After identifying possible target journals, you need to analyze them further to make an informed decision on which journal to submit your manuscript to. You need to ensure the selected journal is a good fit to maximize your chances of successful publication and getting citations. Otherwise, you might get a quick rejection or complete extensive revisions in case the manuscript makes it to the peer review. Also, evaluating target journals helps to avoid those that are predatory. Here are some factors you should consider;
1. What is the focus of the journal?
The first aspect to check is the focus of the journal. You can find descriptions of the journal’s focus under such Aims & Scope and Author Guidelines. These describe the main topics the journal will publish articles, what types of articles as well as which focus they like the articles to have, and the intended audience. From this type of information, you can better match your manuscript with the focus of the journal.
2. Who are connected with the journal?
Check the members of the editorial board. The editorial board is easily accessible from the home page of the journal website and usually has the board members’ pictures, URLs, and email addresses. Do you recognize any of them? They are most likely prominent researchers within the field of the journal so this will also be an indication of the focus of the journal. Also, look through the latest issues of the journal to see if you can identify some of the authors. Do you recognize any of them? Are they authors that you have read and even used in your own research and your reference lists?
3. In which databases is the journal indexed?
It is important to select journals indexed in relevant databases to make your article easy to find for other researchers within the same field. For instance, if you are a researcher within the education field, it is advantageous for the article to be found in a database like ERIC. If you are a researcher within the field of medicine or health science you want your article to be found in databases like PubMed, MEDLINE, and CINAHL. Or you can choose a journal indexed in multidisciplinary databases such as Web of Science (or its sub-databases: SCI, SCIE, SSCI, or A&HCI), Scopus, EBSCO, or ProQuest. You can get information about the databases in which a journal is indexed through the Journal’s website or through other resources, such as Ulrichsweb.
4. What is the impact and reputation of the journal?
To determine the quality of the journal, you will need to check indicators that measure the journal’s impact on the research community. It is important to note that these indicators are not normalized; hence, a journal cannot be compared with another if they are not publishing articles within the same research area. Also, you cannot compare journal indicators from one database wit with the ones from another database. Here are the commonly used journal indicators that you can check and evaluate the impact of the target journal;
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF): It is the most important indicator of quality and is provided by the Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics). It measures the impact a journal has based on the number of citations its articles have received; the more citations a journal receives, the greater its impact is on the research community within its specific discipline.
- SJR (Scimago Journal Rank): It is an alternative to the Journal Impact factor and is provided by Scopus (owned by Elsevier). Although it is not used as often as the more established Journal Impact Factor, it is a valuable indicator of journal impact that may be used as a complementary tool when selecting journals. Also, it is used for journals not indexed in the Web of Science; Scopus covers more journals that are not indexed in the Web of Science. SJR indicates the average number of weighted citations from publications in Scopus during a given year to a journal’s articles published in the three previous years. Next to the SJR value, the quartile for the journal is provided. It tells if the journal is among the top 25% (expressed as Q1) or at the bottom 25% (Q4) of all journals in that field. Q1 journals are of higher quality or impact than Q2, Q3, and Q4 journals.
- Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP): The indicator is also provided by Scopus. It measures the average citation score for articles in a journal. Unlike, the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), SNIP corrects for differences in citation practices between different disciplines. This means that SNIP can be used to compare journals within different subject areas, something which is not suitable with other indicators like Journal Impact Factor (JIF).
- h-index: It reflects both the number of articles and the number of citations per article. For instance, a journal with a h-index of 150 means that 150 articles published by the journal have received at least 150 citations. You should only compare the h-index of journals within the same field.
5. What are the formal requirements of the journal?
Read through the author guidelines and submission guidelines to understand the formal requirements of the journal regarding the manuscript. These include aspects such as structure, word limit, style guidelines, citations & references (referencing style), and formatting. Other details include author information, abstract, keywords, figures, tables, units, supplemental materials, and disclosure statement. You will need to adjust your manuscript according to the formal requirements of the journal as far as possible to avoid outright rejection of the manuscript.
6. What are your publishing needs?
The choice of the journal in which to publish your research depends on one’s goals and motives. These are probably different between a doctoral student and a senior researcher. Some of the information you will need to assess is;
- Timeliness: Do you need to have the article published as soon as possible? Or is it more important to publish in a high ranking journal even if you risk losing valuable time in the case of rejection or a longer publishing process, including revisions and so on?
- External requirements: Are there any requirements in which journal you should publish your article? For instance, open access requirements, high impact factor, indexing, etc.
- Reach: What audience would you like to reach, national, regional, or international? Do you want the article to have high visibility and access?