Choosing the Right Journal for your Paper
Qualitative Considerations • Appropriate audience • Society sponsored or for-profit publisher • Short- or full-length journals • Reputation of the journal (publishing speed, rejection rate)
By the Numbers • Impact factor • Speed of publication
The Rules • Copyright policy • Self-archiving policy • Prior publication – posting preprints - policy
Open Access and Predatory Publishers Appropriate Audience
Most journals list their ”Aims and Scopes” on their home page, for example:
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta publishes research papers in a wide range of subjects in terrestrial geochemistry, meteoritics, and planetary geochemistry. The scope of the journal includes:
1) Physical chemistry of gases, aqueous solutions, glasses, and crystalline solids 2) Igneous and metamorphic petrology 3) Chemical processes in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere of the Earth 4) Organic geochemistry 5) Isotope geochemistry 6) Meteoritics and meteorite impacts 7) Lunar science; and 8) Planetary geochemistry.
Or: Science is interested in a wide range of manuscripts presenting original research and commentary in all areas of science.
Many journals list their most cited and/or downloaded articles. This information also can be obtained in searches in WOS.
A sobering statistic - even in a high-rated journal such as EPSL, upwards of 40- 50% of the papers published are not cited within 5 years of publication Society Sponsored or For-Profit? Society journals: • Feed profits back into sponsorship of society activities. • Editorial board usually drawn from society membership • Some professional societies would not exist without their journals • Many society journals tend to charge the author for publication For-profit journals: • Can include professional (compensated) editorial staff • Often deep and easily searched catalogs (e.g. sciencedirect) • Income often derived from library subscriptions, not authors • Additional services - data archiving, English editing services, color figure publishing
Society Journals: American Mineralogist (MSA); The Astrophysical Journal (AAS); Geochemical Perspective Letters (EAG/GS); Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Science (AAAS) Hybrids – societies get some percentage of the profit: • All the AGU journals – published by Wiley under contract to AGU • GCA – published by Elsevier in association with the Geochemical Society and Meteoritical Society • GSA journals – published by Geoscience World For Profit: • Nature; EPSL; Chemical Geology; Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology; J. Petrology Short or Full-Length Papers
Look at the “Guide for Authors” – necessary for ALL papers – number of words, figures, tables, references – Is the abstract included in the word count, the references, the figure captions?
Use of citation metrics in performance reviews is increasing the push towards papers reporting the MPU (minimum publishable unit), but papers cut to the bone often do poorly in review whereas those that take the space to provide all information needed to understand the story fair well. Increasing tendency to publish all the details in supplementary files (ARGH!!!!) Reputation of the Journal (Speed of publication, Rejection rate)
Journal publication statistics often provided on journal web site – several services offer broader comparisons:
PNAS: • PNAS has a three-tiered process for Direct Submissions (Editorial Board member, NAS member editor, reviewers) and asks editors and reviewers to provide comments in a timely fashion. • More than 50% of Direct Submissions are declined by the Editorial Board within the first 2 weeks of submission. 14% acceptance rate of 16,700 submissions • Average time to initial decision is 43 days, from submission to online publication is 5.5 months.
Nature: • 80% rejected without review, 20% go to review: acceptance rate 1997 = 10.7%, 2017 = 7.6% • 1997 = 7680 papers submitted, 2017 = 10,768 papers submitted; # published 1997 = 825; 2017 = 820
“Nature does not employ an editorial board of senior scientists, nor is it affiliated to a scientific society or institution, thus its decisions are independent, unbiased by scientific or national prejudices of particular individuals.” www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/editorial-criteria-and-processes Science: • 80% desk rejection within 7-10 days, 7% acceptance rate, publication within 14 weeks of submission
GCA: • 1000-1100 papers submitted/year, 30% desk reject, 20% rejected after review, submission to acceptance 20 weeks, to publication 35 weeks
Astrophysical Journal: • acceptance rate of over 85%, publishes 3,000 articles per year, 28% of total citations in the field, 33 days to publication after acceptance By the numbers
• Journal Impact Factor (JIF) = average no. of times an article is cited per year.
# of citations in 2018 ______# of papers published in 2016 and 2017
JIF is meaningless in absolute terms – can only compare within a discipline.
• JIF Percentile is more useful.
• Immediacy Index = average number of times an article is cited in the year it is published.
• Eigenfactor = rating of the total “importance” of a journal. Journals are rated according to the number of incoming citations, with citations from highly ranked journals weighted to make a larger contribution to the eigenfactor than those from poorly ranked journals • Acceptance Rate
• Speed of Review and Publication
• Accessibility: Restricted to subscribers or Open Access?
– Do you have access to the journal yourself? – How widely accessible is it? o Astrophysical Journal – 722 institutions have access o Astronomy & Astrophysics – 389 institutions o Nature Astronomy – 58 institutions
The Rules
• Copyright policy – Does author retain rights? Creative Commons licensing? • Self-archiving policy – Can you post on your own website or in a repository? Embargo period? • “Prior publication” policy – Can you post a preprint without disqualifying the paper for publication?
www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
Preprints in Geosciences/Chemistry
713 preprints
43 preprints, 748 posters
1397 preprints
cf. 1.5 million e-prints in arXiv Automated journal selectors
• Elsevier Journal Finder – journalfinder.elsevier.com • Springer Nature Journal Suggester – journalsuggester.springer.com • Wiley Journal Finder – journalfinder.wiley.com • EndNote Manuscript Matcher – webofknowledge.com/WOS Elsevier Journal Finder - journalfinder.elsevier.com Open Access
How much of the journal literature is Open Access?
(Piwowar et al., 2018)
Discipline-specific journals: AGU Advances, Biogeosciences, Earth and Space Science, Phys Rev X, Geochemical Perspectives Interdisciplinary/mega-journals: Nature Communications, PLoS ONE, Science Advances, Scientific Reports
APCs (Gold or Hybrid OA): ~$250 - $5000+ Predatory Publishing
8,000 predatory journals published 420,000 papers in 2014
Growth of predatory OA, 2010-2014 Shen and Björk, 2015 G. Kolata, April 3, 2019
G. Kolata, Oct. 23, 2017 Investigating OA Journals
doaj.org
beallslist.weebly.com thinkchecksubmit.org
• Do you or your colleagues know the journal? • Can you easily identify and contact the publisher? • Is the journal clear about the type of peer review it uses? • Are articles indexed in services that you use? • Is it clear what fees will be charged? • Does the journal site explain what these fees are for and when they will be charged? • Do you recognize the editorial board? • Is the publisher a member of a recognized industry initiative? –Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) ? –Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) ?