Where Should You Publish? Choosing a Journal for Your Manuscript.

Abstract

As the New Year begins, is publishing a manuscript on your list of resolutions? If so, one very important aspect of writing for publication is finding a suitable journal. Choosing where to submit a manuscript among the thousands of available health-related journals can be daunting. Matching your manuscript with an appropriate journal increases your odds of acceptance so it is worth investing your time into a careful examination of your options before making a decision. While I want readers of the Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health (JMWH) who are writers to consider this Journal for their manuscripts, I also want to see the reach of the work of midwives expanded to other audiences via other journals. Therefore, this editorial describes key distinctions between journals to consider when deciding where to publish, strategies to find appropriate journals for your work while avoiding predatory journals and publishers, and considerations when reviewing potential journals for publication. The goal of this guidance is to help you find the best journal for your manuscript. The first step in choosing a journal is identifying the type of manuscript you are writing because different journals publish different types of articles. It is essential to choose a journal that publishes your manuscript type. Table 1 lists some common journal article types. In addition to the specific article types a journal publishes, each journal has a number of distinct characteristics, including its mission, audience, reach, acceptance rate, timelines, and publication metrics. Every journal has a unique mission, which includes its purpose and focus. A journal's mission can usually be found on the journal's website and at the beginning of one of its print issues. The mission may also be named “Aims and scope” or “About the journal.” Each journal also has a distinct audience. For example, a journal may be targeted to a particular discipline; different types of professionals within one or more disciplines (eg, generalist and/or specialist clinicians, researchers, educators); a specific specialty area, disease, or population; and/or members of one or more professional associations. Evaluating a journal's reach is helpful for estimating the potential size of the audience for your manuscript. Reach is commonly measured by a journal's circulation, which is the number of individual and institutional subscriptions; however, this number is less meaningful now that subscriptions are no longer the only way to access journals. The number of article views and downloads a journal receives as well as the journal's press coverage and social media presence are other measures of reach. It is important to remember that you also have the opportunity to personally increase the reach of articles you write by optimizing your work for search engines. Strategies for search engine optimization include carefully selecting strong keywords relevant to an article's topic; repeating keywords throughout an article's title, abstract, and main text; choosing a concise title; and promoting articles via Internet and social media tools, institutional sites, and press releases.1, 2 A journal's acceptance rate and the timelines for decisions and publication are also of interest to authors. The acceptance rates, which are the percentage of submitted manuscripts that are accepted and published, of journals vary widely. Obviously, your manuscript is more likely to be accepted at a journal with a higher acceptance rate, but this shouldn't be the only consideration in choosing where to submit. Or as a wise person wrote, “don't aim too high or too low, and don't let fear of rejection guide your choice.”3 The time between when you submit a manuscript and receive a decision regarding acceptance or rejection as well as the time between a manuscript's acceptance and publication also vary from journal to journal. Publication timelines include the time from acceptance to both print and electronic publication, which may differ now that online availability of an article frequently precedes publication in the print journal. A journal's acceptance rate and timelines may be available on its website. Decision and publication timelines can sometimes be discerned from dates of manuscript submission, acceptance, and publication, which are now included on some journal's articles. If you are unable to determine a journal's acceptance rate and/or timelines, you can request this information from the editorial office. Publication metrics are another characteristic of journals to consider. The impact factor, which is part of the Clarivate Analytics Journal Citation Reports, is the most widely known and used journal metric. The impact factor measures “the frequency with which the ‘average article’ in a journal has been cited in a particular year or period.”4 Therefore, an impact factor of 2 means that, on average, the articles published in a journal one or 2 years ago have been cited 2 times. The impact factor is a ratio between the number of citations and the number of recent source items published. It is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to articles published in the 2 previous years by the number of source items, which are the articles published in the 2 previous years. For example, the 2016 impact factor is calculated by dividing the number of 2016 citations to articles published in 2014 and 2015 by the number of articles published in 2014 and 2015. The impact factor is often used as an indicator of a journal's quality or prestige, but this measure has significant limitations. The impact factor only includes citations and thus doesn't fully measure the dissemination and influence of an article. Additional concerns about the impact factor include the majority of citations to journal articles happen after the first 2 years following publication, a few highly-cited papers are responsible for the majority of total citations, there is inconsistency in defining source items, and journals have the ability to inflate their impact factor.5 Other journal metrics include CiteScore and the Eigenfactor score. There are also article metrics, such as Altmetrics, and author metrics, such as the h-index. For those interested in publication metrics, Conklin and Oermann6 review journal, article, and author metrics in more detail. After evaluating your manuscript type and considering various characteristics of journals, the next step is to locate potential journals for your work. Begin with identifying your topic and desired audience. Consider the journals you read, including those owned by professional associations of which you are a member. Ask colleagues the journals where they have submitted manuscripts and published articles, including their experiences as an author. Review the reference list for your manuscript and articles found in your literature search to identify journals that may be relevant. Look at fields beyond your own discipline. For example, a midwife-authored manuscript may be appropriate for a nursing, medical, public health, health policy, education, or other type of journal. Two resources that may be helpful as you search for potential journals for your manuscript are the Directory of Nursing Journals and the Journal/Author Name Estimator (Jane). The Directory of Nursing Journals (https://nursingeditors.com/journals-directory/) includes more than 240 journals, which have been through a vetting process to ensure they are reputable. Each journal's entry includes the editor's name and email address, the journal's publisher and any affiliated professional association, a link to the journal's author guidelines, and a description of the journal. Jane (http://jane.biosemantics.org/) is a search engine into which you enter your manuscript title or abstract. The site then uses this text to search PubMed for related journals, authors, and articles. During your journal search, be wary of predatory journals and publishers, which prey on authors for financial profit without meeting scholarly publishing standards.7 Potential red flags that a journal is predatory include targeting authors via spam emails that are often full of grammatical and typographical errors; mimicking legitimate journal titles (such as the Journal of Midwifery, Women's Health and Nursing Practice, which is a predatory journal title that is very similar to the name of JMWH); charging authors for publishing their manuscripts; promising rapid peer review and publication; lacking indexing in legitimate databases (eg, MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO); and listing editorial board members who are unaware of their alleged affiliation with the journal. A complete discussion of predatory journals and publishers is beyond the scope of this editorial, but additional resources to learn more about this topic are included in the references.7-9 Once you have identified potential journals for your manuscript, you will need to review them in more detail. Nicoll's book Manuscript Success10 includes a helpful editable worksheet to collect and compare information when reviewing journals. Start by reading the author guidelines for each journal you are considering to identify its mission, included article types, and word and reference limits. Search the journal's website using keywords from your manuscript to identify abstracts and articles on similar topics. Review the content of recent issues to see if your manuscript fits within the range of topics and avoid a submission that is too similar to an article the journal recently published. As you locate types of articles similar to your manuscript, save them to refer to later as templates for your submission. Once you've reviewed potential journals, select and rank your top 3 choices. This gives you multiple options for resubmission if your manuscript isn't accepted by the first journal where you submit it. As you are reviewing potential journals, consider writing query letters to see if the editors are interested in your topic. This also allows you to ensure the journal in question doesn't have any similar manuscripts that have been accepted but are not yet published. When writing a query letter, be succinct but give enough information for the editor to understand your topic. Send an abstract if you have one but don't include your entire manuscript. Remember you only get one chance to make a first impression so take care in crafting your letters to editors. Saver has compiled helpful advice for writing an effective query letter.11 While the number of peer-reviewed journals can seem overwhelming, the good news is there are many options for finding a suitable home for your manuscript. Choosing a journal is a manageable process if done methodically with thoughtful consideration of each step. In addition to my suggestions for this process, I encourage you to read the excellent editorial on this topic by Kearney.12 While I hope you will consider submitting your manuscripts to JMWH, it is also important for the work of midwives to be published across a wide variety of journals. My favorite quotation about scholarly writing is from a keynote address by the distinguished nurse-scholar Margretta Styles: “The primary reason to publish is because the future of the profession depends upon it.”13 I agree scholarly writing is an important undertaking and hope the advice offered here will make it easier to begin your manuscript's path to publication.