Hi,

It seems that the first consideration where to publish should be if the assigned journal covers the same subjects you are writing about, or related subjects. If the subject or research methods do not match those of the journal, probably the paper will be rejected, or even not accepted for peer reviewing. Other submission considerations are secondary to the above said.

Hi,

It seems that the first consideration where to publish should be if the assigned journal covers the same subjects you are writing about, or related subjects. If the subject or research methods do not match those of the journal, probably the paper will be rejected, or even not accepted for peer reviewing. Other submission considerations are secondary to the above said.

Dear Prof. Michael Patriksson

Have a nice day and good times

I concur with our colleagues. When we submit a research work to a Journal, we must keep in mind many factors. Firstly The journal must be specialized in the subject of the manuscript. Secondly, it must be a reputable journal of a considerable impact factor and has a large audience. Thirdly, the response and reply of the journal must be in a reasonable time.

Generally, anyone can choice the suitable journal from these links: 

http://journalfinder.elsevier.com/#results

http://www.springeropen.com/get-published/find-the-right-journalood 

Good Luck

It is interesting that a clear majority mentions time for review as a critical issue. I submitted my first paper in 1989, I think - long time ago, yet it feels like yesterday - but in those days, and for many years on, I almost never heard a discussion about review time being crucial. What my colleagues were concerned with was that the quality of the review itself must be high, that the papers were sent to real experts who did a thorough job, even if they were critical - they would be quite harsh against those journals whose reviewers had made sloppy reviews! (I do remember my colleagues being more anxious that the galley proofs of the final published paper, that were checked by hand and sent over physical mail, were dealt with correctly. The fact that you now do it electronically is one of the few positive aspects of the review process that have been improved over the years.) Mind you, in those days I think reviews took much longer, and not only because things were sent through physical mail. I in fact think that the reviewers were more thorough. I wonder if any of you have the same experience - that reviews are in some journals nowadays more shallow, and of course therefore also quicker. 

While I am not saying that a quick review of a manuscript necessarily means that the review has been sloppy, would it not be fair to say that the review(s) would be better if the journal made sure that the referees had more time to review each paper? 

Dear colleague

All above answers are important and its suitable yo your question

Regards 

I am currently working on a second peer-review level article now, and one is currently under review. I say this because I am junior compared to the other people answering, but I will offer my own thoughts as an junior academic from my own experience, and from the experience of my colleagues. 

Typically once I have a rough idea what topic I am writing about that is of merit, I immediately shortlist two or three journals that are relevant topically to my research, and have a solid reputation among my peers. Once I have that shortlist, I typically select the one that my projected research would have the cleanest fit into. I then craft my article around that journal's specific requirements, which include length, citation style, and the typical structure of articles within said journal.

I like that approach a lot because catering your research to the journal and the editor's requirements indicates that you are serious about publishing with them. You still need to have good-quality research, but getting on the the editor's good books could mean the difference between a rejection "revise and resubmit" if they were on the fence about it. 

As to journal diversity, I think the most important thing is simply to choose journals relevant to your current topic. As it stands all of my book reviews are in different journals, and my two major articles are going to different journals too. I cannot say whether or not you will increase your reputability among your peers if you limit your preferred journals, but I prefer to simply target journals that fit my research needs.

As far as time-to-publication goes, that depends entirely on the field. I don't worry too much about it myself because my field (Military History) doesn't have as serious of a time crunch to get results out quickly as the sciences. If you need your research to be the newest, then time to review would be more important.

The people before me gave great answers, but I wanted to just throw you my feedback as well.

Depending on the level of results that were obtained.

Hi Quentin,

Military history would have been my second choice, had it not been applied mathematics! So I am quite sympathetical to your choice. :-) Indeed, there cannot be that many lines of research in that field that requires you to write fast in order to beat everyone else. And I suppose also that the journals you submit to have a review system that does not guarantee a verdict within a month, which some - sorry to say less serious - journals guarantee. 

Are you aware also of other distinguishing factors, between your field and, say applied math - in terms of the publishing bit?

Hello Michael,

Good question. I will state upfront that I have no experience with applied mathematics in terms of the publishing process, and that my experience with mathematics itself end with calculus, and basic statistical analysis for some of my quantitative work.

In terms of the publishing process, the actual peer-review process is similar as far as I am aware. You still need to find reputable journals that specialise in your field, you still need to await response from peer reviewers, and you still need to go through the same revision period.

The big difference that comes to mind is the style of articles. For example, you do not often see smaller commentary-style pieces for military history articles, save for the book review/review article. Conferences also count for relatively less compared to twenty to thirty page articles and larger manuscripts, whereas several scientists I know rely heavily on conference proceedings for smaller, more isolated projects (such as a proof for a mathematical concept). I would recommend reviewing the CVs of the major people in your branch of applied Mathematics, and review the rough proportion of full-length articles to conferences, and to other types of projects. 

Hi,

Besides the discussions above, I think, one should also take time and try to guess a target journal's "tendency". There are some glues there like the most cited papers announced by the journal itself. 

For submission of a new manuscript for publication, we select journals based on following criteria: the aims and scope of the journals, the restrictions, and impact factor of the journal, journals that publish papers on the same subject and quality as ours. We also use the JournalGuide to efficiently search and select candidate journals for a smooth path to publication.

Well, the impact factor can be - and often is! - inflated very easily: plenty of journals ask authors to cite additional papers from the journal, for example; such a thing adds to the journal's IF. Nasty editors! I tend not to look at IF - it's quite uninteresting as well as misleading.

Dear Michael, I agree with your views. But impact factor of journal is given major emphasis in India to assess the publications of researchers.

I realise that the idea that I now put forward may be impractical if the reference list is long, but it would indeed help, in principle, and it might be implemented easily:

Suppose that along with the manuscript and its list of references/citations to the literature, the authors had to provide a motivation for each and every one of the papers cited - IN PARTICULAR the self-citations, either in the submission letter or in a comments section of the reference list. If the software used is any version of LaTeX, then the motivation can easily be included in the BiB file that the authors submit together with the LaTeX files - simply add a motivation in one of the comments places, such as using the "note" line but with the OPT tag to its left so that it will make BiBTeX not print out that comment in the actual result. Provided the .BiB file is submitted the editor and referees can then read the motivations, and make a decision on whether some citations (ESPECIALLY self-citations) should be omitted.

I think some limitations about time and educational situations have a great impact on the final choice. I prefer to consider all constraint,s and then, I will optimize my decisions to select the best possible journal in that time.

Ali: Since you really cannot know a lot about every journal where you might be able to publish your latest technical report/manuscript, would you say that you try to publish where you usually publish, or do you try to spread your articles over a larger set of journals?

There are plenty of criteria involved:

(a) You may wish to publish where the very best, latest papers were published on the subject, because you then know it will be read by the right people.

(b) You may publish where you usually publish, because your name is then familiar to the editorial board.

(c) You may - on the other hand - want to spread your research over more than one - possibly several - journals, so that perhaps more researchers will know of your work.

(d) You may wish to publish based on some quantitative criteria, such as the journal's Impact Factor. 

What ultimately turn out for the best is quite uncertain, as you do not know if others will even find your paper. The world of publishing is too huge these days that no-one can have an overview anymore.

Michael: However, it is not NP-hard. You can consider all preferred aspects (which are limited) and choose the best strategy. You can maximize your benefits from those options. Some constraints are not essential some times, and some of them are not independent, you want to spread your researches, hence, (b) is over. (a) and (d) are not independent, because the best papers in (a) are usually published in journals with high impact factors. Therefore, you can see that the selection of the fittest journal is not a NP-hard problem. you can think fuzzy and you can predict the outcomes based on the level of other papers on a specific journal. Some rare events can also be happened, but, the overall view is clear. The world of publishing is not often very big for a specific researcher, because your topics cannot  be suitable for all field of science.