Publishing Your Research

Congratulations! You've written a research paper, and it's really good. So good, in fact, that you want to get it published. So how do you get started?

1. Talk to a faculty member in your field. This might be your advisor or your course professor. They can often point you to great journals for your research.

2. Do a search on topics or themes similar to what you are writing about and see where those articles are published. Take a look at your own reference list - what journals are you citing? They might be the same ones you want to publish in. Consider also publishing outside your field. For example, if you have done research on the history of economics for a business course, look at both economics journals and history journals.

3. Once you've selected a few journal titles, find the website for those journals. Read their mission or focus to find out what topics or methodologies they are interested in. Some journals will only publish empirical research, while others are looking for case studies. Check out their table of contents to become familiar with the kinds of articles they publish, as well as the formatting and tone. 

4. When you're ready, most articles have author submission directions or a portal where you can create an account and submit your article. Make sure you read the author guidelines. You should never simultaneously send your article to more than one journal, or submit something that has already been published elsewhere. 

A note to undergraduate students: Academic journals often will not publish undergraduate research. However, there are specific journals that do accept undergraduate research:

Peer Reviewed The peer-review publishing process is when other experts in your field review your work, and give feedback and recommendations on whether or not your work should be published. Some scholarly journals have sections where they publish non-peer reviewed articles. These articles might be labeled as "Commentary," "Issues," "Opinion Essay," or some other category name. Make sure you clearly read the requirements and expectations to determine what type of article your paper would best fit.

Top Journals in your Field Many professions have "top journals" in their fields. These might be journals that are highly competitive, are cited most frequently, or are sought after based on a combination of subjective and objective metrics.

• Journal Citation Reports through Thompson Reuters will generate lists of journals in some fields based on citation metrics.
• Many professional associations, organizations and accreditation agencies will also list journals, which can be a good place to start.
• Don't forget to also look outside your field. If your research overlaps with more than one content area, consider looking at journals publishing articles from the alternative perspective (for example, research on college students' study habits might be interesting to both higher education journals and psychology journals). 
• Look for call for papers (CFPs). Occasionally journals will put out a call for article submissions, especially when they are planning an issue around a special topic.

Open Access Publications that are open access remove price barriers and permission barriers - in other words, free to access and free to reuse. There are many different kinds of open access publications that have different business models. If you want to make your article is freely available, you may chose to publish in an open access journal. Even if you end up not publishing in open access, make sure you read a journal's copyright information to find out what you can and cannot do with your article once it is published. 

Avoid Predatory Journals A few journals claim to use peer-review, but instead will publish anything an author pays to have published; and/or aren't interested in scholarship, only to make money. It can be difficult to tell which journals are predatory, so below are few resources to help.