In this post, we will discuss and show step by step procedures on How to choose a journal for publication. If you do not know the importance of a journal paper for your higher study admission or scholarship, read this article first. Publishing a paper in a low-ranked journal affects your profile negatively, therefore, it is extremely important to know where you should publish a paper to impress the admission or scholarship committee to get the scholarship. In this post, the below topics will be covered.
- What is a high-ranked or good journal?
- How to choose a journal for publication
- How to find out predatory journal and avoid them.
What is a high-ranked journal?
There are several parameters that define whether a journal is high ranked or not. To consider a journal high ranked all the below criteria must be fulfilled, otherwise, simply avoid that journal. The criteria are listed below-
The editor-in-chief of the journal- when you go to the journal website, the first thing you need to check is the affiliation of the editor-in-chief. If he is a professor from a good university or famous research organization then it is highly likely it's a good journal, but it does not guarantee the rank of the journal.
">The editorial board- The second thing you need to check is the editorial board members of the journal. If the members are affiliated with renowned universities or research organizations, then the journal also passes this test.
Is the journal indexed- The third and most important thing is to check the indexing of the journal. The journal at least must be indexed on the Web of Science and Scopus. If it is not indexed in any one of these, simply avoid that journal. The next section will describe in detail how to check whether a journal is listed on the web of science and Scopus or not.
These three above-mentioned parameters are mandatory for a journal to be considered a valid indexed journal publication. However, besides all these criteria, some other parameters must be fulfilled by the journal to be considered high ranked. Those are-
Impact factor- This is the most important criteria to consider a journal highly ranked. The impact factor is calculated by the web of science by making a ratio of the number of citations of that journal and the number of papers published in that journal in a year. For easy understanding, just remember that the higher the impact factor the better the journal is. Suppose, a journal is having an impact factor of 5 and another journal of the same category has an impact factor of 10, therefore the second journal is in a higher-ranked position than the first one. If you notice the two journals in the figure below- you will notice the journal named "Biofpr" has an impact factor of 4.102 and the "Energy" journal has an impact factor of 7.147, therefore, in the field of biofuel, the "Energy" journal is more highly ranked.
How to choose a journal for publication
A predatory journal is a journal that is not indexed. if you search for a journal simply on Google, it will show you many journals, some of them will not be found on the above website, those are simply predatory journals. Publishing your paper in a predatory journal will negatively affect your profile when applying for a scholarship or admission to a well-ranked university. Also, a famous researcher Bealle has published a list of Predatory Journals. Never submit your manuscript to this journal for publication.
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