Image from: https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2023/04/18/pmc-as-an-archive/
MEDLINE currently indexes over 5600 journals in medicine and the life sciences. The Web of Science master journal list indexes over 24,000 journals covering 254 subject disciplines. With so many potential outlets for your work, it can be a daunting task finding a journal that is the right fit.
There are a few steps you can take at the beginning to help you narrow your focus and get you started on a short list of potential journals.
Completing these steps should give you enough information to draft a short list of potential journals for you to evaluate and narrow down. Here are a few things to think about when evaluating your short list:
Need a brief primer on using journal metrics and what they are? Check out this article in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology:
These journal/manuscript matchers have been developed by various entities and results will vary depending on which one you are using. They can be helpful in developing your short list of journals to investigate for submission. They can be also be a good tool to familiarize yourself with journals that publish in your area of research.
Journal matching tools
Publisher Journal Matching Tools
Note that these tools were created by their respective publishers and will only return results for journals published by them.
Dimensions - This "research and innovation" database links multiple sources together with more than 98 million publications and 150 million patents. Their data can provide insight into which journals have published research similar to yours.
Once you have decided which journal to submit your manuscript to, go to that journal's site and find the "Guide for Authors" page to see how you need to prepare your manuscript for submission.
Once you submit your manuscript the publisher will determine what happens next. There are several different ways this could go:
Remember you can only submit any given manuscript to one journal at a time. Simultaneous submissions are prohibited.
Terms used in scholarly publishing
Manuscript types - Your manuscript "version" depends on what stage of the publishing process it is at. It's a good idea to keep all versions of your manuscript.
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