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Criteria for Selecting Journal for Publication
Categories Scientific Communication

Criteria for Selecting Journal for Publication

Author krishna kumar 6 Comments on Criteria for Selecting Journal for Publication Posted on

Introduction

Publishing an article in the journal adds to the academic performance of the researcher. Almost every researcher desire to publish their research articles in the reputed journal to ensure that it reaches maximum readers. Hundreds of journals are publishing the research article. This article will throw light on some criteria that will help you to select the best journal for your manuscript.

Criteria for Selecting Journal

There is no straight formula to determine the best journal to publish your manuscript. However, analyzing various parameters may help you to decide the journal that best suits you for publishing. Following are some of those criteria:

Impact factor: The impact factor is an important criterion to determine the importance of the journal. The impact factor of a journal is the measure of the average number of citations provided to the articles published in the last two years in that particular journal. The impact factor is a scientometric index.  The JCR impact factor is old and effective in providing the names of high impact journals. However, you should also have a look at other impact factor scores. It is important to note that you do not rely only on the impact factor as the high impact factor scores may also be vague.

Peer Review Process: The peer-review process is important to maintain the quality of articles. High-quality articles increase the reputation of journals. The quality journals have a strict peer-review process. All the details for the peer review process are available on the website of the journal. The journal will inform you about the peer review process, the selection of reviewers, the timeline of the peer-review process, and handling other information. Many poor-quality journals do not follow a strict procedure for peer review.

Right of the authors: While considering the target journal, also look into the policies of copyright and other rights mentioned on the website. High transparency of the journal about these rights indicates a high quality of the journal. Some good journals allow the author to have full rights over their manuscript and permit them to disseminate the research. Read the full copyright agreement while before signing.

Business model: The business model of the journal should be clearly stated on the website. All the related cost should be clearly mentioned, and the author should be surprised with any fee which was not mentioned. Further, the name of the sponsors and the mission statement of the journal should be clearly stated and should be followed.

The reputation of the journal: The reputation of the journal should not be seen in isolation and is viewed through various parameters. It includes the quality of articles published in the journal, the society under which the journal is published, the impact factor, the number of people in your circle knows about the journal and other factors.

Indexing: You should identify whether the journal is indexed in a reputed database. Indexing in the reputed database allows the article of the author to reach maximum readers. Some of the citation databases include CINAHL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Scopus. These databases list the journal based on various parameters, and their inclusion increases the reputation of journals.

Scope of the journal: You should get information about the scope of the journal and the research domain for publishing your manuscript. Ensure that the scope and aim of the journal are in a line similar to your research. This will help you to make information available to your target readers. Websites of many journals categorically indicate the domain of research that is not under their spectrum of publications.

Journal ethics: Ethical issues are important while publishing the original research. Many journals require detailed information related to ethical aspects of your research. These include conflict of interest, informed consent form, and confidentiality. Good journals are also concerned about data and conclusion manipulation. Journal also checks the manuscript for plagiarism, fraud, segmented publications, and review board approval.

Instructions for authors: You should read and understand the “author guidelines” in detail. You should target the journal and make your manuscript according to the requirement of the journal. Many journals have limited the number of pages, images, or word count. Check the complete list of requirements before drafting and submitting the manuscript.

Editors of the journal: Every good journal has an editorial board comprising of highly reputed reviewers who have credibility in their respective domains. The website of the journal must show the name, position, and contact information of the editors. In case you require more information about the editors, communicate with the journal before submitting your manuscript for peer review.

Conclusion

Various factors should be considered before sending the manuscript for peer review and subsequent publication. These factors are impact factor, the peer review process, aim and scope of the journal, and ethics.

Rejection of a Manuscript
Categories Scientific Communication

5 Common Errors that Lead to the Rejection of a Manuscript

Author krishna kumar 0 Comments Posted on

You have written your research manuscript with diligence, and now, you are ready to submit it for publication. You are worried if it gets rejected.

This is common with novice research scientists. However, if you know what makes the journal editors reject your manuscript, you can take care of such errors before submission.

So, here’s a glimpse of the common errors that can lead to the rejection of your manuscript:

1) Selection of a wrong journal

The foremost reason your manuscript gets rejected is that your research study doesn’t fit the scope of your selected journal. So, you will waste your valuable time if you select a journal out of your paper’s scope.

To avoid any mistake in selecting the right journal for your paper:

  • Carefully read the scope of the journal on its Homepage and also the section on “Instructions to Authors”.
  • Search for the similar articles in the journal.

 2) Plagiarism

Plagiarism is an act of presenting other’s work as your own. It is a serious offence in the research paper writing. Journal editors are not fools. With a plethora of plagiarism detectors, it’s easy to recognise plagiarised content in your paper.

Even self-plagiarism or reproducing your own work in another journal without citing the original can lead to the rejection of your manuscript.

Therefore, you should:

  • Always acknowledge your sources of reference
  • Not submit the results of a published literature even in a lower-ranked journal
  • Change the text copied from another source to make it different and also acknowledge the source.

3) Insignificant or false findings in the research results

The journals accept only those manuscripts that present an original research study, those which report high-quality and novel work and make significant contributions to their desired field.

Thus, if your manuscript fails to meet this criterion, or it reports a routine or trivial or false finding which doesn’t contribute significantly to the progress of Science, it will be outwardly rejected.

To avoid rejection:

  • Search the published literature related to your research topic and see their results.
  • Publish only those findings which are new or significant to your field of research.
  • Highlight the novel properties of your research study
  • Compare your article with the previous work in the field and justify your improvements with a clear statement

4) Technical errors

With one or two technical flaws, you will receive a request for revision. However, rejection occurs if it contains many technical flaws such as:

  • Discrepancy between the Abstract and the remaining manuscript
  • Study of the wrong groups
  • Wrong statistics
  • Clinically insignificant results
  • Absence of a relation between the results and their discussion
  • Contradictory/false data
  • If the conclusion doesn’t answer the research question
  • Poor use of language with grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors

There lies the importance of proofreading and editing your manuscript before you submit it to the journal.

5) Failure to follow “Instructions for Authors”

If you do not follow the “Instructions for Authors” prescribed by a specific journal, it will either delay the peer review process or lead to your manuscript rejection. So, you should always:

  • Carefully read the instructions a number of times. Best, take a print out of the journal guidelines and highlight the key instructions you have to follow.
  • Before submission, check whether you have incorporated all the instructions in your writing.
  • If you do not understand the instructions or are short of time, take help from a professional scientific editor.

Last, but not the least. Do not hurry to submit your paper to the journal publication. Take time and carefully check if you have fulfilled all the requirements as an author.