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Choosing a journal

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You’ve spent months, or even years, working on a project. You’ve finalised your manuscript and you’re ready to submit. But which journal should you send your paper to?

There have been more and more journals popping up over the past few years, so this question is getting harder and harder. Is it better to submit to a broad, generalist journal or a niche publication that caters to specialists in your field? Should you look for a journal with an international audience or one that mainly circulates within your own country? Should Impact Factors or other metrics play a role in your decision? These are all important points to consider and breaking the decision-making process down into a few steps will make it a lot easier for you to answer them.

Where possible, we'd advise choosing a journal before your finish (or even before you start) writing you manuscript. This will allow you to tailor your argument to the journal's aims and audience (as well as to the requirements like the word count). Rejection is a very common part of academic publishing though, so don't be discouraged if your preferred journal doesn't accept your paper. Just try to adjust the manuscript for the next journal on your list.

Jump straight to:

Step 1: Create a longlist

The first step is to compile a list of potential destinations. You’ll need to work on narrowing these down later. For now though, here are some tips on creating your initial list of journals:

  1. Your references list: If you’ve cited articles from a particular journal, there’s a good chance that you’ve written a manuscript that they’d be interested in seeing. Don’t just copy across every journal in your reference list though. Look for the ones that gave you key elements of your argument or those that have provided multiple sources for you.

  2. Your department: Ask around – where does your supervisor like to publish? What about colleagues? Are there people in your department on Editorial Boards who you could talk to? Again, don’t just add every journal you find to your list. Think about who in the department is studying similar topics to you.

    Having friends, colleagues and supervisors read through your manuscript is a great way to get initial feedback and comments as well. This can help you to improve your paper before it gets to an Editor or a Reviewer.

  3. Your library: Check what journals your institution’s library subscribes to. Librarians work hard to ensure that the literature available to you is relevant to your field of study. And journals that are relevant to your field of study are the kinds of places that you probably want to publish. Librarians can be an excellent resource at this stage of the publishing process.
  4. The internet: This may seem like an obvious one, but a quick online search for the key terms in your manuscript will help to round out your list before you start to whittle it down. Be careful to avoid predatory journals at this stage – this is where they’re most likely to creep into your list. You can find more information on the signs of predatory journals below.

Once you’ve got your long-list of potential journals, it’s time to trim it down to something more manageable. Make sure to save your full long-list somewhere though, as you can come back to it as a starting point when you’re ready to find a journal for your next paper.

Step 2: Set your priorities

While you can only ever submit your manuscript to one journal at a time, you’ll probably find that there are a number of journals where you could submit your paper during the process of creating your longlist. The aim is to find the best fit. You want to make sure that your article is right for the journal and that the journal is right for your article. This could be influenced by many factors including the requirements of your funder, the structure of your paper and, of course, the focus of your paper. Here are a few factors that you should consider:

  1. Reach: Is your article going to be of interest to most researchers in your discipline or only those within your specialist field? Could it have implications for researchers globally or will it mainly be relevant to people in a specific region? For articles that are likely to appeal to only a small research community, it may be best to consider a specialist journal. The readership numbers will be lower, but they’re more likely to be the readers that you really want to reach. Broad, international journals will get your article to a wider audience. Editors of those journals will tend to look for papers that appeal to a significant portion of their readers, so consider whether your paper will check that box for them.

    It’s also important to consider whether your article will be of interest to readers across different fields. If so, interdisciplinary journals are the best option. Not only will they help to get your work to readers in all relevant fields, they’re also more likely to be able to source peer reviewers from those different fields.

  2. Requirements: Some journals will require certain things from authors who they publish. Anonymising your manuscript for peer review is the most common of these. Some journals may require you to archive any primary research or provide information on funding as well though. It’s always best to check these before submitting and to have an idea of what requirements your manuscript meets or doesn’t meet.

  3. Stature within the field: There are a lot of methods to judge the impact of a journal – the Impact Factor being the most well-known. Although it’s most relevant to STEM and social science journals, the Web of Science began calculating Impact Factors for humanities journals in 2022. Most of these have some flaws, but they can help to decide if a journal is a good fit for you. A general awareness of the reputation of specific journals in your field will often be more helpful than these metrics. But whatever way you choose to quantify it, you should think about how the journal you publish in will affect the perception of your article. Will publishing in one journal be better for your CV and your career than another? This shouldn’t be your primary consideration (which is why it’s not higher on this list), but it’s good to keep in mind.

    You will often find that the more prestigous a journal, the longer your manuscript will be under review and the more likely it is to be rejected (these journals tend to have very high rejection rates). If your manuscript is accepted, it may also have to wait longer to be published following acceptance. If time to publication is a key concern (for example, as the REF deadline approaches or as you come towards your PhD defence), you may wish to be more cautious about submitting to the higher profile options in your field.

  4. Promotion: Do you have any plans for promoting your article after it’s published? If so, it’s useful to think about how a journal could help with this. Do they have a blog or social media accounts? Are many of their articles press released? This is particularly useful to consider if your article will be of interest beyond academia. All journals will get your article to some amount of researchers, but not all will be equipped to help you promote your work to the general public.
  5. Fees: The majority of the time, there won’t be any fees for you in the publishing process and you'll be able to completely ignore this point. In some rare cases though, you may need to consider costs. Some journals charge page or figure fees. If your funder mandates Open Access publishing (or if that’s something that you’re interested in regardless), you’ll need to check the Article Processing Charge (APC) for the journals as well. Many journals also offer a Green Open Access option, which is worth checking for. Under this form of Open Access, you can archive your article in a repository or on a website at no cost. For more information on Open Access publishing, you can consult our Open Access Hub or, if you'd like more information on Open Access at Edinburgh University Press, please consult our Open Access FAQs page.

Step 3: The final selection

Now that you have a list of journals and your list of requirements, it’s time to bring the two together. Here’s how to go about deciding which journal you should submit to:

  1. Get to know the journal: Read the Aims & Scope or About the Journal page and any Author Guidelines. These will give you a better idea of what types of papers the journal is looking for. You’ll likely find that you can make an argument for your article fitting into the scope of a lot of different journals. This may sometimes involve a little bit of tweaking before you come to submit. Try not to work too hard to crowbar your article into the scope of a journal though. Remember, the Editors and Reviewers who are assessing your work are probably not going to be as flexible with the journal scope as you will. Also, if your article is a close fit to the journal scope, there’s a better chance that it will be of interest to the journal’s Editors and Readers.

  2. What does the journal publish?: Look at recent issues and ahead of print articles to see what has been published. These articles have all been accepted after going through the peer review process, so if you find some that are similar to yours, it’s likely that your manuscript will fit the aims and scope. Focusing on recent articles will help you to get an idea of the current priorities of the journal.

    It’s also helpful to look at the Special Issues of the journal (if they have any – not all journals do). Checking for any recent Special Issues or calls for papers is a great way to see a journal’s priorities as well. If the Editors are willing to dedicate an entire issue to a topic, it’s likely to be something that they think is very important.

    Looking to see what active calls for papers are out in the world (via the journal website, and association newsletters) is a really good way to get published, because the Editor might be actively looking for your work!

  3. The Editorial Board: Scan through the Editorial Board list on the journal’s website. This will let you know who will be considering and assessing your manuscript. Ask yourself: does the journal have Editors who are well-placed to assess your work? The answer to this question will go a long way to letting you know if this is the right journal for your paper. If there are Editors in your field, they’re more likely to be interested in the topic of your manuscript and know Reviewers who will be able to assess and help to improve it.

    Don't contact Editorial Board members directly to ask for help (unless you know them personally or they have previously offered to comment on your work). Journals have submission and review procedures and the Board Members will most likely need to adhere to (they also tend to have tons of work on their plate with teaching, writing, reviewing, editing etc.).

    Keep in mind that most journals will use external reviewers as well as Editorial Board Members to assess submissions. If a journal doesn't have the perfect people to assess your work, it doesn't mean that they won't be able to invite the perfect people as anonymous reviewers. The Editorial Board lists should be used as a reason to choose a journal rather than a reason to exclude it.

  4. Discoverability: The sheer number of journals in all fields at the moment doesn’t just mean that it’s hard to decide where to publish – it also means that it’s harder for readers to find specific articles. There are lots of things that journals can do to make sure that the articles they publish can be found. Some of these are behind the scenes, but others you can look for. Check which abstracting and indexing services list the journal (most will provide a list on their website) and look at their social media accounts. The more abstracting and indexing services and the more active the social media accounts, the better the chances of your article being found by readers. This can be a good deciding factor if you have a couple of journals that look like they’ll be a good fit for your work.

Throughout these checks, you need to consider all of your requirements for the journal. Remember, you’re looking for a journal that’s right for your article – it’s up to the Editors to decide whether your article is right for the journal.

Hopefully at the end of this process, you’ll have a list of a few journals that fit your requirements. Try to put these in an order starting with the best fit. Even for world-renowned researchers, rejection is a common part of the publishing process. Don’t be discouraged if your manuscript is rejected from your first choice journal, just move on to the next one on your list – but keep in mind that you can only ever submit your manuscript to one journal at a time.

Avoiding predatory journals

Predatory journals are scams that attempt to convince authors to pay publication fees without offering them the opportunity to publish in a reputable, peer-reviewed, edited, curated and presentable journal. Publishing in a predatory journal will not only cost money, it will also deprive you of the career benefits and exposure that publishing in a legitimate journal brings. As most journals will not accept submissions of manuscripts that have been published elsewhere, publishing in a predatory journal means that you essentially lose the manuscript that you’ve worked so hard on.

So, how do you spot a predatory journal?

  1. Unsolicited emails: Predatory journals will often send unsolicited emails inviting submission. These tend to be fairly generic, vague and ambiguous, giving very little information about what they expect or require from the manuscript. Legitimate journals may also invite submissions via email, but they will generally give you information on what they would like you to write, why they chose to invite you, when they would need your manuscript by etc. If you're unsure about whether a submission invitation is legitimate, use the rest of this list to try to determine how likely it is that the journal is a predatory one. If you're still unsure after that, check with your supervisor – 'Do you think that this might be a predatory journal?' is never a silly question. 

  2. Associations: On the journal’s website, look for who they claim to be associated with. This could be scholarly societies, publishers, etc. Clear branding and links to society or publisher homepages are a good indication that these links are legitimate. To be sure though, it’s best to check whether the links exist going in the other direction. Look to see whether the publishers or societies that they claim to work with provide links to the journal.

    It’s also a good idea to see if the journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics. This tends to be an indicator of a legitimate journal.

  3. Editors: Some predatory journals won’t list any Editors, which is a very big red flag. Others will list academics who have never worked on (and generally aren’t aware of) the journal in any way. For these sorts of journals, check whether the Editors listed have expertise in the area that the journal claims to publish in. A disparate mishmash of fields (especially if they don’t match the field that the journal claims to cover) can be a warning sign. The exception to this is interdisciplinary journals that may bring together experts from many fields. You could also check whether the Editors claim to be associated with the journal. As with publishers and societies, see whether the Editors acknowledge the journal on their personal or institutional websites.
  4. Articles: Another thing to check is the quality and consistency of the articles in the journal. If there isn’t a clear, consistent style that the articles follow or if there does not appear to be any significant level of copyediting or typesetting, you may be looking at a predatory journal. A high number of very low-quality articles, potentially with multiple spelling or grammar errors, can also be a sign of a predatory journal. All of these indicate a lack of peer review, editing and typesetting.
  5. Website: When you read through the Aims and Scope, About the Journal and Author Guidelines pages, keep an eye out for errors. Multiple mistakes across these pages can indicate that the page was quickly thrown together, rather than created and developed as a landing page for a legitimate journal.

  6. Fees: The aim of predatory journals is to extract as much money as possible from authors who need to publish their work. This means that their charges are generally very high. While some legitimate publishers charge submission, publication or pages fees, they try to keep these as low as possible and will be up-front and transparent about these costs. You should know about any significant fees at the point of submission (this does not necessarily include small fees for things like colour figures).

    It may seem that this should have been the first point, but in most cases, predatory journals will not advertise their costs and only give details of them after acceptance. If you are informed of fees only after acceptance, it is best to withdraw your article and clearly state to the journal Editor or administrator that you do not wish to publish with them. You will then be free to submit your manuscript to another journal. Any journal should allow you to withdraw your manuscript from consideration at any point up until it is officially published.

If you're still unsure of whether a journal that you're considering submitting to is predatory, we'd recommend working through the Think. Check. Submit. checklist. There are checklists on this website for both books and journals.

Unfortunately, both predatoryjournals.com and Beall's list (which curated lists of confirmed or suspected predatory journals) are no longer in operation. Cabells provides predatory reports for journals in many academic disciplines. However, these are not freely available. If your institution is a member of Open Athens though, you will be able to access them.

Where to now?

Choosing a journal | Edinburgh University Press