to pay to have their existing works published as books at their own expense.

Some vanity publishers target PhD students, offering to print their theses as a book. Often the thesis is reproduced with minimal oversight (e.g. without peer review or proof-reading processes) or simply printed on demand as-is. Because theses are usually available online through an institutional repository, there is seldom any demand. Some vanity publishers have been known to pressure authors into purchasing copies themselves.

Vanity publishing can be distinguished from self-publishing in that copyright is retained by the author in self-publication, but transferred to the publisher in a vanity publishing arrangement. Giving away copyright to your thesis will seriously inhibit your ability to further publish your research.