Remember to visit the Research blog for information about Research and Development (RDS)'S Open Access fund, which can help if an Article Processing Charge (APC) applies.
There are several checks that can be done to ensure the quality of a journal:
Butler, D.,2013. Investigating journals: the dark side of publishing. Nature [online] 495, 432-435
Beware Predatory Open Access publishers!
REF 2021 stipulates that all journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN, accepted for publication after 1st April 2016, should be made Open Access within 3 months from acceptance in order to be eligible.
Think.Check.Attend. is an initiative that aims to guide and assist researchers and scholars to judge the legitimacy and academic credentials of conferences in order to help them decide whether to or not attend…
Caltech have produced a very useful guide to questionable conferences based on Beall's list.
See also the article in Times Higher Education 12 January 2017 : Warning: conmen and shameless scholars operate in this area. James McCrostie was shocked to discover the extent of ‘predatory conferences’, but even more shocked by those abetting them.
Useful guide by Eaton, S. E. (2018). Avoiding Predatory Journals and Questionable Conferences: A Resource Guide, CC BY NC SA
In order to ensure higher impact, your publications must be easy to find.
It is important that you supply a list of keywords related to your publication; these keywords should also be used in the title and the abstract as most searches done electronically look for words within titles and abstracts.
We suggest that you test your keywords to find out what kinds of publications they yield: if the publications that appear under those keywords are very different from yours, you might need to consider adjusting your keywords. Explore our advanced searching guide for more information about searching databases.
Also make sure that your manage your identity, so that you can correctly claim publications and citations.
In high-quality journals, articles submitted by authors usually go through a process of peer review: this means that articles get reviewed by experts in the field before they get published. It is rare for articles to get accepted the first time, there will usually be amendments to be made.
There are two kinds of peer review:
Each publisher might have slightly different peer-review processes; however, it will normally consist of the following steps:
Remember that books might also be subjected to a peer-review process.
Here is a selection of peer-review guidelines from some of the most important publishers:
Remember to deposit your publication to BURO as soon as it gets accepted,