Hi Abbas,

It's an oft-asked question on RG. At the end of the day, it's pros and cons. If you feel that you have a study that is robust, original and has universal appeal - then go for the high impact journals. But - if they are not these things (bar the recent highlighted exceptions of 'joke' submissions getting through review processes in high impact journals) - then they should soon be 'found out'. That said, even if they are not accepted, you should still get some useful reviewer feedback to assist in sending elsewhere.

If your research is more 'localised' and discipline-specific - then specialised journals are more realistic and your chances of success are higher. More specialised, however, can still mean relatively high impact - so try not to think of specialised (or lower impact) as necessarily meaning lower quality.

Undoubtedly 'impact factors' is a important parameter in case of publication but it also depends on the aim behind the publication. So, someone can also go for F1000 Research [https://f1000research.com/], PeerJ [https://peerj.com/], etc.

Hi Abbas,

It's an oft-asked question on RG. At the end of the day, it's pros and cons. If you feel that you have a study that is robust, original and has universal appeal - then go for the high impact journals. But - if they are not these things (bar the recent highlighted exceptions of 'joke' submissions getting through review processes in high impact journals) - then they should soon be 'found out'. That said, even if they are not accepted, you should still get some useful reviewer feedback to assist in sending elsewhere.

If your research is more 'localised' and discipline-specific - then specialised journals are more realistic and your chances of success are higher. More specialised, however, can still mean relatively high impact - so try not to think of specialised (or lower impact) as necessarily meaning lower quality.

As Dean has suggested, if your study is an application of a methodology published elsewhere, then perhaps the 'big name' journals are not your best target. In fact, your study might be missed by colleagues if it is not published in a more specialised journal. However, neither should you be afraid to submit to 'high impact' journals if you feel that your study merits broader attention, i.e. it will be of interest to researchers outside your speciality.

Just because Science & Nature have impact factors of 30 or more does not essentially mean that their review process is better or more rigorous than that of a lower impact factor journal - I have read a few poorly-executed studies in both those journals in the past few years.

For me, the impact factor issue has become to much of a driver of the publication process.

Good luck with your submission, wherever you ultimately decide to go.

Many of the top journals have a "triage" system in place where editors decide whether a manuscript is suitable for review or not. This does not mean that you should try indiscriminately or way above the perceived worth of your manuscript. However, trying to go a little bit above one's expectations should probably not waste a lot of your time, as a first go.

IFs are important also depending on your position. If you are a PI looking for grants or promotion then of course getting into the "big names" is a bonus (and sometimes compulsory). However, if you are a post-doc looking for your next position then the opinion of your supervisor with regards to your abilities/promise will count more than where you eventually publish (as everyone will assume that the hypotheses/experimental design etc.etc. which got you in press are mostly from your PI's lab, not from you... you are just the guy who diligently worked your Sunday's off to put them into practice).

Having said this, the best way to go is to always have some alternatives and then work downward depending on the feedback from the reviewers (once you get to that stage).

Just don't feel bad if your expectations are not met, I have 20 year experience in the lab and put my name on a lot of papers. But even so, every time I send a new manuscript for publication I'll be damned if I could reliably guess whether it will be well received or not. Might as well almost be an astrologer, in this respect.

Great question. To answer it from a personal level, I did an analysis of my own work to see by citations what strategy was best. The title says most of it:

Winker, K. 2011. In scientific publishing at the article level, effort matters more than journal impact factors: hard work and coauthors overshadow journal venue in acquiring citations. BioEssays 33:400-402. (Copyright precludes me from posting it for easy retrieval, unfortunately.) What it does not say (but what is in the text) is that there are additional social benefits to appearing in high IF journals (the marquee effect). Here is the relevant part: "The marquees that are brightly lit by high impact factor scores are desirable locations because, socially and on average among all product appearing there, the importance of the science is judged to be higher. It doesn’t matter whether this reality plays out at the individual level because on average among all individual scientists it is true. In this higher dimension, then, impact factors are very important and are likely to affect such tangibles as getting a job, a promotion, or a proposal funded. Few can afford to neglect these social aspects and consider only the longer-term aspect of how their work is actually being used. How to reconcile the two aspects, venue versus use? My analyses suggest that perhaps an order-of-magnitude view be taken at the individual level such that journals are categorized roughly p, q, and r, wherein impact factors and relationships are p > 10 > q > 1 > r."

Also, on average, the percentage of accepted manuscripts goes down with increasing IF. You want to get your work published in the best journals possible, but not at the expense of spending huge amounts of added time polishing, revising, and re-poloshing. Best of luck with getting your work out.

The last three posts have been very articulate in adding to this thread. There is some very good advice to follow in them.