Karl Mundt Library: Faculty/Staff: Tips from the Library: Selecting a publisher

Selecting where to publish - evaluating journals

While faculty know the major journals in their disciplines, some help may be needed to evaluate lesser known publications or publications in another discipline. Below are a few of the tools available:

Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
JCR is part of the Library’s subscription to Web of Knowledge databases and provides “journal impact factor,” one measure of a journal’s quality/prestige based on how heavily cited it is in other journals. After linking to JCR, choose “Sciences” or “Social Sciences” and then search for a specific journal title or view a group of journals by subject category, publisher, or country/territory.
Cabell’s Directories of Publishing Opportunities This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
These online directories are intended to help you find journals in which to publish your research. The directories provide acceptance rate and other information for evaluating journals in Computer Science, Health Administration, Business (accounting, econ and finance, management, and marketing) and education (curriculum & methods, psychology and administration, and technology and library science). In addition to acceptance rates, information provided includes type of review (blind or editorial), number of reviewers, and more. To get a list of journals in a specific discipline (subject area), click on the "Advanced search" link under the search box. On the Advanced page, find options for selecting a discipline and other options. After you've selected a discipline, clicking the search icon will produce a list of journals for that discipline.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) This link opens in a new window
DOAJ maintains a list of open access journals – journals that don’t charge for access. While quality control is a requirement of inclusion in DOAJ, it may be through either peer review or editorial review. So after identifying potential open access journals in which to publish, you’ll need to check submission guidelines on journal websites to find out the type of review.
Publishing in an open access journal is a choice some researchers consider to be socially responsible because it makes scholarly work available to many, not the few who can afford it, and because libraries/universities aren’t paying for access to material that was created by their own universities’ scholars. Some disciplines – e.g., medicine and sciences -- have moved more quickly to this publication model in which, after acceptance through a peer review process, the author’s institution or the author pays a standard rate or page charge (one time only). Differentiating non-selective “vanity presses” from legitimate peer-reviewed publications with page charges is important.
Sherpa / Romeo This link opens in a new window
Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement. Search by journal title or ISSN. For each journal, The summary provided "is for the journal's default policies, and changes or exceptions can often be negotiated by authors."

In addition to the tools above, the following may help:

"Manuscript Matcher" in EndNote Online

If you use EndNote Online to manage references for your research papers and projects, it includes a tool called "Manuscript Matcher" that will use the title and abstract of your paper to match it to journals that are a best match for publication. It provides a list of 2 to 10 best journals in which to publish content like yours. Select the MATCH tab in EndNote Online. See "Manuscript Matcher" for more information.

Journal websites

Reputable journals will describe their review processes on their websites, typically in their “submission guidelines” area. All journal acceptance rates and review procedures are self-reported by the journals, so no journal should be selected for publication without evaluating its articles for scholarly value, etc.