Fundamental Things to Know About Publishing

Publishing original research creates new knowledge and encourages inquiry. From selecting a publisher to avoiding predatory journals and maintaining ethical standards, Informationists can help you determine an appropriate venue for your manuscript based on your publication type.

Finding a Journal

Carefully consider where you will publish - and publish strategically. Avoid predatory and low-quality journals by following these principles:

1. Review your list of references. If you cite a journal several times, it may be a relevant place to publish.
2. Use Journal Match Finders.  Enter your manuscript's title and abstract into Journal / Author Name Estimator (JANE) to determine journals that match your topic. Then find out more details by using Cabells Journalytics Medicine and Predatory Reports such as quality, costs, and time to first decision.
3. Consider a journal's metrics. Impact factors and other metrics are used to determine the quality of a journal. However, remember that submitting to a top tier journal is not always your best chance of getting published due to their high submission and lower acceptance rates.
4. Read about the journal's Scope, Audience, Reputation; Length restrictions; Time to publication, and indexing. Most researchers will find your article through a literature search, so make sure it is indexed in major disciplinary databases, such as MEDLINE (and therefore appears in PubMed).

Ethical Considerations

Fraud undermines the integrity of scientific research and public trust.  Practice ethical publishing and avoid:

1. Authorship misconduct. Failing to give proper credit or including non-contributors as authors.
2. Salami slicing. This involves dividing one significant piece of research into several smaller publications.
3. Data fabrication and image manipulation to misrepresent the data.
4. Plagiarism. Using someone else’s ideas without proper attribution or submitting a manuscript from previously published papers are both considered plagiarism.

 
It is also unethical to submit the same research findings to multiple publications. Manuscripts going to more than one journal at a time can lead to retractions and damage your reputation.

For assistance with any of these activities and tools, please contact the Geisinger Health Sciences Library at hsl@geisinger.edu.