Where to publish: some guidelines

Choosing a journal

Identify your audience: Who are you trying to reach? If your main audience is other researchers and students in your discipline, then a traditional academic journal may be the best fit. But if you want to reach practitioners or industry, you might want to think about journals that address a mixed audience, or target other types of publication altogether (eg. industry magazines or publications from professional bodies). If you want to communicate your research to the general public, you could consider platforms such as The Conversation.

Get to know your discipline: Where are other people publishing in your discipline or research area? Ask your supervisor and colleagues for advice. Have a look at what you are reading and citing in your own work - are there publications that appear in your literature review that you could target?

Check for fit: Once you’ve identified a potential journal, check its webpage, which will have information about its scope, mission and aims. Is it appropriate for your subject area, choice of methodology, ethos or theoretical approach? Look through some recent articles to see if your article is a good fit.

Discoverability: Do a search on Google or Google Scholar, your Library catalogue or any databases that are important in your field. Does material published by the journal/publisher come up in search results? Do outputs use persistent identifiers such as DOIs? A Google search for the journal name may also bring up articles, blogs or posts by other researchers talking about their experience peer reviewing and publishing in a particular journal.

Indexing: Databases such as Web of Science, Scopus and the Directory of Open Access Journals index thousands of journals according to their own criteria, and you can use these databases to find journals in your field. Although choosing a journal that is indexed in a database may help to increase the discoverability of your work, and reassure you that the publication is less likely to be ‘predatory’ (see below), remember there may be legitimate reasons for a journal not to be indexed - for example, if it is very new or small, or because of its publishing location or main language.

If a journal claims to be indexed in these services on its website, cross-check to see if you can find it. If it is being deceptive about where it is indexed, that can be a red flag.

People: Have a look at the editorial board for the journal. Are they scholars that you recognise as experts in their field? Have you cited their research in your own work? 

Peer review: Is the journal peer reviewed, and if so, what type of peer review does it offer? Sometimes authors and reviewers are both anonymous, sometimes reviewers are anonymous but authors are not and sometimes reviewer and author identities are both open. In the most open models of peer review, reviewer identities are published along with the reviews as part of the article. These models all have pros and cons, and norms vary according to discipline, so it may depend on what you are comfortable with and what is most common in your field.

Transparency and timescale: Is the journal transparent about the time it will take for a paper to move from submission through peer review and on to publication? A faster turnaround time can be positive, but remember to be cautious about claims of very fast review and publication.

Trust: Look for signs of research integrity - for example, membership of the Committee on Publication Ethics, transparency about processes and procedures (eg. retractions, author name changes, use of AI) and whether previous published articles clearly fit the scope and mission statement of the journal.

Metrics: although many journals advertise themselves using metrics such as Journal Impact Factor (JIF), the University of Sheffield is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) which seeks to shift emphasis away from using metrics such as JIF to evaluate where research is published and towards judging research on its own merits. Guidance on responsible use of metrics is available on our website .

Practicalities: Read the journal’s submission guidance carefully for information on practical matters such as formatting and word count.

Maximising openness 

Publish open access: many journals now have an option to publish articles open access, which can increase the visibility, accessibility and impact of your work. Don’t forget, many research funders and REF2029 require some form of open access.

• Make sure you retain copyright over your own work, and that articles are published with an open licence rather than just being made temporarily free-to-read online
• Explore open access options available at the University of Sheffield, to see whether you are eligible for open access under a transitional agreement or through one of our funding sources
• If you want to find diamond open access journals (no fees to read or to publish) search the Directory of Open Access Journals and filter by ‘journals without fees.’

Share your Author Accepted Manuscript: if your chosen journal does not have a paid open access option, or you are unable to access funding to pay the charges, check whether it allows you to share the Author Accepted Manuscript version of your work via a repository. The University of Sheffield Research Publications and Copyright Policy will make it easier for you to share your AAM.

Open up the research process: Does your chosen journal allow you to make your research as open as possible?

• Are you permitted to post a preprint of your work? This allows you to share your submitted article immediately without having to wait for it to undergo peer review
• Does it recommend you share your data and software (whilst considering ethical, legal or commercial restrictions) or require you to provide a data availability statement?
• Does it use open peer review? You can search by peer review type on the Directory of Open Access Journals

Communicate your research: does your chosen journal provide the opportunity to write lay or plain language summaries of your articles, or video summaries to help you communicate your work beyond an academic audience?

Think beyond journals: New open access platforms are being developed which are challenging the traditional research article format. For example, Octopus uses eight publication types, including research problem, method, results, and real world application. Platforms such as OSF (Center for Open Science) are opening up the research process by enabling you to collaborate on protocols, register studies, and publish preprints; protocols.io enables reproducible methods by publishing workflows and operational procedures; while platforms such as Github and Zenodo enable research software to be shared and licensed for reuse by others. You can also publish conference posters and presentation slides via data repositories such as the University of Sheffield’s Figshare repository, ORDA.

Avoiding 'predatory' publications

So-called ‘predatory’ or questionable publications charge authors a fee, and claim to provide publishing services such as peer review, that they do not then deliver. It is sometimes hard to clearly distinguish between a ‘predatory’ and ‘non-predatory’ publication, and even if a particular publication demonstrates predatory behaviour, it does not mean that individual articles within it are necessarily poor quality research. Some publications may also mistakenly be branded as predatory because of the design of their website or quality of their English language. However, as a researcher, you will not want to publish somewhere that misrepresents the quality of its publishing services - as well as causing you reputational damage, it may mean that you lose out on thorough and supportive engagement with your work through peer review. Thinking carefully about your publication choices using the above suggestions should help you choose an appropriate and trustworthy home for your work, but we also recommend looking at the longer checklist created by Think, Check, Submit when assessing a prospective publication. 

The short video below was created by Think, Check, Submit to help researchers start thinking about choosing a trustworthy journal:

Books and chapters

If you are thinking about publishing a monograph or book chapter instead of a journal article, you will want to consider similar questions of scope and fit when assessing potential publishers and book series. Think, Check Submit also has a checklist designed for authors of books and chapters. For information on open access options for monographs, have a look at the University of Sheffield guidance and case studies.

If you have any questions or want advice on deciding where to publish, contact your liaison librarian, or the open access team on oaenquiries@sheffield.ac.uk.