RESEARCH SUPPORT : Strategic Publishing

Journal publishing

It is important to apply a range of criteria when deciding where to publish. Use the following questions as a starting point to inform your decision.

Relevance

• Is the journal relevant to the research discipline?

Measures of quality and esteem

• Is the journal peer reviewed?
• Does the journal have an impact factor?
• What is the SJR rank of the journal?
• Is the Journal included on a discipline ranking list?
• Is the publisher of the journal a member of a recognised  professional association committed to best practice in publishing?
• Does the publisher display unethical or deceptive publishing practices?
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Access and discoverability

• Are all articles in the journal available open access? If not, what is the journal's policy on open access to content?
• If the journal is not open access, how widely is it available to local, national and international readership?
• Is the journal indexed by any of the discipline-specific databases in your research area, or the well-known citation databases?

Timeliness

• Is it important to publish your results quickly?

Book publishing

Questions to ask when choosing a book publisher:

• Does the publisher provide a high standard of editorial support?
• Are the editors recognised experts or practitioners in the discipline?
• Is the publisher responsible for all aspects of the publishing process, including review, copyediting, design, printing, distribution, marketing and publicity?
• Check recently published titles at the publisher website - does your research area align with the publisher's target audience?
• Is the publisher website 'polished'? Are titles easy to locate and marketed well?
• Check with colleagues and your  Research Liason Librarian if the publisher has a good standing in the academic community.
• If the publisher offers open access titles is it a member of a recognised professional association committed to best practice in publishing, such as COPE, or the Open Access Publishers Association?

Be extremely careful of print-on-demand and vanity publishers (such as LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, and VDM) who mass-email early-career researchers and authors of recently published theses offering to publish their thesis as a book. Usually the content of thesis published by these publishers remain largely unchanged and are sold without peer review or editing of the thesis. Your copyright may also be affected. Check the information about predatory publishers for more information.

Author responsibilities

• Responsible conduct of research policy
• Research publication responsibility guideline
• Authorship of research guidelines
• Open access guideline