Science (General)

Researchers today have numerous options when selecting publications for their research. While an complete overview of the scientific publication landscape is beyond the scope of this guide, we offer some useful resources for finding and selecting journals based on discipline:

Things to consider

These questions can help you to identify appropriate journals or conference proceedings in your field:

• What is the audience for my article? Where does that audience go when they want to read something new in their field?
• Are there professional societies or organizations for my field? Or perhaps conferences, annual meetings, or other events?
• Where have colleagues in my field submitted their work?
• Where was the material I cited in my article published?
• If I wanted to read articles on a similar topic, where would I find them?
• Is my article in scope for a journal of interest?
  • Journal publishers typically have a page or section defining their topical scope. See, for example, the "Mission" in the author guidelines for the Journal of Communication.
• Is the journal accessible to users of all abilities?
• What is the journal’s impact and reputation?
• What are the journal’s policies related to submission, open access, and data sharing?

Be realistic about your journal selection (don’t aim too high or too low), but don't let fear of rejection guide your choice.

Resources

These resources and the strategies further below are good starting points for finding and evaluating relevant journals in your discipline.

• Think. Check. Submit. This resource offers easy-to-use checklists to help authors evaluate the appropriateness and trustworthiness of book and journal publishers.
• Cabell's Whitelist. This database provides information about journals’ areas of focus, acceptance rates, and submission policies. As of 2018, the University of Michigan subscribes to the database for education and library science journals.
• Journal / Author Name Estimator. This tool allows you to compare your work to published articles in PubMed to approximate possible publication venues for work in the health sciences.
• MLA Directory of Periodicals. This resource within the MLA International Bibliography describes the scope of journals in many areas of literature and language study, including circulation figures, submission guidelines, information on whether or not journals are peer reviewed, and publication statistics.
• Subject Specialists at the University of Michigan Library. Librarians in your subject area can help you work through the questions above and find other scholarship in your field. They may also be able to help you find discipline-specific resources on where to publish.
• U-M Library Search. Use Library Search to discover databases in your discipline and access full text using your U-M credentials. Disciplinary indexes and databases are the best way to find articles like your own, and every subject area has its own specialized resources.

Strategies

Search general databases like Web of Science and Scopus to identify journals that publishing articles on your topic. See a list of U-M databases or Research Guides for your discipline for more specific databases.

• Search Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory, which provides bibliographic and publisher information on more than 300,000 periodicals of all types.
• Scan online lists of journals within specific disciplines (e.g., a comprehensive Chemistry Journal list from a researcher at the University of Cambridge).
• Some organizations/publishers also provide Journal Selectors, which are semantics-based tools, for you to choose an appropriate journal by entering your title/abstract and other information. However, these tools usually are limited to journals from a specific publisher or a specific discipline. For example:
  • Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE) - for journals included in the MEDLINE database
  • Elsevier Journal Finder
  • BioMed Central Journal Selector
• Check the list of references you have been reading for your research and identify the journals where your peer researchers publish articles on the topic of interest.

Note: For a comprehensive resource on article publishing (written from a biological sciences perspective, but widely applicable), see:

Measey, J. (2022). How to Publish in Biological Sciences (1st Edition). CRC Press.

Narrowing the selection

Consider the following to narrow down your selection of journals: 

• Editorial board. Look at the journal's editorial board. Are any of its members in your sub-field?
• Article "fit". Look at a few issues of the journal and the information provided on the journal’s webpage. Does your article fit within the journal’s typical subject areas and scope? Does the methodology of your work fit what this journal typically publishes? (e.g. quantitative, qualitative, case study, survey, meta-analysis, etc.)? Journals that publish articles on similar topics to yours are likely to be read most heavily by researchers with similar interests.
• Journal Metrics. Are metrics like impact factor or Eigenfactor important in your discipline? If so, sources like these can help locate the relevant metrics for journals you are considering:
• Journal Citation Reports - Available through a U-M subscription, Journal Citation Reports can be used to determine the impact factor (IF) of a journal and how the journal is ranked among other journals in the same discipline
• Eigenfactor.org - A free and searchable database, Eigenfactor covers the natural and social sciences. 
• You may find more ways of ranking journals from the Citation Analysis Guide page (Journal Ranking tab).
• Other ways of evaluating journal "impact" include:
  • Who is on the journal's editorial board or publishing in the journal? Are they recognized scholars in your field?
  • Examine Google Scholar Metrics or Google Scholar Citations, if available.
  • Is the journal indexed in databases relevant to your field? (e.g. JSTOR, Web of Science, MLA, etc.)
  • Is the journal affiliated with a professional organization, scholarly society, or conference relevant to your subject area?

Other criteria

Other criteria to keep in mind when considering where to publish your research include:

• Acceptance rate. A journal's acceptance may be difficult to determine, though some journals do mention it on their About or FAQs pages. For example, Science's acceptance rate is less than 7%, Nature's acceptance rate is around 8%, and PNAS's acceptance rate is around 17% . If you cannot find the acceptance rate for the journal in which you are interested, you can contact the editor of the journal or ask a senior researcher in your field about their experience with the journal. Read more about acceptance rate on this guide page from the University of North Texas Library.
• Turn-around time. Turn-around time is often specified on the journal's About or FAQs page. Turn-around time may be different for different types of articles (e.g., shorter for a Letter than a full Article in the same journal). 
• Peer review. Peer review may be single-blind, double-blind, or triple-blind; find out by looking at the journal's About or FAQs page. Sometimes, a journal may ask reviewers to judge the soundness of the methodology and not the perceived importance of the work (e.g. PLoS ONE).
• Self-archiving. Find out if a journal allows you to deposit a version of your manuscript into an institutional repository (e.g., Deep Blue) or a repository designated by your funding agency (e.g., PubMed Central by NIH). This information is usually located on the journal's Author's Rights page.

Meet basic requirements

Make sure your submission meets the publisher's basic requirements. Most journals provide instructions online for authors. Read them carefully and follow specific instructions such as word limits, preferred citation styles, document formatting, file types, etc. If you're not sure about where you'd like to submit but you have a target publication in mind, work from the author requirements for you target publisher from the start to make it easier to submit your work for publication (and prevent headaches) later on.