LibGuides: Measuring Scholarly Impact: Finding a Journal to Publish In

Identifying Appropriate Journals

Identifying journal options is a good idea prior to writing an article to save time and effort. Journals are so numerous, it can be hard to know what all the options are. Thankfully, there are tools that can assist you.

Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new window
Web of Science offers an "Analyze Results" option to help identify journals from a topic search.
To use this tool, create a topic search [example: (gestational diabetes AND (diet OR exercise OR lifestyle))], then click on Analyze Results, found on the right side just above the first results. Choose Source Titles under Rank the records by this field, and Analyze. The most common journals in the results will be listed.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus provides a Citation Overview tool based on a topic search.
Conduct an appropriate topic search. Then follow the directions found at https://blog.scopus.com/posts/five-steps-to-creating-a-citation-overview-in-scopus.

Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE)
JANE is a tool that mines text placed in the search box to find journals on the topic.
Simply place your abstract or another piece of text into the search box, and the tool does the work for you. More information is available on their FAQ page at http://jane.biosemantics.org/faq.php.
Instructions to Authors in the Health Sciences
Links to the instructions for authors' pages of more than 6000 health and life sciences journals. This site is maintained by staff at The University of Toledo's Mulford Health Sciences Library.
Navigating the Article Publication Process Guide by OSU Research Commons
Here you will find useful information about the entirety of scholarly publishing. Some info is covered in this HSL guide, but other info is unique to it.

Other Considerations

Open Access

Consider publishing in a journal that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Although some researchers feel open access means poorer quality, that is not always the case. There is a significant movement in scholarly publishing to make more scholarly work publicly available.

University Libraries' Copyright Services
Learn more about open access at OSU.
Directory of Open Access Journals
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. The DOAJ Seal is a mark of certification for open access journals, awarded by DOAJ to journals that achieve a high level of openness, adhere to Best Practice and high publishing standards. To receive the Seal, the journal must comply with the following 7 conditions: use DOIs as permanent identifiers; provides DOAJ with article metadata; deposits content with a long term digital preservation or archiving program; embeds machine-readable CC licensing information in articles; allows generous reuse and mixing of content, in accordance with a CC BY, CC BY-SA or CC BY-NC license; has a deposit policy registered wíth a deposit policy registry; allows the author to hold the copyright without restrictions.

Criteria for Journal Selection in Databases

Databases maintain specific criteria before indexing a journal. These vary slightly among the various databases. Criteria for Web of Science, Medline, and Scopus are available at the links below.