How to Select a Journal

Journal Impact Factor

Research Ethics: Plagiarism

Hinari, Agora and online search Parts of this presentaon were taken from

Science Paper Wring Workshop Chris Beadle, Peter Willadsen (designed by Peter Hairsine), CSIRO

How to choose a journal Kim E. Barre hp://www.apsarchive.org/download.cfm?submissionID=6214

Journal Impact Factors and the Author h-index Kae Newman hp://www.library.illinois.edu/biotech/docs/ImpactFactors.pdf

On Being a Scienst: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research: Third Edion (2009) hp://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12192&page=15

How to select a journal

• More than 21,000 peer-reviewed academic journals

• New journals published every year

• Where do you start?

Why does it maer?

• Online access, enhanced search capabilies and indexing vastly expand immediate access to arcles of interest • However, the journal you choose sll has major implicaons • Must consider – Audience – Type of paper – Impact factor – Journal scope – Cost How to start?

• Ask yourself “Who would be interested in reading this paper?” – Basic sciensts vs. policy makers – Specialists vs. generalists • Assess perceived impact – Earth-shaering; of broad importance – Important contribuon to the discipline – Solid work but of limited interest – LPU (least publishable unit) Naonal or internaonal audience?

• Relevant to a naonal audience (local researchers, farmers, extension workers or policymakers)? • Does it present data that is primarily of local interest? o If so, consider a journal whose audience is naonal or regional in scope

OR

• Does the arcle deal with universal themes that are relevant to audiences all over the world? o If so, consider an internaonal, well-indexed journal

• For internaonal audience: English is the language of choice

Audience Selecng your journal: what audience do you want to reach? An example:

Core result: The exoc ck R. (Boophilus) microplus has displaced the endemic ck R. (Boophilus) decoloratus over much of East Africa over the last two decades. It is likely to bring increased threats of disease transmission and pescide resistance.

Internaonal ecology / disease journal An (African) public policy journal An example of the displacement of an A new and possibly very damaging threat endemic by an exoc species with that will require policy acon.. implicaons for disease control.

A journal on African livestock producon An emerging disease threat that farmers need to know about.

For each of these opons both the wring and supporng informaon will be different. Your success depends on recognising this. Aim

What is your aim? To get your readers to use the contents of your paper for: • Decision making • Designing their own experiments • Citaon in their own research Type of paper

What type of paper is it? • Original arcle • Review paper • Commentary • Short communicaon or ‘Technical Note’

When to choose the journal?

• As soon as possible! • Definitely before you start to write – Format issues – Style issues – Scope of you paper

Strategy for choosing

• Are your ‘competors’ publishing in these journals? – Papers cited in your manuscript – Online search hp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed • Past papers from the research group/lab? • Journal scope statements – Any limitaons? See Scope on journal site hp://www.plosntds.org/stac/scope.acon • Inquiry to editor – In wring - with brief details – Does not imply any obligaon to publish Addional consideraons

• Length restricons – Many journals restrict the number of words and/or figures • Color figures – Costs vary widely • Requirements of donor – e.g., NIH regulaons require publicaon in a journal that provides free access within 12 months Addional consideraons

• Cost of publicaon – Submission fees/author fees (Open Access model) – Page charges – Reprint costs – Fee Waiver • Availability of journal – Print vs. online vs. both – Available through Hinari or Agora? – Is it in your library? If not, may want to reconsider. Once selected get the style guide and template from the journal’s homepage and use it in this workshop e.g. Euphyca hp://www.springer.com/life+sciences/plant+sciences/journal/10681

• Instrucons to authors, style guide • Recent examples of papers • Scope • Impact factor Impact factor (IF) • Impact Factor (IF) is the number of current citaons a journal receives divided by the number of arcles published in the two preceding years

• See: hp://thomsonreuters.com/ products_services/science/academic/ impact_factor/

Journal impact factor (IF)

• Discipline-dependent • Medicine has high level of networking, so high impact (e.g. New England Journal of Medicine = 45) • Social Science has low level of networking, so low impact • Work out impact threshold you want to achieve

• Euphyca (Internaonal Journal of Plant Breeding) IF = 1.597 How is IF calculated?

E.g., the 2009 Impact factor for the journal Cell =

# of mes arcles or other items published in Cell in 2007 & 2008 were cited in indexed journals* in 2009 –––––––––-–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– # of “citable” arcles** published in Cell in 2007 & 2008

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *Only references in arcles within the ~10,000 journals indexed in Web of Science are counted; does not include citaons that may cite the arcles in Cell from book chapters, proceedings, or other journals that are not indexed in Web of Science

* * Citable arcles are just research arcles and reviews – not news arcles, commentary, etc.

How is IF calculated?

2009 Impact factor for the journal Cell =

Cites in 2009 to items published in 2008 + 2007 = 9533 + 12554 = 22087

Number of items published in 2008 + 2007 = 343 + 366 = 709

Impact Factor is 22087 ÷ 709 = 31.152

Where next if your paper is rejected?

• Decide on two to three journals at the me of inial submission, ranked by desirability • Reformat for the new journal – very important – Reference format – Re-wring may be needed Closing thoughts

• Your goal should be to publish in the best journal for your work and for your audience – Not necessarily the same as the “best journal” • Picking the right journal…. – Increases your chance of geng accepted the first me – Increases your chance of having your work read/cited – Increases chances that your research will have impact – Advances your career Research Ethics: Respect for Intellectual Property

• Do not use unpublished data, methods, or results without permission. • Give proper acknowledgement or credit for all contribuons to research. • Never plagiarize – Plagiarism is the appropriaon of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.

Plagiarism

“If you copy any words without cing a source, then it's plagiarism. You can paraphrase a source (rewrite it with your own words), or you can quote directly (correctly using quotaon marks), but you always have to cite the source. When you're paraphrasing, if two or three words are the same, you're probably not going to be cited for plagiarism…

Here's a site that may help you understand beer what constutes plagiarism: hp://www.plagiarism.org/ “

Source: rockdahouse85, hp://answers.yahoo.com/queson/index? qid=20100708084442AAhTzUA

Plagiarism search etblast hp://etest.vbi.vt.edu/etblast3/

Test: “Trypanosomiasis, a disease of humans and animals caused by several species of trypanosomes and spread by tsetse flies is a major constraint to livestock producon in 37 countries within the Sub-Saharan region.”

Outline of presentaon

• Importance of journal selecon • Timing of choice • Strategies for selecng a journal – Where to start – Nuts and bolts – Other consideraons • A word about impact factors • What to do if your paper is rejected from your first (or second…) choice journal • hp://www.who.int/hinari/en/ • Set up by WHO with major publishers • Enables developing countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collecons of biomedical and health literature • More than 8,000 digital informaon resources (in 30 different languages) • hp://www.aginternetwork.org/en/ • Set up by FAO with major publishers • Enables developing countries to access a digital library collecon (1900 journals) – Food – Agriculture – Environmental science – Related social sciences • Instuons in 107 countries Online search

• Google (All disciplines) • Google Scholar scholar.google.com (All) • Pubmed www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed (Life sciences) • Scirus www.scirus.com (All) • Naonal Agricultural Library (AGRICOLA) agricola.nal.usda.gov (Agriculture) Thank you Definions

• a citaon is a reference to a published or unpublished source

• Science Citaon Index is a list of scienfic texts from all over the world. For each scienfic paper, it has informaon about the author, the tle, the subject, etc. All this informaon is taken from thousands of scienfic journals. Science Citaon Index is made by the Instute for Scienfic Informaon.