Publishing Journal Articles

COMPETITIVENESS: ACCEPTANCE / REJECTION RATES

Some journals are very competitive and may have very high rejection rates. You can look at the acceptance rate to get an idea of the likelihood of your journal being accepted and if it might be worth looking at a more specialized journal with a higher acceptance rate.

The submission process varies from journal to journal, but you should typically expect to hear a response within 4-6 weeks. Feel free to contact the editor if you have not received a response within 8 weeks. You should receive one of the following responses from the editor: Reject, Accept, or Modify. If your paper is accepted, congratulations!! Sit back and enjoy your fame. Getting an acceptance on the first try is very rare, though. The editor is more likely to ask you to modify your article, based on recommendations of the peer-reviewers. You will have the opportunity to make changes to address these concerns and resubmit your paper. Depending on the level of criticism and work required, you may choose to resubmit your work, or take your work elsewhere and submit to another journal.

Statistically speaking, there is also a pretty good chance that your article will be rejected. Most high-quality journals have rejections rates of 50% or more, so getting rejected is not the end of the world; you are definitely not alone. There are different types of rejection letters, and what you do next can differ depending on the situation. If the editor finds some minor flaws (such as a design flaw) in your work that would prevent publication but that could be fixed, you may try making changes and resubmitting. But if your article is mostly fine but rejected for not fitting the scope of the journal or because is deemed less important than other submissions, then you may think about submitting your article to another journal.

COPYRIGHT

Do you want to maintain copyright privileges of your work? Most journals require that you sign over the copyright, but many now have clauses that allow you to upload your work to an institutional repository. Some will charge you a lot of money to get a copy of your own article after publication. If this is important to you, look over the copyright guidelines before submitting to a journal.

GRANT-FUNDED PUBLISHING POLICIES

If you were awarded a grant to conduct research, you will need to check to see if there are any publishing stipulations. For example, the NIH Public Access Policy requires that the final manuscript of all NIH-funded research must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance of publication. If you have been awarded a grant and the awarding agency has publication policies, you will need to check with the journal you are submitting to in order to verify that they can comply with those policies.

IMPACT AND RANKING

If you are looking for a journal that is influential in the field, you may try looking at the level of influence and ranking. Here are some tools to help you note a journal’s impact and ranking:

• eigenFACTOR
• SCImago

INDEXING IN DATABASES

If you want people to read your work, one of the best ways of getting your work out there and available to researchers is by publishing in a journal that is indexed in a major database. In order for people to read and reference your article, they need to be able to find it. Having an article indexed by PubMed or Alt HealthWatch means that there is a higher chance of people referencing your work.

JOURNALS USED BY THE COMMUNITY

You may want to select a journal that you actually like! Which journals keep popping up in your research? What do your colleagues read? Which journals does our library subscribe to?

LENGTH OF REVIEW PROCESS

If you are on a time constraint, you may want the length of the review process to weigh into your decision. Some journals are monthly, but others may only be published twice a year. Your chances of getting published by a journal with more frequent publications may be higher because they are publishing way more material than quarterly or bi-annual publications. By contacting the editor, you can also find out how long it takes the average submission to get to publication (or rejection).

OPEN ACCESS FEES

Many journals now allow you the option of paying a fee to make your article “open access,” i.e., freely available to the public. Some journals are completely open access, so publishing with them at all will require that you pay a large open access fee (normally between $750 - $1500 for an institution of OCOM’s size).

PEER REVIEW

Peer-review is a process in which your paper is evaluated by peers in your field, demonstrating the strength, quality, and credibility of your article. OCOM does not participate in the tenure process, so there is no requirement of being published in a peer-reviewed journal. However, OCOM’s faculty evaluation system does require faculty to create portfolios, which are reviewed by their faculty peers; publishing in peer-reviewed publications is a great addition to your professional portfolio.

SELECT A JOURNAL THAT IS APPLICABLE TO YOUR WORK

Do you want to publish in a conventional or alternative medicine journal? If your paper is about teaching or educational policy, an education journal may be more appropriate than a medical journal.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Who do you want your article to reach? Acupuncture practitioner? International audiences? Or is your target audience conventional doctors and researchers? Reading the journals scope and mission statement

TYPE OF MANUSCRIPT

Is your paper an original study? Case study? Literature review? Be sure to check the journal requirements to verify that the journal you are submitting actually accepts the type of paper you are submitting.