Journal Selection Tools: Choosing the Right Journal for Your Research
Hello and welcome to "Get Yourself Published, Promote Your Research," a webinar series from the Himmelfarb Library Scholarly Communications Committee at The George Washington University. In this eight part series we explore tools, resources, and tips that can help you get your research published and ensure that it is widely read and cited. In our 30 minute videos we cover topics ranging from how to spot a predatory publisher to using Covidence software for a systematic review. Our webinars are publicly available and licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA Creative Commons license. However, please note that some resources discussed in this series are only available to faculty, staff and students with access to Himmelfarb library resources. My name is Sara Hoover and I am currently the Metadata and Scholarly Publishing Librarian at the Himmelfarb Library. Today's session is called "Journal Selection Tools: Choosing the Right Journal for Your Research." In this session, my goal is to help you identify a journal that's a good match for your research. In the last session, you learned about various publishing models and what editors look for when considering an article for publication. Today we'll focus on what you can do to ensure that you're submitting your research to a journal that's a good match. Let's get started! Following up on the last webinar, let's imagine that your research is done and your data is compiled and written up. Congratulations! Now what are the next steps? You're probably already familiar with the top journals in your field. Maybe you even already have an idea about the journal where you are hoping to submit your research. But maybe you're wondering how likely your article is to be read and cited in the journal that you've selected. Perhaps you're interested in metrics such as the impact factor or you are curious about similar journals. Today we will be talking about some of the tools that are available to not only help you find "A" journal for your research, but also to help ensure that you find the right journal for your publication.
In this session we will look at the different types of tools that exist for researchers and explore questions you might want to consider when selecting a journal. We will also give you the opportunity to utilize various types of selection and comparison tools in order to find a journal in your field. So what exactly is a journal selection tool? A journal section tool is just a resource that provides information about multiple journals. Often these resources include information about metrics such as the journal impact factor. What types of journal selection tools are there? There are 3 main types of journal selection tools. First there are aggregation based tools. These tools help you find journals from a variety of publishers. Next, there are Publisher based tools. These tools help you select a journal from a single publisher such as Elsevier or SpringerNature. Lastly, there are comparison tools and rubrics. These tools are designed specifically to allow you to compare publications, although some have search features similar to an aggregation based selection tool. What's important to remember about these resources is it's always necessary to consider the scope of the toolalways stop to ask yourself what journals are actually being included in a given search. It's helpful to remember that using a variety of journal search tools will yield the most comprehensive list of potential journals. Let's start by talking about aggregation based journal selection tools. As I mentioned earlier, these tools include journals from multiple publishers. These tools often include more titles than a publisher based selection tool. Some of these resources are free while others require you to have access to a subscription service. Those requiring subscription access may be available from your University's library. Some of the most prominent aggregation based tools include InCites Journal Citation Report, the Coafactor Journal Selector, Edanz Journal Selector, the JANE Journal/Author name estimator, and the Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory.
The first resource I want to look at today is the Journal Citation Report. This is a product of the Web of Science group and currently includes information from journals in 236 disciplines. This tool allows you to search for journal information by title or by category. If you're interested in the usage metrics of a particular journal, one great feature of this tool is that it allows you to see very granular metrics such as the journal impact factor and the total number of citations from a journal in a given year. Journal Citation Report is a subscription based service, so it needs to be accessed via the Himmelfarb Library website under the list of electronic databases. I'm now going to quickly walk you through how to access and utilize the Journal Citation Report Database. Begin by going to the Himmelfarb Library website at himmelfarb.gwu.edu. Click on the link for "All Databases". Next, click on the letter "J" for Journal. From there click on the link for "Access Online" next to "Journal Citation Reports." Please remember that you must be a faculty, staff, or student with access to Himmelfarb library resources to access this site. If you're looking for a journal in a specific subject area, click on "browse by category". Today we will be looking for a journal in the area of surgery. Click on the link for "surgery" under the category field. As you can see here, there are 203 journals included in this category. One thing that it is important to remember is that it often takes time to accumulate data on usage metrics, so often times the information that you are looking at is retrospective. Here you can see that the most recent data in Journal Citation Reports is from 2018. To see a list of the journals for surgery from 2018, click on the number under the "# Journals" field. In this case, we'll click on 203. Now you will see a list of all 203 journals ranked by their impact factor.
In addition to being able to see the impact factor, you can also see the total number of citations for a journal and the eigenfactor score. Like the impact factor, the eigenfactor score is a ratio of the number of citations to total number of articles. In this case, the eigenfactor measures the number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the Journal Citation Reports. If you click on a specific journal title, you can see more information about a journallet's try "Annals of Surgery". Here you can see the Journal profile for "Annals of Surgery." This page includes extremely detailed metrics including the Journal Impact Factor trend, Citation distribution, how the journal impact factor is calculated, and contributing items. At the bottom of the page you can also find information on contributions by country and contributions by organization which might be of interest to you. If you already know the name of the journal you are looking for, you can also just enter the name of the journal in the search bar on the database home page. Now that you've seen what the Journal Citation Reports database looks like, let's move on to the next tool. The next resource I want to discuss is the Coafactor Journal Selector. This tool aggregates information on journals in the area of science and medicine specifically. This resource has five areas of focus to help scholars determine whether a journal is valuable. One of the great things about this tool is that it gives you the option to search specifically for open access journals if that's something that's important to you. It also allows you to set a maximum limit for the APC or article processing charges that you would be willing to pay. There is also a filter for approximate review length in the event that you are looking for a journal that might help you publish your research quickly. Another advantage of this resource is that it is website based and can currently be used free of charge.
I'm now going to quickly walk you through the Coafactor Journal Selector. Once again, this is currently a free and publicly available website, so you'll want to begin by going to coafactorsicence.com/journal-selector Here you can see that there are five categories to help you find a journal: subject, peer review, open access, speed, and other. Today we want to look for medical journals, so start by clicking on the plus sign next to "subject" and then click on "medicine". Next click on the purple search tool and you'll see the list of medical journals included in this site. As you can see, this is a much more limited list than the resources included in the Journal Citation Reports database. However, one advantage of this site is that it allows you to look at very specific publication categories. If you are looking to get your research published quickly, for example, click on the plus arrow next to speed. Let's say you are looking to have your article reviewed in 3 months and published within 6 months after acceptance. Click on "search" again and you'll see a list of roughly a dozen journals. Click on the title of a journal, in this case BMC Medicine and you can see information about the journal in various categories. One benefit of this site is that it provides fairly granular information about Open Access. However, the limited number of journals included here obviously restricts whatever information that you are able to find. The next resource that I wanted to mention is the Edanz Journal Selector. This tool was created by a company with the goal of helping researchers publish in international journals. This resource currently aggregates information from over 28,000 journals. One of the advantages of this resource is that it shows you a journal's impact factor in an easy to read format. A journal such as The Lancet, for example, is designated as having an impact factor that is "very high." In addition to offering free information about journals, Edanz also offers fee based editorial assistance.
Edanz is also currently a free web based tool that can be accessed at en-author-services.edanzgroup.com/journal-selector To search for a journal in a specific field, you'll want to go to the dropdown menu that says "General" and click on "field of study." To find medical journals, click on "medical and health sciences." This will allow you to access a more specific list of subject areas related to medicine. Today we are going to look for journals related to neuroscience. Select "Medical and Health SciencesNeurosciences" and then click "go". As you can see here, you end up with a list of 154 journals where you can easily see the impact factor range, the year the impact factor was determined, and whether it is included in the SCI-E or Science Citation Index Expanded. As you can see, a journal such as Neuron has a very high impact factor, and you are also able to sort journals by the impact factor range. One tool that is specifically helpful for the health sciences is JANE or the Journal/Author Name Estimator. This tool was created out of research by the Netherlands Bioinformatics Center and compares titles and abstracts to documents included in PubMed. This resource provides a list of the top 50 potential titles and an article influence or AI Score which measures how often articles in the journal are cited within the first five years after publication. This is a website based tool that also shows you where an article has been indexed. JANE is also currently a free web-based tool that can be accessed at jane.biosemantics.org As I mentioned earlier, this tool allows you to copy and paste in an abstract in an effort to locate a journal. In order to demonstrate how this tool works, I'm going to utilize the abstract from an article that is archived in PubMed Central entitled "Bat Coronaviruses in China." I'm going to copy and paste the article abstract into JANE and then click on "Find Journals.
" As you can see here, your results display a list of potential journals, where each journal is indexed, and an article influence score. Here you can see that the first search result listed is the journal where the article was ultimately published, so it is fairly effective. The last aggregation based resource I want to discuss today is the Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory. This is a subscription based database that aggregates information on over 300,000 periodicals in over 900 subject areas. Keyword searches can help you identify journals in your field. This resource does not currently provide journal usage metrics, but it does allow you to determine whether a journal is peer-reviewed or open access. Like Journal Citation Reports, this is a subscription based product that must be accessed via the Himmelfarb Library website under the list of electronic databases. Begin by going to the Himmelfarb Library website at "himmelfarb.gwu.edu" Click on the link for "All Databases". Click on the letter "U". From there click on the link for "Access Online" next to "Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory." Please remember that you must be a faculty, staff, or student with access to Himmelfarb library resources to access this site. This tool is slightly different than the others than we have looked at in the sense that is designed for you to look at a specific title rather than to browse related journals. That said, if you search by keyword, you can see a list of related titles. So, for example if you search for the term "oncology" you get a list of several hundred journals. One helpful feature of this database is that the icons on the left hand side tell you whether an item is refereed, whether it is electronic, and whether a journal is open access, if you are looking for a specific feature. It is important to note that different formats such as print, electronic, and microform are listed separately here. More information about a specific journal can be found by clicking on the link for that title.
Now that we've learned about aggregator based journal selection tools, I want to talk briefly about publisher based tools. These are tools produced by a publisher and limit you to information about journals produced by that publisher only. One advantage of these tools is that they have a feature that allows you to plug in your abstract and get a list of potentially relevant journals. Matches are based on keywords, so result quality can be variable, but these resources continue to improve. Some of the most prominent publisher based journal selection tools include the Elsevier Journal Finder, the Springer Nature Journal Selector, and the Wiley Journal Finder which is currently in the Beta phase. The Elsevier Journal finder is one of the most well known publisher based journal selection tools. The tool aggregates information from the over 2,900 journals published by Elsevier and allows you to plug in an abstract and keywords. The tool then gives you a list of potential journals by "text match score" and includes metrics such as CiteScore and Impact Factors for each journal. This tool is probably more comprehensive than other similar tools, but the results also limit you to Elsevier products. The Elsevier Journal finder is currently a free site that can be accessed by going to journalfinder.elsevier.com. You can enter your paper abstract directly or explore how the tool works by clicking on the "Don't have an abstract" link. Today we're going to click on the link for the article associated with medicine and then we'll click on "Find Journals." We now see a list of 50 potential journals. Like many other tools, here we can see the open access status, the CiteScore which is an Elsevier specific metric, the impact factor, the acceptance rate, approximate time to 1st decision and approximate time to publication. If you click on the journal title, you can see more information about the journal scope and recent publications.
One thing I like about this tool is that you can see the approximate APC or article processing charge for publishing open access. The next tool I want to mention is the Springer Nature Journal Selector. This tool includes information from the over 2,900 journals published by SpringerNature and works in much the same way as the Elsevier Journal Finder. The tool gives you a list of results with information about the journal including impact factor, average review time frames, and journal acceptance rates. The tool will also take you quickly to the journal submission page to allow you to submit an article. The Springer/Nature journal suggester is a website that can be accessed by going to journalsuggester.springer.com. In order to demonstrate how this tool works, I'm going to again utilize the title and abstract from "Bat Coronaviruses in China." For this tool to work, it is important to remember that you need to include both the title and the abstract. Next click on the "Suggest journals" button to see a list of relevant titles. As you can see, results are listed in a way that is very similar to the Elsevier Journal Finder, although there is slightly less information. The Wiley Journal Finder is still in its beta phase, but it also allows you to search for journals based on keywords in the manuscript title and manuscript abstract. The tool includes information from the roughly 1,600 journals published by Wiley and includes the impact factor, ISI rankings, and Open Access status. Like the SpringerNature Journal Selector, it allows you to quickly access the journal submission page. To access this web based tool, go to journalfinder.wiley.com. Like the Springer/Nature Journal Selector, you'll need to include both a title and an abstract. We'll use the information for the same article that we have been exploring earlier and then click "find". Here we get a list of 12 potential journals with informational categories similar to those we have seen for the other publisher-based selection tools.
One of the nice features of this tool is that it very clearly indicates the most relevant title. Moving forward I also want to briefly mention tools that will allow you to compare the differences between journals. Many aggregation based and publisher based journal selection tools also have comparative features, but tools such as the Scopus Compare Source Tool give you a more comprehensive overview of the differences between specific titles. The Scopus Compare Sources Tool is part of a subscription based product created by Elsevier that allows you to compare up to 10 journals. Comparative metrics include the CiteScore, JSR by year, SNIP by Year, and more. If you are interested in data visualization, this tool does a nice job of letting you see the differences between titles and allows you to see information displayed as charts or tables. This tool also does a good job of giving you more recent data than some of the other resources. I'm now going to quickly walk you through how to access and utilize the Scopus tool. Under the list of databases on the Himmelfarb website, click on Scopus. Please remember that you must be a faculty, staff, or student with access to Himmelfarb library resources to access this site. On the right hand side of the blue toolbar click "compare sources". While this tool works best if you already have a specific journal title in mind, you can also a keyword in the title box to see a list of titles with that word in the title. Today I'm going to enter the term "anatomy", and click search. and as you can see, we get a list of 12 results. Today I'm going to compare the Annals of Anatomy, the Journal of Anatomy, and Clinical Anatomy. What you're seeing here is comparative information about citation information over time. Once again, one of the main metrics you'll see is the CiteScore, which is Elsevier's alternative to the Journal Impact Factor, and which measures the average number of citations received in a calendar year by all items published in that journal in the preceding three years.
The last type of resource I want to briefly mention is journal evaluation rubrics. Librarians at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law school have recently put together a comprehensive open access tool to allow you to evaluate a journal. This tool was originally designed to address questions about Open Access journals and credibility, but it can also be helpful for journal selection. This tool can be somewhat time consuming to use, but if you are trying to decide between two journals, this resource can help you differentiate the nuances between sources. To access this resource, click on the link on your "Journal Selection Tools Links" PDF. As you can see, this resource has instructions for use, an evaluation rubric, and a rating worksheet. Provide a rating for each category, then calculate the total points. At the bottom of the worksheet, you'll see a guide based on point totals as to whether a journal might be considered "good," "fair," or a "poor" resource. Now that we've reviewed some of the most common journal selection tools, I'd like to give you the opportunity to use these resources on your own. For this exercise, please refer to the list of aggregation based selection tools in your "Journal Selection Tools Links" pdf. Select one aggregation based journal selection tool and search for a journal in your field. Pause the webinar until you are ready to continue. For the next exercise, we will be exploring publisher based tools. For this exercise, please refer to the list of publisher based selection tools in your "Journal Selection Tools Links" pdf. Select one publisher based journal selection tool and look for a journal in your field. Pause the webinar until you are ready to continue. For the final exercise, we will be utilizing comparative tools For this exercise, please refer to the list of comparative tools in your "Journal Selection Tools Links" pdf. Select one tool or rubric and compare two journals in your field.
Lastly, complete the related quiz to document your findings. This concludes our session for today. Thank you for taking the time to listen to "Journal Selection Tools: Choosing the Right Journal for Your Research", a part of the "Get Yourself Published, Promote Your Research" webinar series from the Himmelfarb Library at The George Washington University. If you enjoyed this webinar, please join us for the next installment in our series: "Introduction to Predatory Publishing", which will be released on March 11, 2020 and where we talk about what you can do if you think you've been approached by a predatory publisher. Also, if you have time and are able to complete our exit survey, we'd appreciate your feedback. Thank you! If you have any questions about the material covered in this session or have questions specific to your own research don't hesitate to contact me at shoover@gwu.edu. On behalf of the Himmelfarb Library Scholarly Communications team, thank you for listening!.
In this session we will look at the different types of tools that exist for researchers and explore questions you might want to consider when selecting a journal. We will also give you the opportunity to utilize various types of selection and comparison tools in order to find a journal in your field. So what exactly is a journal selection tool? A journal section tool is just a resource that provides information about multiple journals. Often these resources include information about metrics such as the journal impact factor. What types of journal selection tools are there? There are 3 main types of journal selection tools. First there are aggregation based tools. These tools help you find journals from a variety of publishers. Next, there are Publisher based tools. These tools help you select a journal from a single publisher such as Elsevier or SpringerNature. Lastly, there are comparison tools and rubrics. These tools are designed specifically to allow you to compare publications, although some have search features similar to an aggregation based selection tool. What's important to remember about these resources is it's always necessary to consider the scope of the toolalways stop to ask yourself what journals are actually being included in a given search. It's helpful to remember that using a variety of journal search tools will yield the most comprehensive list of potential journals. Let's start by talking about aggregation based journal selection tools. As I mentioned earlier, these tools include journals from multiple publishers. These tools often include more titles than a publisher based selection tool. Some of these resources are free while others require you to have access to a subscription service. Those requiring subscription access may be available from your University's library. Some of the most prominent aggregation based tools include InCites Journal Citation Report, the Coafactor Journal Selector, Edanz Journal Selector, the JANE Journal/Author name estimator, and the Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory.
The first resource I want to look at today is the Journal Citation Report. This is a product of the Web of Science group and currently includes information from journals in 236 disciplines. This tool allows you to search for journal information by title or by category. If you're interested in the usage metrics of a particular journal, one great feature of this tool is that it allows you to see very granular metrics such as the journal impact factor and the total number of citations from a journal in a given year. Journal Citation Report is a subscription based service, so it needs to be accessed via the Himmelfarb Library website under the list of electronic databases. I'm now going to quickly walk you through how to access and utilize the Journal Citation Report Database. Begin by going to the Himmelfarb Library website at himmelfarb.gwu.edu. Click on the link for "All Databases". Next, click on the letter "J" for Journal. From there click on the link for "Access Online" next to "Journal Citation Reports." Please remember that you must be a faculty, staff, or student with access to Himmelfarb library resources to access this site. If you're looking for a journal in a specific subject area, click on "browse by category". Today we will be looking for a journal in the area of surgery. Click on the link for "surgery" under the category field. As you can see here, there are 203 journals included in this category. One thing that it is important to remember is that it often takes time to accumulate data on usage metrics, so often times the information that you are looking at is retrospective. Here you can see that the most recent data in Journal Citation Reports is from 2018. To see a list of the journals for surgery from 2018, click on the number under the "# Journals" field. In this case, we'll click on 203. Now you will see a list of all 203 journals ranked by their impact factor.
In addition to being able to see the impact factor, you can also see the total number of citations for a journal and the eigenfactor score. Like the impact factor, the eigenfactor score is a ratio of the number of citations to total number of articles. In this case, the eigenfactor measures the number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the Journal Citation Reports. If you click on a specific journal title, you can see more information about a journallet's try "Annals of Surgery". Here you can see the Journal profile for "Annals of Surgery." This page includes extremely detailed metrics including the Journal Impact Factor trend, Citation distribution, how the journal impact factor is calculated, and contributing items. At the bottom of the page you can also find information on contributions by country and contributions by organization which might be of interest to you. If you already know the name of the journal you are looking for, you can also just enter the name of the journal in the search bar on the database home page. Now that you've seen what the Journal Citation Reports database looks like, let's move on to the next tool. The next resource I want to discuss is the Coafactor Journal Selector. This tool aggregates information on journals in the area of science and medicine specifically. This resource has five areas of focus to help scholars determine whether a journal is valuable. One of the great things about this tool is that it gives you the option to search specifically for open access journals if that's something that's important to you. It also allows you to set a maximum limit for the APC or article processing charges that you would be willing to pay. There is also a filter for approximate review length in the event that you are looking for a journal that might help you publish your research quickly. Another advantage of this resource is that it is website based and can currently be used free of charge.
I'm now going to quickly walk you through the Coafactor Journal Selector. Once again, this is currently a free and publicly available website, so you'll want to begin by going to coafactorsicence.com/journal-selector Here you can see that there are five categories to help you find a journal: subject, peer review, open access, speed, and other. Today we want to look for medical journals, so start by clicking on the plus sign next to "subject" and then click on "medicine". Next click on the purple search tool and you'll see the list of medical journals included in this site. As you can see, this is a much more limited list than the resources included in the Journal Citation Reports database. However, one advantage of this site is that it allows you to look at very specific publication categories. If you are looking to get your research published quickly, for example, click on the plus arrow next to speed. Let's say you are looking to have your article reviewed in 3 months and published within 6 months after acceptance. Click on "search" again and you'll see a list of roughly a dozen journals. Click on the title of a journal, in this case BMC Medicine and you can see information about the journal in various categories. One benefit of this site is that it provides fairly granular information about Open Access. However, the limited number of journals included here obviously restricts whatever information that you are able to find. The next resource that I wanted to mention is the Edanz Journal Selector. This tool was created by a company with the goal of helping researchers publish in international journals. This resource currently aggregates information from over 28,000 journals. One of the advantages of this resource is that it shows you a journal's impact factor in an easy to read format. A journal such as The Lancet, for example, is designated as having an impact factor that is "very high." In addition to offering free information about journals, Edanz also offers fee based editorial assistance.
Edanz is also currently a free web based tool that can be accessed at en-author-services.edanzgroup.com/journal-selector To search for a journal in a specific field, you'll want to go to the dropdown menu that says "General" and click on "field of study." To find medical journals, click on "medical and health sciences." This will allow you to access a more specific list of subject areas related to medicine. Today we are going to look for journals related to neuroscience. Select "Medical and Health SciencesNeurosciences" and then click "go". As you can see here, you end up with a list of 154 journals where you can easily see the impact factor range, the year the impact factor was determined, and whether it is included in the SCI-E or Science Citation Index Expanded. As you can see, a journal such as Neuron has a very high impact factor, and you are also able to sort journals by the impact factor range. One tool that is specifically helpful for the health sciences is JANE or the Journal/Author Name Estimator. This tool was created out of research by the Netherlands Bioinformatics Center and compares titles and abstracts to documents included in PubMed. This resource provides a list of the top 50 potential titles and an article influence or AI Score which measures how often articles in the journal are cited within the first five years after publication. This is a website based tool that also shows you where an article has been indexed. JANE is also currently a free web-based tool that can be accessed at jane.biosemantics.org As I mentioned earlier, this tool allows you to copy and paste in an abstract in an effort to locate a journal. In order to demonstrate how this tool works, I'm going to utilize the abstract from an article that is archived in PubMed Central entitled "Bat Coronaviruses in China." I'm going to copy and paste the article abstract into JANE and then click on "Find Journals.
" As you can see here, your results display a list of potential journals, where each journal is indexed, and an article influence score. Here you can see that the first search result listed is the journal where the article was ultimately published, so it is fairly effective. The last aggregation based resource I want to discuss today is the Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory. This is a subscription based database that aggregates information on over 300,000 periodicals in over 900 subject areas. Keyword searches can help you identify journals in your field. This resource does not currently provide journal usage metrics, but it does allow you to determine whether a journal is peer-reviewed or open access. Like Journal Citation Reports, this is a subscription based product that must be accessed via the Himmelfarb Library website under the list of electronic databases. Begin by going to the Himmelfarb Library website at "himmelfarb.gwu.edu" Click on the link for "All Databases". Click on the letter "U". From there click on the link for "Access Online" next to "Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory." Please remember that you must be a faculty, staff, or student with access to Himmelfarb library resources to access this site. This tool is slightly different than the others than we have looked at in the sense that is designed for you to look at a specific title rather than to browse related journals. That said, if you search by keyword, you can see a list of related titles. So, for example if you search for the term "oncology" you get a list of several hundred journals. One helpful feature of this database is that the icons on the left hand side tell you whether an item is refereed, whether it is electronic, and whether a journal is open access, if you are looking for a specific feature. It is important to note that different formats such as print, electronic, and microform are listed separately here. More information about a specific journal can be found by clicking on the link for that title.
Now that we've learned about aggregator based journal selection tools, I want to talk briefly about publisher based tools. These are tools produced by a publisher and limit you to information about journals produced by that publisher only. One advantage of these tools is that they have a feature that allows you to plug in your abstract and get a list of potentially relevant journals. Matches are based on keywords, so result quality can be variable, but these resources continue to improve. Some of the most prominent publisher based journal selection tools include the Elsevier Journal Finder, the Springer Nature Journal Selector, and the Wiley Journal Finder which is currently in the Beta phase. The Elsevier Journal finder is one of the most well known publisher based journal selection tools. The tool aggregates information from the over 2,900 journals published by Elsevier and allows you to plug in an abstract and keywords. The tool then gives you a list of potential journals by "text match score" and includes metrics such as CiteScore and Impact Factors for each journal. This tool is probably more comprehensive than other similar tools, but the results also limit you to Elsevier products. The Elsevier Journal finder is currently a free site that can be accessed by going to journalfinder.elsevier.com. You can enter your paper abstract directly or explore how the tool works by clicking on the "Don't have an abstract" link. Today we're going to click on the link for the article associated with medicine and then we'll click on "Find Journals." We now see a list of 50 potential journals. Like many other tools, here we can see the open access status, the CiteScore which is an Elsevier specific metric, the impact factor, the acceptance rate, approximate time to 1st decision and approximate time to publication. If you click on the journal title, you can see more information about the journal scope and recent publications.
One thing I like about this tool is that you can see the approximate APC or article processing charge for publishing open access. The next tool I want to mention is the Springer Nature Journal Selector. This tool includes information from the over 2,900 journals published by SpringerNature and works in much the same way as the Elsevier Journal Finder. The tool gives you a list of results with information about the journal including impact factor, average review time frames, and journal acceptance rates. The tool will also take you quickly to the journal submission page to allow you to submit an article. The Springer/Nature journal suggester is a website that can be accessed by going to journalsuggester.springer.com. In order to demonstrate how this tool works, I'm going to again utilize the title and abstract from "Bat Coronaviruses in China." For this tool to work, it is important to remember that you need to include both the title and the abstract. Next click on the "Suggest journals" button to see a list of relevant titles. As you can see, results are listed in a way that is very similar to the Elsevier Journal Finder, although there is slightly less information. The Wiley Journal Finder is still in its beta phase, but it also allows you to search for journals based on keywords in the manuscript title and manuscript abstract. The tool includes information from the roughly 1,600 journals published by Wiley and includes the impact factor, ISI rankings, and Open Access status. Like the SpringerNature Journal Selector, it allows you to quickly access the journal submission page. To access this web based tool, go to journalfinder.wiley.com. Like the Springer/Nature Journal Selector, you'll need to include both a title and an abstract. We'll use the information for the same article that we have been exploring earlier and then click "find". Here we get a list of 12 potential journals with informational categories similar to those we have seen for the other publisher-based selection tools.
One of the nice features of this tool is that it very clearly indicates the most relevant title. Moving forward I also want to briefly mention tools that will allow you to compare the differences between journals. Many aggregation based and publisher based journal selection tools also have comparative features, but tools such as the Scopus Compare Source Tool give you a more comprehensive overview of the differences between specific titles. The Scopus Compare Sources Tool is part of a subscription based product created by Elsevier that allows you to compare up to 10 journals. Comparative metrics include the CiteScore, JSR by year, SNIP by Year, and more. If you are interested in data visualization, this tool does a nice job of letting you see the differences between titles and allows you to see information displayed as charts or tables. This tool also does a good job of giving you more recent data than some of the other resources. I'm now going to quickly walk you through how to access and utilize the Scopus tool. Under the list of databases on the Himmelfarb website, click on Scopus. Please remember that you must be a faculty, staff, or student with access to Himmelfarb library resources to access this site. On the right hand side of the blue toolbar click "compare sources". While this tool works best if you already have a specific journal title in mind, you can also a keyword in the title box to see a list of titles with that word in the title. Today I'm going to enter the term "anatomy", and click search. and as you can see, we get a list of 12 results. Today I'm going to compare the Annals of Anatomy, the Journal of Anatomy, and Clinical Anatomy. What you're seeing here is comparative information about citation information over time. Once again, one of the main metrics you'll see is the CiteScore, which is Elsevier's alternative to the Journal Impact Factor, and which measures the average number of citations received in a calendar year by all items published in that journal in the preceding three years.
The last type of resource I want to briefly mention is journal evaluation rubrics. Librarians at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law school have recently put together a comprehensive open access tool to allow you to evaluate a journal. This tool was originally designed to address questions about Open Access journals and credibility, but it can also be helpful for journal selection. This tool can be somewhat time consuming to use, but if you are trying to decide between two journals, this resource can help you differentiate the nuances between sources. To access this resource, click on the link on your "Journal Selection Tools Links" PDF. As you can see, this resource has instructions for use, an evaluation rubric, and a rating worksheet. Provide a rating for each category, then calculate the total points. At the bottom of the worksheet, you'll see a guide based on point totals as to whether a journal might be considered "good," "fair," or a "poor" resource. Now that we've reviewed some of the most common journal selection tools, I'd like to give you the opportunity to use these resources on your own. For this exercise, please refer to the list of aggregation based selection tools in your "Journal Selection Tools Links" pdf. Select one aggregation based journal selection tool and search for a journal in your field. Pause the webinar until you are ready to continue. For the next exercise, we will be exploring publisher based tools. For this exercise, please refer to the list of publisher based selection tools in your "Journal Selection Tools Links" pdf. Select one publisher based journal selection tool and look for a journal in your field. Pause the webinar until you are ready to continue. For the final exercise, we will be utilizing comparative tools For this exercise, please refer to the list of comparative tools in your "Journal Selection Tools Links" pdf. Select one tool or rubric and compare two journals in your field.
Lastly, complete the related quiz to document your findings. This concludes our session for today. Thank you for taking the time to listen to "Journal Selection Tools: Choosing the Right Journal for Your Research", a part of the "Get Yourself Published, Promote Your Research" webinar series from the Himmelfarb Library at The George Washington University. If you enjoyed this webinar, please join us for the next installment in our series: "Introduction to Predatory Publishing", which will be released on March 11, 2020 and where we talk about what you can do if you think you've been approached by a predatory publisher. Also, if you have time and are able to complete our exit survey, we'd appreciate your feedback. Thank you! If you have any questions about the material covered in this session or have questions specific to your own research don't hesitate to contact me at shoover@gwu.edu. On behalf of the Himmelfarb Library Scholarly Communications team, thank you for listening!.