Hello, my name is Anne-Wil Harzing and I work at Middlesex University London. Today I’ll be talking about how to pick your target journal. I’ll be focusing in particular on publishing research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research with social impact, but most of the things I’ll be talking about today, are applicable for any type of publication. First of all, it’s really important to remember that to have impact you really need to publish in the outlet that reaches the right audience. Your aim is not just to get your publication published. Your aim is to impact both academic and non-academic audiences. So, let’s start with some general tips on targeting. You’re a research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied researcher so research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research your journal through editorials, and professional development workshops. Most journals will have regular editorials about how to publish in the journal, and what is important in publishing in that particular journal. The easiest way to find these editorials is to simply do a search in Publish or Perish, and in the next slide I’ll show you how to do this. Top journals also regularly run professional development workshops. These are normally run at conferences, but in COVID-19 times many of these are run online so it’s really easy to attend them. The easiest way to find editorials on publishing in your target journal is to use Publish or Perish, the free software that you can download from my website. To do the search, simply enter your target journal in the publication name field and enter something like editor or editors in the title word fields. If you do this for the Journal of International Business Studies you’ll find a wide range of editorials, ranging from common method bias, publishing student data, interdisciplinary research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research, publishing qualitative research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research, the role of theory anything you can think of really. And here is a second general targeting tip. This is particularly applicable if you work in a discipline that has a professional association that publishes a range of journals.
My example here is about a discipline of Management, but it’s equally applicable in any discipline in management the main professional association is the Academy of Management the Academy of Management currently publishes six journals it started out with two journals that are now about 50 to 60 years old the Academy of Management Journal and the Academy of Management Review the Academy of Management Journal focuses on empirical work and the Academy of Management Review focuses on purely conceptual or theoretical work. Although you might well be able to publish research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research with social impact in these journals and the Academy of Management Journal has actually had special issues on this I wouldn’t consider them the first choice for this. That’s why I marked them with red. The third journal in the Academy of Management stables is the Academy of Management Perspectives originally this journal was mainly meant for practicing managers and students and it was used a lot in the classroom. Recently however this journal has kind of reinvented itself and is now focusing on research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research that has an impact for public policy. So I would consider this to be a very appropriate outlet for research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research with social impact that’s why I’ve labelled it green the last three additions to the Academy of Management stables are the Academy of Management Discoveries the Academy of Management Annals and the Academy of Management Learning and Education of these the Academy of Management Discoveries focuses more on phenomenon-driven research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research and as such I would consider it quite important for research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research with social impacts that’s why I’ve labelled the screen the Academy of Management Annals focuses on integrative reviews of research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research and the Academy of Management Learning and Education focuses on pedagogical or educational research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research both of them might publish research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research with social impact but I wouldn’t consider them as appropriate as the Academy of Management Perspective and the Academy of Management Discoveries so that’s why I’ve labelled them blue.
Okay so these were the general targeting tips let’s now look at some specific options and there are a lot out there so here are the seven specific options that I’ll be discussing in this presentation. First, of all don’t discard top journals many of them love society’s significant research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research. Second, if you work in Business and Management don’t just focus on the ABS list. Third, also think about publishing in sister disciplines. Fourth, you might want to have a look at some of the new online only journals. Fifth, there are a range of other journals available as well. Six, how about books in contrast to what you might think there by no means dead, and seven blog posts a very useful option. Number one top journals editors love society significant research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research have a look at this list of recent special issues these are all journals that are top journals in Business and Management and all of the special issue topics are of huge societal relevance so don’t think that job journals will not publish your research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research with social impact at the same time be realistic. Most of disciplines only have one or two top journals and they have very very high rejection rates the very simple reason for this is that top journals have very high standards to give you one example top journals in management and marketing will typically not publish any research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research that uses single source data and a lot of our research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research falls in this category so if you want to publish in these journals you might want to try and strike up a collaboration with academics who’ve already published in this journal before there is a lot of tacit knowledge involved in what you need to do to publish in these journals and this is best learned through assimilation through actually collaborating with authors who’ve done this before. If you work in Business and Management you’ll probably have heard of the ABS journal ranking list rightly or wrongly many Business schools in the UK and increasingly in other countries too, use this journal ranking to assess the quality of publications if you’re not working in Business and Management this might not mean anything to you but your field might likewise have journal rankings that other universities use if you do work in Business and Management and your university uses this journal ranking list you might want to look at three star journals that are ranked highly in other journal ranking this and there are a lot of ranking lists about on my website you will find a journal ranking list that integrates at least 18 different of these rankings.
Then another option to consider will be new journals it’s usually a little bit easier to publish in new journals in the first volumes and then if that journal becomes more prestigious later you will still have published in the journal. However, use your common sense to try and figure out which new journals are likely to become more prestigious in the future some clues you might want to use is for instance is it published by a professional organization I talked about the Academy of Management journals before. Any Academy of Management journal is likely to gain a reputation quite quickly. Then look at publishers as well journals that are published by prestigious publishers are more likely to be valued in the future than journals that are published by publishers that are completely unknown. Business and Management is very much an applied discipline. So a third option might be to publish in the base disciplines or to publish in sister disciplines remember though that different disciplines have different expectations if you want to publish in Psychology journals for instance you’ll need to remember that Psychology journals focus very much on methodological rigor and internal logic they tend to publish a lot of experimental research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research and typically expect a couple of studies in one in the same article if you want to publish in sociology on the other hand the emphasis is far more on storytelling rather than empirical rigor and the emphasis is far more on societal impact as well.
So, another option would be to publish in open access journals that are only available online. In Business and Management there aren’t actually that many journals in this category and most of the journals that are available online only are what we call predatory journals which is something we’ll discuss later. So many Business and Management academics think that every online journal is a predatory journal. That’s certainly not the case there are some really high-quality online journals. So, they’re basically two groups of journals in this category. One is what we call the mega journals these are journals that are not focusing on a specific discipline but publish everything that is methodologically sound regardless of the discipline it is in. Then there’s a second group of journals that’s a bit more focused for instance Sage Open only publishes in the social sciences. Sage has a good reputation as a social science publisher, so this is a really credible outlet if you’re looking for an online open access journal. Then there’s for instance Nature Human Behaviour which would be a good option if you do for instance experimental research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research in Behavioural Economics or Psychology given that Nature is a really well-known journal the brand name of nature also carries over to some extent to this online open access journal. So now we’ve talked about publishing in top journals and looking outside the ABS journal ranking list, publishing in base disciplines and sister disciplines, and publishing in new online open access journals, but that doesn’t cover the whole universe of journals. So, there’s a lot of journals left.
For those I would suggest to really do your due diligence, because within this group there are a huge number of really high-quality journals that are just below the top journals, but there is also a large group of really low quality journals bordering in some cases on predatory journals, which as I said we’ll discuss a bit more in a minute. When you embark on your due diligence, I would suggest you look at three things in particular: the speed of the publication trajectory, the number of articles the journal publishes, and the extent of specialization. So, first of all the speed of publication. Of course, you would think that the speedier the publication the better because you want to get your work out there. That’s obviously true, ideally you would want to get your work out there as quickly as possible. But in high quality journals the peer review process does take time, it takes at least one or two months and in most cases three or four months or even longer than that. And in high quality journals it will take at least two rounds of revisions and sometimes more than that. So, if you see that a journal generally publishes within say two or three months of an article being submitted, then that’s usually not a sign that it’s a high-quality journal. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a low-quality journal, but it is something you would need to look in a bit more. Then secondly the volume of publications in the journal. Obviously, you would think the more articles they publish the bigger the chances that they will publish my article and that’s certainly true. So you have a bigger chance of getting published in a journal that publishes more articles. But at the same time that usually also means that our quality standards are quite a bit lower than journals that publish far fewer articles. So in the field of Business and Management most journals, most high quality journals, typically publish between say 50 and 150 articles a year some maybe 200-250, but generally not more than that.
So if you’re looking at a journal that publishes 500-600 or even up to a thousand articles a year it’s another sign to look at it in a bit more detail to ensure that they do uphold their quality standards. Another signal that you might want to look out for is a journal that is rapidly increasing its number of publications, so say going from 100 publications 10 years ago to 800-900 publications right now. That’s usually not a great sign of quality. Then finally you might be tempted to publish in a journal that’s really specialized on exactly the topic that you’re research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied researching. Again, it might increase your chances of being accepted for that journal so that’s good news. At the same time, it means that the audience that you’re reaching is similarly specialized. That might be a good thing because you might want to be talking to that specific audience, but it does mean that your audience is fairly small and if you want to bring the topic that you’re research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied researching to a mainstream audience publishing in a really specialized journal is not the best way to do this. One thing I would say though is avoid predatory journals at all costs. If you don’t know what predatory journals are, these are the kind of journals that send you regular emails saying we would love to publish your paper you’re such a great academic, and then when you submit the paper it turns out that you have to pay them to publish the paper and that peer review is virtually absent. You might get a really brief report, or you might get no reports at all but guaranteed your paper will be published sometimes even in a few weeks. And don’t forget it’s easy to be taken in by this, just like regular scammers they become more and more sophisticated. They send innocent PhD students emails like oh I love the paper that you presented at this conference would you like to publish it in our journal.
And of course, if you’ve never published in a journal before you’re not to know that this isn’t genuine. Although predatory journals hardly existed 10 years ago there are now more predatory journals than real journals. More problematically they’ve actually been predatory journals that were listed in the Web of Science or Scopus. Usually, they’re kicked out after a few years, but in those few years people can say well I’ve published a paper in a journal that was listed in Scopus or the Web of Science. So typically, publications in these journals explode in the years that they’re listed in these outlets. If you’d like to know more about this topic, I’ve included a link to a blog post as well as a separate presentation. Here is the mission statement of the International Journal of Management not to be confused with the Journal of International Management which is a legitimate journal the International Journal of Management has a wonderful mission statement. I’ll give you a few moments to read it. So, who wouldn’t want to be a budding genius with a clairvoyant mind if only all predatory journals were as easy to spot as this one. Okay so we know how to avoid predatory journals, but there’s also another category which I’ve called iffy journals. These journals are not exactly predatory, but they do have some predatory features. First of all, they have many authors from countries in which universities pay for Web of Science or Scopus listed journals which creates a huge incentive to publish in these journals. They, just like predatory journals, spam offers to get publications submitted to their journal or get authors to edit a special issue for their journal and they typically have a very high level of self-citations within the journal. So, publications in the journal citing other articles in the journal. Obviously, some self-citations some journal self-citations are normal, you would expect at least three to five percent self-citations within a journal and if it’s a specialized journal maybe 10 to 15 but these journals have 30 to 50 self-citations and sometimes even more.
These iffy journals are often characterized by a huge explosion in articles they publish once they have been listed in the Web of Science or Scopus exactly because some universities pay for publication in journals that are listed in the Web of Science or Scopus. So, for example a journal like Sustainability published around 100 articles in 2011, but in 2019 they published over 6 000 articles. In 2019 they also had more than 400 special issues so they’re actively recruiting people to edit a special issue, because obviously that outsources the work of getting authors to submit to their journal. So as a special issue editor you’re basically a sales rep for them, because you’re trying to get people to submit to the journal. Now Sustainability isn’t listed as a predatory journal, but its characteristics are very similar to a journal such as African journal of Business and Management, which is a predatory journal. Now I know that many of you look at the journal impact factor to assess the quality of a journal. In itself it’s a very dubious measure of general quality, but that’s not the discussion I want to have today. What I want to point out today is that the journal impact factor is very problematic in an age of online journals. If you look at a journal such as Journal of Cleaner Production this has a journal impact factor of more than six. This is more than nearly all journals that are listed on the ABS list so nearly all top journals in Management. So, you would conclude okay this must be a really high-quality journal. But what’s the problem the problem is that the journal impact factor only looks at citations in the last two years and obviously if a journal has a really fast turnaround this article can cite a lot of journal articles published in the same year or the year before or the year before that.
In typical journals in Business and Management, the publication process is so much slower that by the time the article gets published you are probably two years after you originally submitted it, so you’re not likely to cite many publications in the last two years. So the journal impact factor is always going to be lower. So far we’ve talked about publishing in top journals we’ve talked about looking at journal rankings beyond the ABS journal ranking list, we’ve talked about publishing in the base disciplines and publishing in sister disciplines, we’ve talked about publishing in new online open access journals, and we’ve talked about all the other journals including journals that are slightly lower ranked, but very credible journals, but also journals that are predatory and journals that are not quite predatory but are what we call iffy journals. But for all of these journals one thing applies: journals are communities and by choosing a journal by targeting a journal you choose the community you want to belong to; you choose the community in which you want to have a conversation. We can look at all the choices we’ve discussed so far in this slide as well. Let’s say you want to publish in the base disciplines or in sister disciplines rather than in your own discipline, then you need to ask yourself will scholars in these base disciplines or system disciplines be interested in the topic that I’m publishing about, will they read my article even if it is published in one of these journals. And then at the same time, will academics in my own discipline read the article if i publish in a journal that’s not part of my own discipline. They might but it’s not likely to be a journal that’s high up on that list, so you would need to do additional work to make sure that authors in your own discipline actually read the article.
Then two of the other options we discussed are publishing in the new online open access journals, including some of the mega journals, or published in lower ranked journals, whether it has slightly lower ranked than the top journals, or whether they are very much lower end, or whether they’re even towards the predatory end of the spectrum. We’ll all of these journals are easier to get into than the top journals in your field, but even if it’s a mega journal even if all the articles are technically sound if your article is published next to thousands and thousands of other journal articles, how will it stand out how will the audience that’s interested in your articles find your article. This is even more of a problem in predatory or semi or semi predatory journals, journals which we’ve called iffy journals. I’m not saying that all the articles in these journals are bad, there might be some really good articles in these journals, but they’re next to a lot of really, really bad articles. So, the quality of your own article might not be noticed in a sea of dross, in a sea of really poor-quality scholarship. So, in the end I would suggest publishing the highest-level journal you can there are lots of people who go through every new issue of a top journal and look at the latest research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research in the area. So, if your article is there, they will notice it automatically you won’t have to work hard to get an audience. At the same time, you might want to publish in other venues if you want to reach other audiences if you want to for instance reach practicing managers or government officials or even the lay public you might want to publish in other venues and that’s what we’ll turn to next. Okay so far, we’ve talked a lot about publishing in journals, listing no less than five different options, but there are two other options for publishing work with social impact. First of all publishing books. In many disciplines and in particular in the Arts and Humanities but even in disciplines such as Sociology books are highly prized publications, they are really procedures and you’re expecting to publish at least one or two books in your career.
In other disciplines, and Business management is one of them, books are not generally seen as essential. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t consider them because they do have a very good role to play. There are very different types of book though the first one is the one that you’re probably most familiar with and that’s what we call the authored research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research monograph. This means that you write the entire book yourself or maybe with one or two co-authors. This allows you to pursue a particular revenue of research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research and report on your research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research at great length and make a really comprehensive argument. However, there’s also the option of editing as the sole editor or one of the editors of a handbook or a compendium or contributing a chapter in one of these. Obviously editing a handbook or a compendium is more prestigious than contributing a chapter to this but you’re not getting to edit a handbook if you’re just starting out in the field, so contributing a chapter is perfectly fine too. In some fields handbooks and compendiums get a lot of attention, especially if the editors and or the contributors include some really well-known scholars. So, if two of the best-known scholars in your field ask you to contribute a chapter to a handbook or a compendium that would be a really good way to get your name out there as someone publishing in the fields. So, what if you really want to write a research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research monograph, but you don’t really have enough material for a full-blown book. Well then there’s lots of options many publishers these days publish much shorter books as well. Palgrave for instance, has what they call the pivot books, and they’re about 25 to 50 000 words. Edward Elgar has what they call the footprint books, and they’re about 100 pages.
So, these are shorter books that allow you to still author an individual book and make the arguments you want to make. So, what about textbooks, certainly not the most obvious option to publish research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research, but it is certainly a way to bring the latest research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research to yet another audience: students. In particular if you’re writing a textbook that is aimed at higher level undergraduates or masters students or even a combination of masters students maybe up to PhD students. You can also edit a research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research monograph, so that means that you have a collection of individual chapters and each chapter is written by a different author. This is generally not seen as prestigious as a research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research monograph or a handbook, but it’s still a good way to get your name out there if the publisher is a credible publisher and if you can get a high quality of contributions. However, the problem with an edited book is usually that it’s very hard to get contributors to commit to a certain quality level. So, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as your first option but again don’t discard it out of hand. And then finally if you really have something that you want to get of your chest that you want to publish that you think is important, but you can’t find any publisher who’s interested in publishing it, you can also self-publish your books. You can do this through an Amazon subsidiary and it’s a really easy process. I’ve self-published quite a few books most of them were about the Publish or Perish software, but I’ve also published a book for my father who is a sculpturer so for his 80th birthday I created a book including pictures of all of his sculptures and stories by his children and family. So, the options so far journal articles in lots of different types of journals, and books whether they are research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research monographs or edited books or handbooks or textbooks they basically communicate with either scholars or students.
But what if you want to reach out to a larger audience? Then I would really recommend blogging, there are lots of different outlets for blogs and I’ve listed some of these below. You can write opinion pieces, or you can do a write-up of a specific funded research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research project or you can write about an individual article that you’re particularly proud of, or you can even summarize the research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research on a particular topic on other articles. So, it doesn’t even have to be your own research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research but if it’s a particular topic you’re passionate about you can do a summary of research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research in the area. But it’s all about getting your name out there connected with a topic that you’re passionate about. And once you’ve published quite a bit about a certain topic it’s a great way to rejuvenate old research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research. I’ve written a blog post about a lot of my research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research that some of which was published maybe 20 years ago or even 25 years ago. So, by taking say two or three or four articles on a specific topic, and writing up a short blog post about these, you can show how they relate to each other and how they build on each other. And even for other scholars it’s much easier to just read a blog post then read four individual articles. And if they’re interested in the articles, they can read them after reading the blog post, but at least they get the general idea of it. So, if you want to know more about blogging I would suggest you have a look at my blog post series on social media which also includes a blog post on blogging. So, I hope that at least some of this presentation was useful to you and you have a better idea on where to target your research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research with social impacts. What I would like you to remember is that academia is a really long-term game. You might actually be in in an academic career for more than 50 years, so not everything needs to happen right now you have time. So, don’t try and chase or try and even find the one best solution, because what is the best solution really depends on the project and the stage of your career.
What is the best solution will also depend on the university you work in or even the country that you work in. So, you might actually have different careers within one career in academia, so maybe some part of your career you will be focusing on more fundamental research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research, and you will be publishing in top journals in your discipline. But in another part of your career, you might be focusing on more applied research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research, and you might be looking for a different type of journals, or you might be looking at books. In yet another part of your career you might be focusing more on doing action research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research, or doing consultancy work, and you might focus on yet another type of outlets. Or you might have a stage of your career where you focus mostly on teaching and you want to translate some of your research on chemical intermediates, international journal of applied research to reach a student audience and go on to write textbooks. So, there isn’t one best solution. However, the one thing that I do think remains constant during an academic career is that the only thing that will sustain you in the end is your curiosity, your passion, and your desire to create something new and impactful. So, I hope that this presentation has also given you the inspiration to do this.
Where to find great research papers?
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You can very easily find papers on a variety of topics at Global Research Letters, which will help you with your own research work and understanding of writing and publishing research papers properly. With access to so many amazing research papers, you can practice and learn the process of writing research papers and their importance.