Where to Submit Your Manuscript

This blog post comprises points from How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 9th edition (2022). These points come from Chapter 6, “Where to Submit Your Manuscript”. 

In early editions of this book, information on where to submit your manuscript appeared after the section on writing the different parts of the paper. Starting from the 6th edition (2006), a chapter on where to submit your manuscript has come before this section. 

Why does such material now come earlier? Because having a journal in mind before writing your paper is helpful. Not only do different journals have different requirements (such as for format). Also, different journals have different emphases and readerships, and so papers should be geared differently to suit them. 

Now, three points from this chapter:

(1) Identify journals that have published research analogous to yours. Often, such journals are suitable ones in which to publish your work. 

(2) Be sure to submit work only to valid journals—not to entities (sometimes called predatory journals) that obtain fees from authors but do not provide valid peer review and publication. The website Think.Check.Submit. (https://lnkd.in/guWddSSF) offers help on identifying credible journals and book publishers. Other sources of guidance include librarians and senior colleagues. 

(3) After choosing a journal, look analytically at some papers in it. Doing so can help in ascertaining the journal’s expectations and identifying papers that can be models to follow. (Of course, also look carefully at the journal’s instruction to authors.) 

(An ironic experience: While writing this post, I received email inviting me to submit a paper to a journal. Some features of the email suggested that the journal was  predatory. One was the sentence, “I appreciate your professionalism and knowledge after a view at your article  Choosing a Journal for Submission: Don’t Fall Prey.” By the way, this short article can be accessed at https://lnkd.in/gXSB6b6W.)  

Looking forward to providing some points from other chapters in a future post! 

Barbara Gastel, MD, is professor of integrative biosciences and medical humanities at Texas A&M University, College Station, USA, where she coordinates the graduate program in science communication.

This series of posts originally appeared on Professor Barbara Gastel's LinkedIn page.

How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, by Barbara Gastel and Robert A. Day, is available in paperback, hardback and Kindle format.