記住我
REVIEW ARTICLE
Year : 2022 | Volume
: 17
| Issue : 6 | Page : 314-318
Publication models and how to choose the right journal
Tony George Jacob1, Peush Sahni2
1 Department of Anatomy, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India; Working Committee, The National Medical Journal of India
2 Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery and Liver Transplantation, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India; Editor, The National Medical Journal of India
Correspondence Address:
Prof. Peush Sahni
Editor, The National Medical Journal of India, Institute of Medical Science, New Delhi 110029
Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None
CheckDOI: 10.4103/0973-3698.364673
A key step in publishing one's manuscript is selecting the journal. If not done right, your work could lose its relevance. There are numerous factors that you may consider in choosing an appropriate journal for your manuscript and these have been listed out in this article. These include journal metrics, reputation, audience, the range and type of articles that the journal covers, turnaround time, its circulation and reach, and the business model of the journal. We, in this article, have covered certain important metrics of a journal like an impact factor, citation index, rejection rate, and the Eigen factor. We have also described the business models that govern scientific publication today – both the traditional and the open-access model – in adequate detail, along with their key advantages and disadvantages. We hope that this article would help you make the key decision of finding the right journal for your manuscript.
Keywords: Impact factor, indexing, open access, pseudojournals, rejection rate
Now that you have completed your research project and have compiled all your results in the form of a manuscript, it is time to communicate it to a journal. Why do so? There are numerous reasons: dissemination of important findings of funded research, promotions and career progression, awards, fame and recognition, and moreover an opportunity to contribute to the ocean of knowledge that surrounds us. Particularly in this digital age, a traditional journal article (in its digital or printed form) has superior credibility when compared to a tweet, blog/vlog, or a judiciously placed report in the newspaper. Soundbytes from newsrooms do not contribute to standing among one's peers in the field. The primary purpose of this chapter is to guide you in the process of selecting an appropriate journal for your manuscript so that the chances of it being published and read are enhanced.
Often, experienced authors and team leaders of research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics have a fair idea of the journal they want to see their paper in when the project is conceived or is getting operationalized and the first results are trickling in. Especially in biomedical sciences, authors often prepare a generic manuscript along the lines of the introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRaD) format and then go through the trials of submitting the manuscript at a journal and if publication is declined then looking for the next journal to submit to. Although electronic submission and peer-review systems have made it more efficient with a shorter turnaround time, is there an efficient strategy to do this?
Some of the factors that you may consider while deciding on the target journal for your manuscript are listed below:
Novelty FactorFrom the conception of the study, the researcher knows whether the work is entirely new or is replicative of a study that has been performed elsewhere.[1] Even if it is replicative, there may be things that are novel in the study, for example, a different geoethnic group, genetic makeup, age group, sex, etc. A good question to ask is are the results expected? Are they divergent from what has been published previously? Is there an explanation for the divergence (or none)? Is this relevant? If the results are novel and their implications are going to affect treatment and policy, most reputed journals will readily accept the manuscript. However, if the implications are more local then it would be likely to be accepted in a more regional journal.[1] It may be remembered that even a negative result may be novel and relevant if the study proves that what has been used as a standard treatment is actually not useful – this could be a drug, vaccine, or procedure.
Journal SpecificsA journal published by a scientific society or an academic group would be niche and the readership would also be such. If your work is directed at a specific readership then such a journal would be the best to reach out to the people you want should read your findings. These societies (some prestigious ones) are also the ones involved in policy building in the specialties. Hence, if your work alters the paradigm of treatment of a specific condition or even the concept related to it, then a more specific journal would be the ideal target for your manuscript. The experts reviewing your manuscript too would be niche and you must be prepared to receive a spectrum of criticism for it – from the positive to the negative. For an academician, a publication in such a journal would also invite more citations of their work by others in the field and build their reputation in their peer group.
For a clinician, who wants to publish work related to patient care, choice of therapy, algorithms of treatment, and diagnosis or prognosis of a condition, it would be better to target a journal that is read by a broad range of clinicians in that field. Reprints of such journal articles would also be circulated by pharmaceutical representatives among practitioners as a promotion for products related to them. Such clinicians may also want to target “open access” (OA) journals because these would be accessible to anyone online worldwide without any subscription fees to the publisher or society. We will discuss OA in a later section.
If the study and its findings are not going to be understood by a clinician, then sending it to a “basic science” journal makes more sense. However, many broad “area” journals have a rapid turnaround time between submission–review–acceptance–publication and have a high rejection rate. This is also because a higher number of people submit manuscripts to them. A more niche journal would have a lower rejection rate,[2] but the possibility is that the duration between submission to publication may be longer. The “rejection rate” of a journal is one of the indicators of its ranking in the scientific community.[2]
It is a good practice to go to the site of the target journals and look at the publication metrics on the articles in the past couple of years (for the category of the article that you are targeting). All articles are often accompanied now by data on the dates of submission, revisions, acceptance, and publication. A knowledge of this information would prepare you (and your students) for the duration or help you decide on another journal (especially if getting the manuscript published as early as possible is a priority). This information also indicates a robust peer-review process. If a journal promises to review and accept your manuscript in 15 days, we recommend that you do not submit it to that journal; it is likely to be a pseudojournal (predatory journal) out to get into your pockets. This will be discussed in a later section.
If a journal has published recently on a certain topic, it may be interested in a follow-up article on the same topic. On the other hand, it is possible that the journal is not interested in publishing something similar but may be interested in publishing a contrary viewpoint. Hence, this information is useful while deciding on the journal to submit your manuscript.
The details of the journal that are available in the “Instructions to Authors;” “Preparing your Manuscript” are a good place to begin to sort out whether you should be submitting your article to that journal[1] because it would include:
Scope of the journal: This would give broad guidance on the areas that the journal coversTypes of articles published: Letters, reviews, case reports, case series, original research, opinions, systematic reviews, meta-analysis, pictorial essays, video vignettes, and book reviewsWord limit for each type of articleNumber of figures and tables allowed (color and black and white)Citation style: Vancouver, Chicago, Harvard, American Psychological Association, etc.Formatting details: For text, figures, photographs, tables, and referencesSections to be included: Whether it follows the IMRaD style?Publication or handling charges (at submission or at acceptance)OA or not.Most scientists and clinicians who are working in “a” field usually know which are the key journals in that field. For junior researchers – clinicians in these branches, it would help to discuss with seniors, and check their own list of citations (references) in project proposals, review of literature, and manuscripts to know which are the journals most often cited and hence prestigious in the community. This prestige is also often guided by the reputation of the editor and the editorial board of the journal and its inclusion in literature databases.[1]
Quality and Prestige of a Journal (inclusion in Literature Database, Citation Index, Impact Factor, etc.)Inclusion in public literature databases
This means when researchers search for articles related to their work, will your article be included? Common databases that are used by researchers in the biomedical field are MEDLINE, EMBASE, PubMed Central, Chemical Abstracts, Excerpta Medica, Google Scholar, Scopus, and the Science Citation Index. Another database is the Directory of Open Access Journals which lists all the “credible” OA journals. Of all these, most medical researchers go to PubMed as a default search engine to search MEDLINE and PubMed Central database as being indexed on these databases would enhance the visibility of the journal and thus the author too. MEDLINE includes fewer journals than the other databases and hence is considered more prestigious. However, Scopus and Embase although created and maintained by commercial publishers are quite selective in the selection of journals and are generally considered to be reliable databases. The more the number of agencies indexing a journal, the easier it is to find an article published in it. However, there may be some predatory/pseudojournals that may be listed in some of the databases and thus the authors must go back and check the website of the journal for its policy and turnaround time.
Most scientists/researchers in the field know journals, in which if they publish an article, would indicate that their research is of a good quality. However, this too is a point that is better discussed with seniors and mentors in the field.
Impact factor
This is a controversial index of a journal's prestige and ranking. It was introduced by Eugene Garfield, a librarian and data scientist, in 1955. The impact factor (IF) is calculated as the total number of citations to a journal in the current year divided by the total number of articles published in that journal in the previous 2 years. The IF may be tilted in favor of journals that publish a lot of review articles. Similarly, journals that have a broad base may have a disproportionately higher IF than niche journals (often published by academic societies).
However, there are other indices that have been introduced to offset the importance given to Garfield's IF, now published in the Journal Citation Reports by Clarivate.[2] These are:
Weighted IF: This is closely related to the IF, although it gives statistical weightage to the importance of the journal, in which the articles have been cited (based on the citing journal's IF)PageRank: This is anonymized to its developer, Larry Page of Stanford University, who also carried this forward to the development of the search engine Google. PageRanks are created by the number of hits/links coming in on a website, which can be narrowed to the hits/links on the websites of scientific journals too. The links coming in are also weighed based on the importance of the incoming link (like a citation). Hence, a higher PageRank indicates a more influential journalSCImago Journal Rank: This index is based on the Scopus database which includes material published in scientific journals and webpages and patent recordsEigen Factor and Article Influence Score: This score combines the citations of a source article in an entire body of published work that could include newspapers, magazines, theses, technical reports, manuals, etc. The total score of all journals included in the listing is 100; hence, this score usually is associated with numerous decimal points and can be found on EIGENFACTOR.org. This Eigenfactor is used to calculate the Article Influence Score, which is based on the average influence of each of its articles published in a journal over the past 5 yearsCirculation: This is the number of copies printed of each issue of the journal. It would be dependent on the subscription to get a physical copy of the journal. It is no longer very relevant when most journals have online copies – either with free access or subscription-based access, or sometimes even a mixed mode of access.These metrics are all factors that you may consider while you are choosing a journal for your manuscript.
International or regional
This aspect will be entirely determined by the work that you intend to present in the manuscript. If the work is in an area of interest for a global audience (metabolic diseases, basic science research, a pandemic, etc.) an international journal with a wide readership may be a priority for submission. However, if the manuscript is centered around something that afflicts a specific region (continent, country, ethnic group, etc.) a more specific readership may provide greater traction for the article once it is published.[1] Such targeting of the article would enhance the reading and use of your article and thus its citation in other publications and projects.
Business models of scientific journals
Most researchers are familiar with the process of publishing in a scientific journal. However, as it would be, it takes time, effort, and money to publish any material, whether it be a pamphlet, newspaper, book, blog, or scientific journal. They all require resources-workforce, infrastructure, and investment. Journal ownership could be with academic or professional societies, universities, medical centers, research institutes, or commercial publishers. Again, the actual publication process may be on contract of the owners with a publishing house. Some of them are nonprofit publications that are supported by grants, subscription, or membership fees of professional societies (that put aside an operational budget for the publication of the journal). Others are run as profit-making businesses.[2]
All of them, although have a common structural model – an editorial board that is headed by a Chief Editor. The editorial board is supported by staff recruited for the journal. The staff help in coordinating the submissions and communications with authors, the process of peer review, copy editing, and the nitty gritties of running any establishment – administration, recruitment, finances, publicity, marketing, and so on.
Traditional Publication ModelHere, many of the journals are supported by finances that are generated from professional society membership fees, subscription fees (from individuals, institutions, and libraries), and advertising within the journal. They also generate revenue by publishing reprints for distribution to medical practitioners by pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Some, especially those run by commercial publishers may also have editions that are specially sponsored (underwritten) by commercially interested sponsors. In addition, these journals may also derive income from authors in various ways such as:
Submission chargesPage chargesCharges for printing color photographs, or for publishing more than the number of figures stipulated by the journalReprint chargesCharges for permission to reproduce material published in the journalCharges to make the article OA.Hence, most journals run on principles of economic viability. The editorial board curates material that may be relevant to their readership (hence, subscription) and the commercial enterprises (pharmaceutical and device-making companies) keep a close watch on the metrics (e.g., readership) of the journal to decide where to put their money next.
An important point to consider here is also the law of ownership. The ownership of published data rests with the owner of the publication, which could be a professional society or the publication house. Hence, any reproduction of the material that is published (even by the author, who transfers ownership of their data, etc.) without permission is illegal, i.e., a violation of copyright laws, unless it is deemed to be in the domain of OA, which we will discuss next. Thus, there are many legal avenues by which journal publications can sustain themselves and make a profit too.
Open Access JournalsOA[3] is a set of principles and practices to make research output freely available (online) to all. The model works on the principle that the reader should not have to pay to read content related to research, contrary to publication houses that recover publication costs through subscription charges, pay-per-view, or membership to an academic/scientific society, etc., Even though the move toward OA was begun in opposition and contrarian to the traditional business model of publishers of the scientific journal, it has been embraced by many of the traditional publishing houses. Many of the well-known and prestigious journals have included an OA journal to their regular publication model and are profitable by charging article processing fees. This is also probably because many government funding agencies want the results of research projects funded by them to be available to the general public that has indirectly funded the research through public funds.[3] Hence, some papers get published in an OA mode. However, this movement has a downside too… that of predatory journals.
The OA movement has now evolved into multiple models, which we discuss here:
Platinum/Diamond OA:
These are publishers and journals that do not charge the researchers and yet make their content freely available to all (online). Typically, these journals are funded by nonprofit academic organizations or universities. A good example of these is the National Medical Journal of India and the Indian Journal of Medical Research.
Green open access
Here, the model depends on self-archiving of an article usually in a publicly-accessible/funded institutional repository. Typically, authors archive the last version of their manuscript that is being revised for publication. It is not the version that is finally published by the journal and is dependent on the journal policy that allows the archiving of such material. However, if the journal allows the archiving of the final published article, it may be predicated by a time embargo imposed on authors in their agreement with the publisher about after how much of a wait period the article may be archived in a freely accessible repository. Thus, authors still publish in traditional journals with the standard business model, but usually provide access to a version of their manuscript that is closest to the final published article. There are directories of such journals that allow this archiving (OpenDOAR). Such repositories can also be managed by universities, for example, cIRcle, which is the digital repository of the University of British Columbia. Then, there is Hinari that was set up by the World Health Organization in collaboration with major publishers to provide access to biomedical and health literature to over 125 developing countries.[4]
Gold open access
In this model, the article in either a traditional journal or a declared OA journal is made freely available online as soon as it is published, but there is a catch – the authors have to pay an article handling fee (or processing fee/charges). Thus, the cost of publication is passed on by the publisher to the authors. The cost can vary depending on the “prestige” of the journal. If you visit frontiersin.org you will see that there are 185 journals published by them[5] and if you glance at the table[6] on their fee structure you will find that depending on the journal and the category of article, the cost can vary from US$ 490 to 3225 for articles in categories A, B, and C (A: Original research; B: Case reports; C: Data reports, opinions, etc.; D: Focussed reviews and articles related to childhood disorders). Type D is published free of cost.
Hybrid open access
The publisher has both types of access available for the same journal – some articles are OA, whereas others are subscription based (closed access). Again, it is the authors that have to pay to make their article OA when accepted and published. For all practical purposes, the publisher has the traditional model of publication, but for payment will make it OA. This, is probably, because, as mentioned earlier, a large number of national and international public funding agencies are mandating that research funded by them should be available to the public at large. Hence, reading the writing on the wall, publishers of traditional journals have included this option.
Bronze open access
Articles published with this model are freely accessible on the publisher's website, but there are no associated licenses for publication included. Hence, they may not be reused anywhere else.
Black open access
This is not a publication model and hence may not be applicable when you are searching for a journal. However, it is important to be aware of it. It relates to unauthorized copying of published material and hosting it on the web. It infringes the copyrights of the publisher and puts material online that would normally be paywalled. Some sites that do this are popular among students in developing countries, for example, Sci-hub, which is a shadow library, founded by Alexandra Elbakyan, who now is being pursued and prosecuted in many countries by numerous publishers.[7]
Pseudojournals and publishing
These are also called predatory journals or publishing, write-only publishing, or deceptive publishing. It is an exploitative model that also charges authors article processing charges and usually promises acceptance and publication in an inordinately short period (1–2 weeks). These often do not have a rigorous process of peer review or copy editing and publish the manuscript “as-is.” Beall[8] described and decried it in detail and called it “publishers that are ready to publish any article for payment.” The reason they are called predatory is because they trick authors into publishing with them. A good indicator of “predatory journals” would be a large number of spam emails that you would receive that ask you to send them your manuscript on “any” topic, of “any” kind and they assure you publication in the “shortest” period for a “small fee” to process your article and make it available. Numerous young researchers become prey to these and hence this brings us back to the point of consulting seniors or mentors while selecting a journal.
ConclusionsThere is a process to selecting a journal, but your system of selection may not be the same as that of your peer. Further, this system will differ for different types of manuscripts, the subject that it covers, and the target audience. The first journal you target may be above the “acceptance” range of your manuscript, but it will usually provide reviewers' comments that will be able to vastly improve your manuscript (if incorporated). The rejection from a journal is not the end of the journey for a manuscript; it only diverts it along another path that may prove to be more acceptable for that piece of literature.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
References
留言 (0)