Which journal will take the best care of my paper?

Abstract

“Where should I submit this?” As a mentor and editor, this is the most common question I field. Choosing a journal can be a daunting task for newer authors. In a recent editorial, I noted the broad variety of journals for nursing audiences (Kearney, 2015) and promised to take up the topic of selecting a journal in a future editorial. The thoughts expressed here are an effort to keep that promise. Classifying your paper is the essential first step when you are matching your paper to a journal (Henly, 2014). Author guidelines may specify manuscript types that are of interest to a journal, and reviewers will mentally classify papers into types to judge their quality and fit with a given journal. The easiest paper type to find a home for is a clinical research report: results of a controlled study of a size and rigor sufficient to add trustworthy evidence to the literature. These are the main content of RINAH. Results of feasibility studies to test the approaches planned for future research are a subtype of research report. Also in the research report category are implementation science or quality improvement papers: reports of practice changes supported by earlier controlled studies that the authors now have tested and evaluated systematically in a real-life setting. (Systematic implementation and valid evaluation distinguish such reports from other clinical reports described below.) Nurses also publish a fair number of education research reports, in which an educational approach is tested in a controlled fashion. All these types of papers depict results of research completed by the authors. A second paper type is reviews of previously reported research. These include reviews or syntheses of research for researchers, using a systematic or integrative review approach or meta-analysis to identify what is known about a given phenomenon and the implications of that state of knowledge for what researchers should study next. These are welcome in RINAH when conducted rigorously and reported systematically using the PRISMA reporting guidelines. Policy recommendations based on a synthesis of research evidence are another type of review paper. We publish some of these as guest editorials. Reviews of research also may be written for clinicians, reflecting a synthesis of the published evidence with identification of those findings vetted sufficiently to be applied to clinical practice. A third type of paper is what I call a methods paper: a description of an innovative or little-known approach to a certain aspect of research, whether recruiting or retaining participants, measuring a type of parameter, collecting a certain type of data, or conducting certain types of analyses. RINAH is eager to publish methods papers when evidence of the effectiveness of the method is included. A fourth category of paper is an analysis of or reflection on philosophy or theory pertaining to an aspect of clinical care, education, or research. This category includes reviews of theories applied in past research to a given research topic, proposals of new or modified theory, and discussions of philosophical perspectives on research, education, or practice. A journal's openness to these papers may be based on the degree to which the authors’ claims are supported by traditional scientific evidence. For example, RINAH would be interested in a theory paper in which research findings are cited to support each link of a proposed model, but we are less likely to publish a paper in which a proposed theory is supported only by logic or other theoreticians’ views. Other journals are very interested in these papers. Also in this category are aesthetic reflections on research, education, or practice, in the form of poetry, fiction, visual art, and the like. Some journals have a niche for these works and a long-standing tradition of publishing them. Clinical papers are the fifth category in my tentative scheme. Clinical observations, locally-designed practice innovations, or case study reports, in which clinical events or trends are shared to expose other clinicians to unusual or significant observations or circumstances, can be extremely important. For example, in the early days of HIV, the disease was first depicted in a series of clinical reports of an immune dysfunction syndrome of unknown origin found in gay men. Clinical guides or recommendations based on the authors’ clinical experience are other valuable clinical papers. Unlike the implementation science or quality improvement research reports described under research reports above, these reports depict practice changes are untested or untestable in controlled studies but have shown promise in the authors’ experience. New authors often combine several types of papers in a single manuscript, a common pitfall for students because academic assignments often call for a mix of content. An experienced author can check that your work is easily classifiable and meets expectations for its paper type. Consumers of research and related scholarship no longer are restricted to the journals to which they or their institutional libraries subscribe. Readers of all ages now find relevant material by searching online. I have remarked occasionally that as long as your audience can find your work using a search engine such as PubMED, CINAHL, Google Scholar, or the like, it doesn't matter which journal publishes it. Now I am thinking differently; it actually does matter a fair amount. The following journal characteristics may make a difference in the success of your work. Who reads a given journal and how many readers it has are very valuable considerations. (In the electronic age, readership is no longer determined by subscribers or circulation and must be determined indirectly by indicators such as impact factor, described below.) For example, if in your research you have shown definitively that an extremely common medical practice is much more dangerous than an inexpensive alternative, you want your work to reach a very large audience of providers and consumers of patient care. You need a journal with a large readership of diverse clinicians—JAMA, perhaps. On the other hand, if you have articulated a new theory to be used when teaching new nurses how to care for preterm neonates, you have a much narrower target audience and need a journal with a highly specialized focus. Impact factor indicates the frequency with which work in the journal is cited, in proportion to the number of articles in that journal that could be cited. The calculation reflects indirectly a journal's breadth of reach and the quality of content. A high impact factor means that the average article in that journal reaches and is cited soon afterward by many authors. How do all those authors find the work and decide to cite it? The article is accurately keyworded so it can be found with a search engine; depicts research, analysis, or synthesis expertly done and judged trustworthy; and addresses a topic of broad interest to those who write for publication. An article that does not reach many active authors (perhaps because its content is not captured in its keywords), that depicts poorly-designed research or a weak argument, or is not useful to authors for other reasons will not be cited. Impact factor also reflects the quality of the journal's peer review process, to the extent to which that process insures that only the best-done research and best-written reports are accepted for publication. High-quality editing also can shape the readability and interest of an article, increasing its odds of being cited. Caution is advised here. A journal with a low impact factor may publish work of poor quality or may not be reaching its intended audience, or it may publish work of high quality but of narrow interest to a small group. The impact factor of many nursing-focused journals is relatively low because of the limited number of authors in the scholarly field of nursing. A nursing journal may be widely read by students or clinicians, but unless those users are writing for publication, its value to these readers will not be reflected in the journal's impact factor. So, impact factor is relevant to a journal selection, but only to the extent that a broad audience of scholarly readers is important and that the impact factor reflects good research and scholarship that is routinely well-managed by the editorial team. The owner and publisher of a journal may have powerful influence on the types of content of interest to that journal. Journals owned by associations typically but not always have a scope specific to the aims of the association. Educational publishers differ from biomedical publishers in approaches to marketing and distributing their products. In some fields, the number and type of authors matter in the peer review process. In many biomedical journals outside nursing, double-blind manuscript review is not the norm, and reviewers are free to take the authors’ affiliations, disciplines, and past work into consideration in evaluating the manuscript. The author guidelines should reveal a journal's approach to author blinding, but the impact of author background on likelihood of acceptance may only be discernable by reading the journal's content. Some journals value a multi-disciplinary author team, and others question it. Some journals welcome a long list of co-authors, and others do not. Some welcome work by students, and others do not. If you are an atypical author for a journal, it may not be worth your time to push against the tide. Both the topics and the types of articles that appear in a journal are critical indicators of the fit of your work. Novice authors may focus on topics and miss the importance of article types. For example, I met recently with a young scholar who had found three candidate journals for his qualitative study of a group at high risk of HIV. He had cited work from all of the journals in his own writing, which is a good indicator of the relevance of their content, but when we looked at recent tables of contents, we saw that although all three journals published research on HIV risk behaviors, the type of articles varied greatly. One of the journals published no qualitative work and favored large samples studied with standardized psychological instruments. The second was heavily populated with intervention studies by large multidisciplinary teams. The third was less well-known and not exclusively focused on HIV but targeted his vulnerable population and included a number of qualitative studies resembling his. We would not have known this without going to the journal contents, reading the abstracts, and retrieving several example papers. If your aim is to inform nurses in the research they do or the clinical care they direct, provide, or teach, then a nursing journal will do the best job of shaping your work for your target audience. A nursing journal will take the best care of a paper specifically focused on nursing practice or health phenomena amenable to nursing care. The reviewers will be nurses or close allies of nurses; the journal's distribution and marketing will target nurses, nurses’ associations, nursing librarians, and nursing schools; and the editors will work with authors to present their work in language and with emphasis that will speak to nurses. Keep in mind, however, that not all nursing journals are exclusively by and for nurses. This is especially true for research-focused nursing journals. Research in Nursing & Health is classified as a nursing journal, but our authors and reviewers reflect both areas in the journal's title and include a mix of professional and scholarly backgrounds relevant to the study of health and the delivery of health care. This breadth enables us to appreciate research from a range of disciplines that has relevance to the work of health care providers. Many articles in RINAH are of interest to researchers in specialized areas of health and illness– such as heart failure, health care systems, or child development– but are not specific to nursing in any way. The most important considerations are that work is respected and strengthened in the review, revision, and publication process, and the journal is a highly-regarded venue within a professional milieu. I like to think that these describe RINAH. If your writing contributes to a specific literature in a fairly narrow clinical topic area in which nurses are only one of several disciplines, you may want to consider a journal with a clinical population focus, such as cardiology, geriatrics, oncology, etc. Read the journal's content carefully, and remember the caveat above that the type of paper accepted by the journal is as important as the clinical topic. Similarly, if your main research principles or methods are those best understood in a discipline other than nursing science, or your main audience is not clinicians, you have reason to consider journals in psychology, sociology, biomedical informatics, public health, health policy, and the like. Each of these fields has journals that are the keepers of its literature. Become familiar with these, make an informed decision on the best home for your work, and be prepared in your writing to speak the language of that discipline so your work will be understood and appreciated by its reviewers and readers. If despite your best efforts your manuscript is not appreciated by a journal's peer reviewers, perhaps your content or approach is not of sufficient interest, or it may mean that you have not yet depicted your content effectively. Given the predominance of search engines in connecting scholars to literature, position your work well to be found by the most common search engines. While many journals including RINAH have a pre-selected and limited set of keywords for classifying your paper at the time of submission, the manuscript itself can contain other, better keywords. Like finding typos, selecting keywords is sometimes best done by other people who are more distant from the work and can classify it more easily. Use MeSH headings, the PsycInfo thesaurus, or other resources provided by the search engines where you work will appear. Remember, however, that Google® and Google Scholar® are the most commonly used search engines these days. Natural and concise language will best help your work reach its audience (Sage, ). Share your work at conferences, and converse with others working in the topic area. As you become known for a particular topic or approach, readers will be more likely to read your new articles and to cite them. Once your work is accepted for publication, let leaders in your school or agency know as soon as possible. The public affairs unit may find it of sufficient interest to issue a press release, which is most effective if it appears simultaneously with the publication. Some publishers also issue press releases or compendia of new paper titles, but this is less common in smaller or more specialized journals. Consider joining a scholarly networking website such as ResearchGate®, where your publications can be found by others in your interest area, and others’ related work can be brought to your attention. Regardless of your paper type, journal characteristics, or disciplinary audience, your manuscript must be managed well by a journal if it is to contribute to the literature and have the impact you seek. To find a journal that will appreciate and take good care of your work, consider the following criteria. Most query letters received by editors could be avoided if the would-be author had looked at the content of the journal over the past several years. Modest-sized research journals will not reject a paper for repeating a recent topic; rather, the criteria will be the quality of the research methods and the contribution of the work to the current literature. In contrast, a clinical journal will make an effort to structure topics to address pressing issues in the field. Calls for papers in clinical journals reflect areas in which papers are sought. Closely related to the point above is the editors’ and reviewers’ familiarity with your focus and methods. Again you can judge this by reading work that has been published in the journal within the past several years. As in my HIV example above, if the journal has not published any articles in which your method was used, this may be a message to you. On the other hand, if you are an experienced researcher who used a novel method and can justify it with strong rationale and supporting evidence, reviewers and editors may well be comfortable with it. Look through past work in the target journal for such explanations, to see the kind of supporting evidence you will need to provide. This rationale must be in the paper itself, not only in the cover letter to the editor, which the reviewers will not see. The characteristics of your approach (sample size, instrument validity, statistical tests) must be congruent with the journal's expectations. To be sure reviewers and editors will judge your research on its merits, use the format of sections and headings of your target journal as a guide, so reviewers will find the content they are looking for in a predictable place. If regardless of its presentation your work is not of the magnitude or rigor seen in the reports in a top journal, and many early projects are not, do not assume that including a rationale for the shortcomings of your project will make the work acceptable. Keep looking for a journal that publishes work like yours. Clinical journals may have the audience you seek but may not be at ease with a complex research paper in a traditional experimental reporting format. Again, read the journal content carefully and analyze how research is presented. In some clinical journals in which research appears, the methods are in a sidebar, and the main text is the physiology behind the clinical problem and the real-life applications of the research results. A clinical co-author can be invaluable in framing your work for a clinical audience. After the emotional reaction has subsided, it is extremely important to read carefully the reviews you received. They can guide you in revision and editing to achieve your optimal impact. Read critiques carefully for indicators that this was not the best type of journal for this paper. Even if you are sure that the journal was a good choice, if the preponderance of reviewers or the editor were not enthusiastic, move on. You may receive an explicit recommendation from an editor or reviewer to target a different type of journal. I make these recommendations to authors who submit certain types of theory or instrument translation papers, or papers about nursing students or nursing education, which we are not publishing currently. If you have clearly depicted the nature of your project, there is no point in arguing with a message that your work is outside the journal's current scope. If you believe it is within the journal's scope, this may be an indication that the nature of your work did not come across in your writing. Seek guidance on rewriting from an experienced and disinterested writer. As you seek a new venue for paper submission, decide whether to stay in that journal subtype or try a different one. If your work was not at all understood by reviewers, you may need a different journal type. It may be, however, that it was very well understood. Reviewers and editors in research journals read a great many manuscripts and can be quite astute in recognizing weak points in a project. For an admittedly imperfect research project, perhaps a traditional research report is not possible, but a methods-focused commentary such as a “lessons learned” paper may be a way to disseminate the learning to be gained from the challenges you faced. In conclusion, the best home for your paper is a journal whose editors and reviewers are familiar with your area of inquiry and the approach you used to pursue it, and who will guide you to polish the work to a publishable standard. This may involve repeated “revise and resubmit” decisions. If you are a novice writer, recognize that the opportunity to revise is a vote of confidence in the potential of your work for publication, and a cheerful and careful approach to revisions will help you succeed. Matching your paper to a journal may be like finding the best child care provider for your child. You want an experienced adult who will appreciate the beauty and brilliance of your child but maintain your standards of behavior and perhaps even strengthen them. Often you seek someone from your culture or background who will uphold your values and traditions. Finding the best journal to take good care of your paper is a similar quest. Just as children's appearance and behavior may reflect the priorities of their parents, the published output of a journal can guide you in determining whether your work will be well cared for in that journal home.