Just as the title says: how do you select the journal in which you want to publish your work? Do you have a certain strategy, preference? Would you rather go for a specific journal on your topic or a more broad general one or?
Just as the title says: how do you select the journal in which you want to publish your work? Do you have a certain strategy, preference? Would you rather go for a specific journal on your topic or a more broad general one or?
Comments
We publish things, I hope, most of the time, because we have something to say. And if we have something to say, then we have something to say to somebody. I think of journal selection as defining who that somebody is.
This has been diluted somewhat in this brave new world of digital publishing in which fewer people encounter articles in the context of the journal as a whole, but by selecting a journal you’re still selecting the people who see your piece because they get the ToC alerts, because they’re reading something in the same issue, or because they periodically check into see what’s happening with that journal.
So you want to figure out who reads it. Who cites it? Who has referenced articles in the journal that are relevantly similar to yours? Is it published by a society that covers the topic of your paper? Is your paper something of interest to a wide audience, a focused one, an interdisciplinary one? The same journal won’t be appropriate for every piece of work.
You’ll encounter a lot of pressure to select publication venues based on prestige and journal rankings. I’m not saying ignore these, but really you should be guided by the fact that you’re trying to communicate, and choosing a platform that brings what you have to say to the right people, in the right form.
On top of that, I refuse to publish with commercial publishers, but that’s another discussion.
This is general advice, and different disciplines will have different wrinkles.