SELECTION OF JOURNALS FOR RESEARCH PAPERS (INCLUDING

SCI,SCIS, SSCI, ESCI, PubMed, Scopus, WOS, UGC etc ) citation, H-

indexing, JIF, Peer-reviewed process, Acceptance rate.

Publication in a peer-reviewed journal is the obvious goal of most research projects. It is

through publication that your research reaches others in the field, advancing knowledge and
encouraging communication between groups with similar research goals. Although peer review
can be a lengthy and often exhausting process, the ultimate publication of your manuscript
effectively validates your work and can help to advance your career, attract bright students and
experienced staff, and garner funding for future studies. One of the most important—and
possibly the least well understood—aspects of the publication process is the choice of a suitable
journal that is likely to accept your work.

Submitting a manuscript to an unsuitable journal is one of the most common mistakes

made by authors, and both novice and seasoned researchers are capable of making this error.
First-time authors or those who are branching out into broader research territories may be
unfamiliar with the journals in the field. Meanwhile, experienced authors may be tempted to
publish in the same journals as always, despite the fact that new publication opportunities are
constantly arising in the form of electronic-only journals and open access publications. Even
rigorous, high-impact work can be rejected when the topic of the research does not match the
scope of the journal, and making this mistake wastes time, money, and motivation.

Hence, regardless the stage of your career, you will be revisiting the question of choosing
the right journal multiple times during your career. The parameters you need to consider might
change over a period of time with the advancement in technology changing the way journals
operate.

Aims & scope: Even remarkable, high-impact work can face rejection when the research topic
doesn’t align with the scope of the journal. This can lead to unnecessary loss of time and
motivation that could very well be avoided in the first place if authors take some time to study the
aims & scope of the journal.

This information is often easily available on journal’s website. Reading through “About
the journal,” “Aims & scope” or similar sections can help you understand if the journal is a good
match to submit your manuscript. For example — Nature Reviews Immunology website indicates
that they accept in-depth coverage of all areas of immunology, from fundamental mechanisms to
applied aspects. Sometimes journals might also mention certain research types that are not
accepted, for example, Food Research International doesn’t accept studies that focus on
optimizing the yield of the production process.

Author’s guidelines: This section will give you specific instructions on things like the
journal’s preferred layout, word limit (including and excluding bibliographic information),
referencing style and more. Submitting to journal that doesn’t accept your article type is a
guaranteed way of getting your paper rejected. For example — British Journal of Surgery doesn’t
accept case reports. If the journal charges any submission fee or article processing charges, you
will find it under this section as well. Poorly presented or proofread papers often make reviewers
and editors assume that their research is also poor and are thus not worth publishing. It is
important that the research is also well-written. So authors whose first language is not English are
especially recommended to seek help from professional academic editing services, like Editage to
make sure that their manuscript meets the global standards of publication.

Time to publish: In an ideal world, journals should be as accountable to authors as authors are
to journals. But the real world operates differently. Many of us have heard about that one friend
who is completely clueless about the status of his manuscript that he submitted over a year ago.
Unfortunately, the tales of loss of time due to submitting manuscripts to inadequate journals are as
old as time. Any mistakes made in the journal selection process can slow down the progression of
your career.

Good journals take a minimum of four months to come back to you with a response if
your paper has been sent for a peer review. If your paper has been rejected, you should hear about
it within 4–6 weeks after submission.

Reputed journals work hard to publish papers within 9–12 months of submission. But high
profile journals do have longer wait times, mostly because of the volume of submissions they
receive, and their rejection rates are also higher.

Having said that, you must look into how many issues are published by a journal annually.
The more they publish, the lesser would be the time taken by them to publish your paper. Keep an
eye out if they have a ‘call for papers’ for any special edition, where your paper might be a good
fit. Special editions get lesser submissions relatively and make it easier for your paper to be
considered and published, if it fits the criteria.

Journal Impact Factor (JIF): Journal Impact Factor (JIF) basically shows the number of
citations received by journal articles in proportion to the number of citation articles it published in
the past 2–5 years. It has become the default metric to assess the reputation and quality of a
journal and is held in high regard by authors, institutions and employers alike. Getting jobs, grants
etc. is all a whole lot easier when you are a published author in a high IF journal.

Should you go for a journal that attracts a more appropriate target audience for your paper,
or the one that has better JIF? This is a common debate in the scientific community with mixed
opinions. Some researchers strongly recommend that you prefer your audience regardless of the
impact factor of the journal as it significantly increases the chances of your paper being evaluated
by appropriate reviewers. Also, when your research is read by the right audience, your paper gets
cited more often which increases your H-Index.

Many researchers, however, question the recognition enjoyed by JIF in the community.
The common argument is that since IF doesn’t reflect the quality of the research; it is not an
appropriate determining factor for an individual’s work. For example — Einstein’s work, “The
Electrodynamics Moving Body” did not get many citations when it was published, but it now gets
around 1000 citations every year.
 Some publishing practices by high IF journals add more to this debate. Review articles,
for example, are known to get higher citations than research articles. As a result, many journals
publish more review articles that help them maintain a higher JIF for years, without having to
publish any solid research articles for a long time.

In fact, it is important to note that in some core subjects, where the number of researchers
is also low, JIF will also be low. You must do a relative analysis of JIF in your particular field
when choosing a journal. In such cases, it is also recommended that you prefer journals that
attract your target audience rather than JIF.

Thus choosing a journal solely based on its JIF is not the best strategy. For new authors, it
is recommended to take a balanced approach in choosing the best journal. Few researchers do this
trade off by sending the data they want to publish fast to journals with average IF but the right
target audience, and the most important data is sent to journals with high IF. But you can always
find your own way.

Science citation index (SCI): SCI is powered by Thomson Reuters. SCI journal rank is the
citation index for papers produced by Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), which is owned by
Thomson Reuters. ISI adheres to strict evaluation process to assure the credibility of journals. ISI
database provides some measures of academic impact of the paper indexed in it. SCI covers more
than 8500 notable and significant journals.

The index is made available online through different platforms such as web of services.
SCI develop their own factor that measures the impact of index called Index factor. It’s the ratio
between the citations and citable items published in a journal.

Calculation=cites to recent items/ no of recent items.

Journals that meet the quality criteria enter Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).
Journals that meet the additional impact criteria enter Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE),
Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) or Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI)
depending on their subject area. These are dynamic collections subject to continuous duration to
ensure journals are in the appropriate collection. ESCI journals that gain impact move to SCIE,
SSCI or AHCI. SCIE, SSCI and AHCI journals that decrease in impact move to ESCI. Any
journal that decreases in quality will be removed from the Web of Science Core Collection.

ESCI (Emerging Sources Citation Index): The Emerging Sources Citation Index aims
to extend the scope of publications in the Web of Science to include high-quality, peer reviewed
publications. It ensures important research is visible in the Web of Science Core Collection even
if it is not yet internationally recognized.
Requirements for indexing:
The selection process is the first step in applying to other Web of Science indexes. These include
the Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and Arts and Humanities
Citation Index (AHCI).
Journals accepted for coverage must meet the following criteria:

 Peer reviewed
 Follows ethical publishing practices
 Meets technical requirements
 Has English language bibliographic information
 Recommended or requested by a scholarly audience of Web of Science users

All journals submitted to the core Web of Science databases will be evaluated. If they’re
successful they will be indexed in the ESCI while undergoing more in-depth editorial review.
Timing for evaluation follows Clarivate Analytics’ priorities for expanding database coverage,
rather than the date that journals were submitted for evaluation. If a journal is accepted from the
ESCI to another database it will no longer be covered in the ESCI. Journals which are indexed
can opt out of consideration for further evaluation if they need to improve their citation profile.
Journals can also move from the flagship indexes to the ESCI if they no longer meet the
conditions of the flagship index

Citation Analysis: The process whereby the impact or "quality" of an article is assessed by
counting the number of times other authors mention it in their work.
Citation analysis involves counting the number of times an article is cited by other works to
measure the impact of a publication or author.  The caviat however, there is no single citation
analysis tools that collects all publications and their cited references.  For a thorough analysis of
the impact of an author or a publication, one needs to look in multiple databases to find all
possible cited references.

Citation Analysis is used to find out how much impact a particular article or author has
had, by showing which other authors cited the work within their own papers.  The H-Index is one
specific method utilizing citation analysis to determine an individual’s impact.

Citation Analysis for WoS

Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it.  It indexes over 10,000
journals in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
 To find the citation counts to your own articles:
 Enter the name of the author in the top search box (e.g. Smith JT).  
 Select Author from the drop-down menu on the right.
 To ensure accuracy for popular names, enter Univ Illinois in the middle search box, then
select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right.  (You might have to add
the second search box by clicking "add another field" before you enter the address)
 Click on Search
 a list of publications by that author name will appear.   To the right of each citation, the
number of times the article has been cited will appear.   Click the number next to "times
cited" to view the articles that have cited your article
Finding H-index for WoS
Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it.  It indexes over 12,000
journals in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences.  To find an author's h-index in
WOS:
 Enter the name of the author in the top search box (e.g. Smith JT).   Select Author from
the drop-down menu on the right.
 To ensure accuracy for popular names, add an additional search box and enter "Univ
Illinois" and then select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right.
 Click on Search
 Click on Citation Report on the right hand corner of the results page.  The H-index is on
the right of the screen.

Scopus: Scopus provide citation counts for articles indexed within it (limited to article written
in 1996 and after).   It indexes over 15,000 journals from over 4,000 international publishers
across the disciplines.
 
 To find the citation counts to your own articles:
 Once in Scopus, click on the Author search tab.
 Enter the name of the author in the search box.  If you are using initials for the first and/or
middle name, be sure to enter periods after the initials (e.g. Smith J.T.). 
 To ensure accuracy if it is a popular name, you may enter University of Illinois in the
affiliation field.  
 Click search.
 If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are
examining). 
 Once you click on the author's profile, a list of the publications will appear and to the right of
each citation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear.  
 Click the number to view the articles that have cited your article

Finding H-index for Scopus: Scopus provide citation counts for articles indexed within it
(limited to article written in 1996 and after).   It indexes over 22,000 journals from over 4,000
international publishers across the disciplines.  
To find an author's h-index in Scopus:
 Once in Scopus, click on the Author search tab.
 Enter the name of the author in the search box.  If you are using initials for the first
and/or middle name, be sure to enter periods after the initials (e.g. Smith J.T.). 
 To ensure accuracy if it is a popular name, you may enter University of Illinois in the
affiliation field.  
 Click search.
 If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you
are examining).  Under the Research section, you will see the h-index listed.
 If you have worked at more than one place, your name may appear twice with 2 separate
h-index ratings.  Select the check box next to each relevent profile, and click show
documents.
Peer-review process: The whole idea of a peer review process is to validate the written
investigative findings from an author group that are further assessed by a group of industry
experts (referees) for relevance, novelty, and accuracy. These experts usually do not belong to the
editorial staff of a journal and are normally not even paid for their opinion. Any misleading or
unproven findings are thus removed during this process.

A quality peer review process makes your papers more robust by pointing out gaps in your
findings that might need additional explanation. Reviewers offer feedback to make your paper
easier to read and also how you can make it more useful to add to the findings that are already
published in your field.
The end goal of a peer review process is to decide if the findings of a manuscript are worth
publishing. The end responsibility of this process is born by the journal’s editor who may choose
to agree or disagree with the feedback of the reviewers. It is due to this stringent publishing
process that peer reviewed journals enjoy great respect in academia and should be one of the most
important things you should consider when choosing a journal.

Acceptance rate: As it might seem obvious, journals with lower acceptance rates are
considered to be more prestigious and meritorious. Up to 90% rejection rates is not unheard of for
top-tier journals. For others, around 50% rejection rate is the norm. Finding out acceptance rates
of individual journals however is not easy.
There is no industry-wide accepted standard of calculating a journal’s acceptance rate. As
a result, every journal follows the approach they see fit. While some journals take the total
number of manuscripts received by them as the base, others consider the manuscripts they sent for
peer-review as the base for calculating the acceptance rate. There are also journals that do not
maintain accurate data records for this and only offer a rough estimate.
Moreover, for highly-specialized fields, if the number of researchers contributing to the
area is pretty low, the acceptance rates of journals tend to be higher. Sometimes acceptance rates
of a journal might also vary depending on the types of manuscripts. Case reports, for example,
might get host of rejections, whereas acceptance rates for research articles might be pretty good.
Many journals or publishers mention their acceptance rates on their website.

H-index (Hirsch Index): The H-index is an author level metric that attempts to measure both
the productivity and citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar. The index is
based on the set of the scientist’s most cited papers and the number of citations that they have
received in other publications.
This index was suggested in 2005 by Jorge E. Hirsch, a physicist, as a tool for determining
theoretical physicists relative quality and is sometimes called as the Hirsch number.

Conclusion
After all of the hard work that goes into performing successful research, the final crucial step is
choosing the right journal in which to publish. With over 9,500 journals in the Directory of Open
Access Journals alone, choosing the best journal can be daunting, even for seasoned researchers,
and making the wrong decision can cost valuable time, money, and effort. Keeping in mind the
aims and scope of the journal, identifying papers that are similar in quality and scope,
determining the journal’s restrictions, and considering the impact factor and potential reach will
ensure a smooth path to publication.