Looking for a research journal that will publish?
Here are some places to start online!
Student Peer Review Journal Options
Student peer reviewed journals improve undergraduate training with motivational support, experience in submission processes, educational opportunities in improving writing skills and training in peer review editing.
Careful selection is required to ensure the journal meets the standards for indexing in the well-known academic database for the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Report.
Clarivate advise using the Impact Factor to measure the quality of a journal with informed peer review.
It is the frequency with which article in a journal has been cited in a particular year or period. The calculation is a ratio between citations and recent citable items published.
Medical Journal tier system:
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 4
Journals without Impact Factor.
Balhara (2012) identifies other important factors such as language preference of the database, number of references cited in the "average article", coverage, citation collection procedures, citation distribution of journals, availability of online publications, negative citations, selective preference in journal topic, publication lag, citing behaviour across subjects and influence from journal editors.
Database Indexing
Journals submit to have their publications indexed to the relevant databases for visibility and readership.
Look for a journal with the same prerequisites that the database consider.
Aspects of database include;
- field relevancy
- ethical publishing practices
- adhere to technical requirements
- quality and scope of interest to an international audience
- English language bibliographies
- databasing indexing using author, headings, abstracts, keywords or referencing
- quality or peer reviewed
- efficiency in workflow and processes
- accepted by other databases.
Comparing Journals for Selection
Management of library journal collections by librarians
Positioning of journals using quantitative evidence (impact factor)
Interests in evaluating advertising potential of a specific journal
Peer review, productivity, and subject specialty citation rates (author prestige in journals)
Selective judgement for small journals
Seek peer review journals strict peer review system in accordance with international editing guidelines and experts mentors. These result in good-quality submissions. Journals with government, agency, academic institutions or professional publishing groups funding offer financial stability with the future dissemination of knowledge (Aboshady & Gouda, 2016).
First Tier Journals
Approaching journals with high level tier ranking enables opportunity for resubmission or options in approaching another journal.
Tier one medical journals are the journals that have the most impact on medicine - any given publication from these journals has a significant potential to change clinical practice for the better and improve human health.
Second Tier Journal Options
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement offers a good research list for second tier journals. It gives options for work submitted by students and professionals. These are the leading journals.
Journal with highest impact factor for 2016
CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, (131.723)
(Clarivate Analytics, 2017)
Most items published
PLoS One, 28114 (ranking 5th for total citations and 1786th for Journal Impact Factor)
(Clarivate Analytics, 2017)
First ranked journal
NEJM (more than 50 000)
(Massachusetts Medical Society, 2014; Thomson Reuters. 2015a)
The second and third ranked journals
The Lancet (45.217)
JAMA (35.289)
(Thomson Reuters, 2015b)
Suggested Reading
References
Aboshad, O. A., & Gouda, M. A. (2016). Pros and cons of student journals. Perspectives of Medial Education. 5(1): 63–64. doi:10.1007/s40037-015-0244-2
Journals in the 2016 release of journal citation reports—2016 journal citation reports. (2016). Retrieved September 5, 2017, from the Clarivate Analytics Website: http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/imgblast/JCRFullCovlist-2016.pdf
Low, W. Y., Kwan Hoong Ng, M. A. Kabir, Ai Peng Koh, & Janaki Sinnasamy (2014). Trend and impact of international collaboration in clinical medicine papers published in Malaysia. Scientometrics. 98(2): 1521–1533. doi:10.1007/s11192-013-1121-6
Media Center: Fact Sheet. Retrieved September 4, 2017, from the Massachusetts Medical Society, New England Journal of Medicine Website: http://www.nejm.org/page/media-center/fact-sheet
Thomson Reuters. (2015a). Rank in category: New England Journal of Medicine. 2014 Journal Citation Reports. United States: Thomson Reuters.
Thomson Reuters. (2015b). Journals Ranked by Impact: Medicine, general & internal. 2014 Journal Citation Reports. United States: Thomson Reuters.
