Step 2 - Assessing your list of journals

The next step is to gather information about each journal. Look for information about the journal's aims, scope and target audience. This is usually found on a journal's homepage in sections called 'About the Journal', 'Aims and Scope', 'Instructions for Authors' or something similar. Other useful sources are are listed in the shortlisting tools. 

Realistically assess the following in relation to your paper:

• what are the journal's preferred subject areas? 
• who is the journal's target audience? Is my topic important to the journal's editors and readers? Will my paper make the greatest impact with this audience?
• what manuscript types are accepted by the journal? (e.g., reviews, original research)
• does the journal specify a preferred study design, support particular research traditions or theoretical perspectives? 
• is there a requirement for research based in a particular location?
• are there any content-related instructions? (e.g., methodologies, statistics, sampling).

You can exclude a title from your shortlist if their aims and scope are not aligned with your manuscript. 

Selecting a suitable target journal for your manuscript by Editage Insights (YouTube). 

This video provides a brief overview of the different factors to consider when matching your manuscript to a journal's aims and scope.

Find information about a journal's publication management practices and fees to ensure you receive appropriate editorial and publishing services. 

Sources to check include publisher websites and shortlisting tools. 

The following questions can help you assess a journal's publication management practices:

• Editorial board composition - are there well-known, respected researchers or exemplars in their fields?
• Publisher reputation - is it published by a professional body or well-known commercial publisher? 
• Publisher accessibility - can you easily contact the publisher?
• Publication age and history - when was the journal established? Is the publication history regular and consistent?
• Rejection rates - are they very low or very high? 
• Citation metrics - how do they compare to other journals in the same field or sub-field?

• Peer review model and process - is it transparent, efficient and helpful? 
• Time from submission to decision - long delays suggest management inefficiency or difficulty securing reviewers.
• Time from acceptance to publication online - long delays suggest publication backlogs.
• Number of issues per year and number of articles per issue. A greater number of articles published per year increases your chance of being published.
• Journal indexing - is it indexed in major citation databases (e.g., Web of Science, Scopus)? This increases the visibility and discovery of your paper by other researchers.

• Is the journal published behind a pay wall or does it support open access? 
• Are there any Article Processing Charges? It's important to budget for fees in grant submissions as they can cost up to several thousand dollars.
• Is the journal included in any of our APC discount or fee waiver agreements?

• Does the publisher have a standard CC (Creative Commons) license or their own agreement?
• Have you read and understood the license?
• Does the license permit you to legally redistribute your work in an institutional repository or other open access venue? Depositing your work in a repository may be a condition of your research funding.
• You will own the copyright in your work, unless there is an agreement in place that specifies otherwise. Make sure you understand the conditions before you enter into any agreement with a publisher.

Journal citation metrics help you identify the highly cited journals in your field. They can be sourced from journal ranking tools and publisher websites.

• All citation metrics have strengths and limitations - use a range of indicators
• Journal ranking tools use different metrics and cover different journals
• Citation rates vary widely in disciplines - only compare journal metrics within a discipline or sub-discipline
• Some discipline areas are under-represented in mainstream metrics and have separate ranking lists
• High citation rates are not necessarily measures of quality

Journal-level citation metrics indicate the citation impact of a journal title. This section outlines several key metrics. Consult our guide for more information.

Journal impact factor (JIF)

• Represents the average citations of a journal document in the previous two years.
• Shows how highly cited the average journal document is relative to others in its discipline.

CiteScore 

• Represents the average yearly citations of documents published in the previous three years.
• Shows how highly cited the average journal article is relative to others in its discipline.

SCImago journal rank (SJR)

• A ratio of the average yearly weighted citations of documents published in the previous three years.
• Accounts for the number of citations received by a journal and the importance or prestige of the journal citations come from.

h-index (Hirsch index) 

• A journal's h-index is the number of articles in a journal [h] that have received at least [h] citations over a citation period.
• Accounts for quantity (number of articles) and quality (defined as number of citations).