You are interested in publishing an article in an academic journal. But how do you go about selecting a journal to submit to, and how can you tell if a journal is right for your work?
Think of your journal selection as finding the right community in which to start a conversation about your research. There are few places we recommend looking for potential journals that might be suitable for your work:
If you followed the steps above, you have probably narrowed your choice down to a few prospective journals Here are a few more considerations to help you narrow it down even further.
Visit the journal's website and read and review its aims and scope, along with their submission requirements and guidelines. It may also be worth taking the time to read a few of their published articles. Check if your work aligns with the types of articles the journal typically publishes. Remember that you can only submit your work to one journal at a time.
It's important to consider if your work reaches the broadest possible audience within and beyond academia. To achieve the greatest impact for your work, consider making your work open access. You can do this by publishing in an open access journal or by placing your work in UVicSpace, the university's institutional repository. Consult the section on publishing open access to help you with your decision.
You may also need to consider the Journal Impact Factor, or how the journal is ranked compared to others in the field. You can look up a journal in Journal Citation Reports to see how it is ranked.
Be wary of journals soliciting articles from you, especially if they are overly flattering or pushy in their solicitation. Predatory publishers produce journals and books that are not edited or peer reviewed.. They often charge exorbitant fees to unsuspecting researchers who agree to publish their work with them. Check out our tips in the section on Deceptive/Predatory journal publishing..
Predatory journals exploit the open access publishing model. Most open access journals - including high-quality journals - charge the author an article processing charge (APC) to support publication and peer-review costs. Predatory journals exist only to collect APCs from authors. There is no legitimate peer review.
If you are asked to pay an APC to publish in a journal you're not familiar with, do some research to confirm that it is a legitimate, high-quality open access journal. Check the following guide to assess the key things to consider when assessing a journal.
You can also visit Think. Check. Submit: a campaign to help researchers identify trusted journals and publishers for their research.
Consult the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) which provides a list of legitimate open access journals. If you still can't find a satisfactory answer, you will need to assess the legitimacy of the journal yourself. Here are some useful resources to guide you:
(UBC's journal assessment page, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License)
Typically, publishing your work requires the transfer of all your rights in the work in exchange for publication. A university press or publishing house will require that you do this through a "copyright transfer agreement" or "publisher's agreement."
It is important that you examine your agreement to ensure that you retain the following rights:
The Canadian Association of University Teachers - Intellectual Property Advisory (CAUT) recommends that as an author you read the publication agreement carefully. It is important that journal publishers only receive the rights necessary to publish your work. Consider using an author addendum to amend the publication agreement so as to retain key rights to the article that is published.
An author addendum is a legal tool you can use to modify the publisher's agreement and keep rights to the journal articles you publish. The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) have created an author addendum that you can use to secure key rights to an article that is published.
You put a lot of time and research into your work and now it's time to publish it! Before you sign any agreements with a publisher, you need to know your rights as an author.
See also: UVic's Policy on Intellectual Property.
In the case of an invention, see UVic industry partnerships for more information.
From the moment your work exists in a fixed form, it is protected in Canada by copyright law. The Canadian Copyright Act protects both your economic and moral rights as an author.
Peruse the copyright primer for more information on this topic.
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