Finding a Journal to Publish Your Research

Advice for medical students on finding a journal to publish your research

How to find a journal to publish in?

You’ve spent a lot of time and effort on your research, and now you feel like it’s time to publish your findings.   One big question looms – where can I publish my study?

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of journals that publish biomedical research. This includes journals who will publish original research, review articles, case reports, QI/QA studies, and so on.   How do you find an appropriate journal for your particular study?  Below you will find some advice to help you decide on a journal.

• Ask your research mentor. If you have a research mentor, they may have a good idea of what journals may be appropriate for your research. Please rely on your mentor’s expertise in this area.
• If you still need help finding a journal, try the below steps
• Search PubMed for recent publications reporting studies that are similar to yours. This could involve study type (retrospective chart review, survey study, case report, etc.), topic, scope of study, and other factors. Once you identify a few studies, investigate the journals that have published that work.
• Utilize a “journal finder” website. Some examples are JANE (https://jane.biosemantics.org/) and publisher-specific journal finders such as Elsevier’s journal finder (https://journalfinder.elsevier.com/) or Springer’s journal suggester (https://journalsuggester.springer.com/)

You’ve found a couple of candidate journals. Now what?

• Determining the cost of publication
  • Publication of research may incur substantial publication costs. Some key things to remember:
    • Search the “Instructions for Authors”, “Author Center”, or similar section on the journal’s website to see if there are publication costs
    • Open Access journals (journals where anyone can view an article without a subscription) often have high publication costs running into the thousands of dollars
    • Some journals will have an Open Access choice, where Open Access is optional for a fee. This is often called a "Hybrid" journal.  You may still publish if you decline the Open Access option, but your article will require a subscription to view. In most cases, declining the Open Access option will result in no or small publication charges
  • Check the MSU’s library page for support of Open Access Publishing for publishing agreements and discounts – see here: https://lib.msu.edu/about/collections/scholcomm/support/. The MSU library also has a fellowship with the journal BMJ Case Reports, which you can find information about here: https://lib.msu.edu/medicalwriting_publishing/
• Is the journal reputable?
  • Prestige: It is often a goal of a research group to publish in prestigious journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Science, Nature, Cell, etc. Prestigious journals will bring the most exposure to your study, which will increase the impact of your research on the field. Unfortunately, publication in prestigious journals is very selective and therefore difficult to attain. Studies published in the most prestigious journals often have broad implications to the field, are large and/or very well designed, or are in a specific “hot” area of study at the time of publication.
    • There are a number of ways the prestige level of a journal can be gauged, most of which rely on assessing how often articles published in that journal are cited by other articles. See the MSU library discussion of Journal Impact Factor and other metrics - https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/research-impact-metrics/journal#s-lg-box-20567987
• Predatory Journals
  • Predatory journals have been defined as: “entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” (https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03759-y)
  • Predatory journals will collect your publication fees and publish your research quickly, but a promised peer review will not occur. As a result, studies in predatory journals are of questionable quality since no peer review has been done. Studies in such journals are often dismissed as flawed and not worth the effort of reading. Predatory journals may also accept your work but never publish it until you pay exorbitant fees – and once an article is submitted to a journal you cannot submit the work elsewhere until the original journal accepts/rejects it, basically holding your work hostage.
  • Some tips and tricks about predatory journals and avoiding them:
    1. Try to ensure the journal is affiliated with a reputable publisher
    2. Check to see if a journal is affiliated with a professional society. You can go to a professional society’s website to see if they have an affiliated journal.
    3. Search the journal name to see if it is considered a predatory journal. If the journal name does not come up, search the journal publisher’s name.
    4. Some journals will report the “received” and “accepted for publication” dates for each article they publish. This represents the date the manuscript was received by the journal and the date it was accepted for publication. A legitimate journal will have varying times between the received and accepted dates, from as short as a month or two to longer than a year.  If the time between these dates is short (i.e. a few weeks apart) for every single article in that journal, you can assume this is a predatory journal.
    5. Be wary of journals that you and everyone on your research team have never heard of. Check #’s 1 and 2 above if this is the case.
    6. Be careful when a journal solicits your research. That is, unless you are among the world’s leading researchers in the field. Check #’s 1 and 2 above if this is the case
    7. Be wary of incentives such as “no publication fees if article is submitted by [date]”. Most reputable journals do not do this. Be aware also that there will likely still be surprise fees even if you meet the deadline.  If you are promised no publication fees, and then you are charged fees after the study is accepted, then you most certainly have been caught in the trap of a predatory journal
  • More items to look into before submitting to a journal can be found at the Check.Submit website - https://thinkchecksubmit.org/journals/
• Preprint servers
  • Preprint servers are online archives containing preliminary research reports that have not yet been peer reviewed
  • Authors submit articles to preprint servers to get their study information out quickly, and to receive comments and feedback on their research.
  • There are numerous preprint servers, including MedRXIV and BioRXIV
  • Because articles posted in preprint servers are not peer reviewed, their quality is dubious, and they should not be used to guide clinical care, dictate health behaviors, or reported as fact by the news media.
  • Most, but not all, peer-reviewed journals accept articles for submission even if they have already been posted on a preprint server
  • Once a paper has been accepted for publication by a peer-reviewed journal, a link to the published article will be posted on the preprint server article
  • Reading articles in preprint servers is tricky. It is recommended that first you attempt to see if the article has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. If so, then read that version of the article. If not, use your critical appraisal skills to carefully read the preprint article.

Content developed by Mark Trottier, PhD