Hello, this is Emily, and I'd like to welcome you to this uni-edit video.
What type of journal should I target?
Knowing what type of journal to target is important to finding the right fit
for your paper topic and research style. Therefore testing whether your research
meets these criteria is a good way to self assess your research and decide
which journal is most suitable for your work.
Targeting a suitable journal for your research increases the probability your
paper is read by the right audience in your field, which helps advance your own
profile and knowledge in your field by reaching a demographic that is more
likely to cite and disseminate your research.
Irrespective of the soundness and novelty of your research, reaching your
target audience depends largely on readership accessibility options in the
journal. Selecting the appropriate level of accessibility for your paper may seem
straightforward, but it is generally constrained by whether the journal or
publisher offers these options and journal fees journals are generally
categorized as either paid subscription or open access regarding their
readership accessibility.
Paid subscription is a membership service to the journal usually covered
by the university or research institution that allows readers to
access the journals content via institutional login access. Journals will
usually only publish material from paid subscribers. Therefore, as an author you
will need paid subscription via your institution but this largely depends on
the type and outreach of the journal for your audience. Your paper is primarily
read within the academic community with paid access to journal content.
Conversely, open-access papers are disseminated more widely due to no
subscription restrictions for readers. This means papers are publicly available;
however, allowing open access does not come without fees. Journals as publishers
need to pay publishing administration and intellectual property and copyright
overheads the costs of running a journal to open their papers freely to the
public. The level of accessibility for your paper depends on you as an author
or authors institution paying the open access fee.
This fee, covered by either the individual author or the institution,
covers the publishing overheads to allow the journal paper to be freely available
to the public without the need for subscription to the journal.
A quick recap of the differences and the similarities between open access and
paid subscription. Across the top you can see that both open access and paid
subscription: either can serve to reach your target audience. On the Left, open
access: while no paid subscription is required, there are typically fees. On the
right, paid subscription journals only publish from paid subscribers. On the
left: open access audience is usually more publicly available. On the right,
paid subscription: audience can be limited to paid subscribers of the
journal. Some offer open access options
you. Within the life sciences, more and more
journals are becoming open access. Open access journals are increasingly seen as
the modern journal, as they provide publicly available content, overcome
financial barriers for readers that would normally require a financial
commitment to access content, and reach a larger readership due to improved
accessibility.
Here's a digital list of open access journals as published by Elsevier. If you
scroll down, you can see that published articles on these are fully
peer-reviewed. They are immediately free to access and download from science
direct. They're permitted reuse defined by the author's choice of the Creative
Commons user licenses, and they're published with CROSSMARK to maintain the
publication record. Notice the open access publication fee is payable by the
author or their institution or funder to cover the publication costs. Fees can
range from one hundred fifty to five thousand US dollars excluding tax. Visit
your journals home pages for specific pricing information. This is an A to Z
directory of open access journals and as you can see by clicking upon one of them.
I would be able to receive more information since they are alphabetized.
I'm now into the B section, but as I continue to scroll this is an extremely
long list of open access journals.
We hope you enjoyed this tip. Once again, this is Emily from uni-edit. Have a wonderful
day!