We suggest you review this list and answer these questions first in your journal selection, preparation, and submission process:
1. Is the journal on your faculty’s approved list for your academic degree level?
2. Does your faculty require longer research articles (RAs) for academic rank or will they accept shorter research briefs (RBs)? RBs are usually 4,000 words or less. RA’s are usually 5,000 – 8,000 words.
3. Run a search on the journal archive and see if there are papers with similar topics to yours. Review them and compare them to your research. Also search on your country’s name (Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, etc.), and see if the journal is friendly to papers from your country/region. Many journals have a regional focus, although this is not stated.
4. Is the journal’s name on an archived Beall journal or publisher list? If it is, our best advice is to find another journal, even if it is SJR/Scopus indexed. A newer list of predatory publishers is now anonymously maintained online as well (use with extreme trepidation).
5. Confirm your targeted journal is indexed in Scopus, SJR, or ISI. The simplest way to start this process is to type in the journal’s name in Google followed by the word ‘Scopus’ or ‘SJR’. Also, confirm your targeted journal is not located on the Scopus journal removal/discontinued spreadsheet file. The October 2020 Scopus update is located here. On this list you will find many OMICS and WSEAS journals, as well as journals from other publishers you might not expect, such as Elsevier and Inderscience. Remember, just because a journal is listed with a top tier publisher does not mean they are Scopus indexed or not on a Beall list. Most are shocked to find out that there is a Scopus journal removal list, similar in some ways to what Jeffrey Beall was attempting to do with his predatory publishing lists.
6. Does your potential submission journal use an online submission system in which you can track your submission such as APSSR’s ScholarOne or KJSS’s ScholarOne? This is the best choice possible, and if you are submitting to top tier publishers, this won’t be a problem. However, be aware that many independent journals use an ‘online’ system but offer you no ability to track the submission (e.g. IJI). In reality, they are just a more complex email submission. Unfortunately, some really good journals use some really bad submission and tracking processes.
7. If the journal you select does not allow you to track your submission, often times just determining if they received your submission can be an exercise in futility. It is not unusual for authors to send emails to a journal 3 – 6 months after their submission, and receive an email back from a staff member saying they never received a submission from you (usually with no name). Worse yet, and far too often again, the journal will not respond at all. Therefore, if time is important to you, maybe the journal having the ability to allow you to track your submission is essential in your submission selection criteria?
8. Did you select a journal BEFORE you wrote your paper? This is what you were supposed to have done, but 99% write their paper first, and then select a journal. This is backwards and makes it much harder to find a journal with more esoteric topics. Also, many times an author’s paper topic does not match or fit a journal on the faculty’s approved journal list. Why create another problem?
9. Did you use the journal’s template and following their detailed guidelines? If you did not, the potential for your submission moving forward is almost zero. What might seem a bit odd to you in your journal research is that the higher a journal is ranked, the less likely it is they have a template. The reason for this is that the journal will take care of the finally formatting and proofing for you. Lower ranked journals have less support staff and expect the author to do this very labor intensive and time consuming job.
10. Did you use the correct style guide, citation, and reference system? Most social science journals use APA (edition 7 now), but many journals also use Harvard (all Inderscience journals), or an IEEE format. Here are quick links to the SAGE Harvard reference style, the SAGE Vancouver reference style, and the Sage APA reference style links.
11. Make sure your paper is cohesive, clear, and follows a logical order. This is especially critical if you are a non-native speaker. Did you logically order the hypotheses on your conceptual model and your final model? Do the models match your text and tables (most times they do not). Are the hypotheses in order and not jumping around between latent variables?
12. Make sure you use short abbreviations such as x1 or y1 for your observed variables or 2-3 letters for your latent variables such as CSR (corporate social responsibility), DES (destination), LOY (loyalty), etc. This is even more important if you are having your paper translated from your native language such as Thai or Chinese to English. This saves both the translators and the English language editors huge amounts of time and reduces the confusion factor significantly. It also increases the consistency of your translation and the paper’s reduction in possible review problems.
13. Keep you references ‘fresh’ (no older than 5 years if possible), especially in your discussion section. Be aware, it is not unusual for a journal pre-screening editor to reject your paper due to your references being too old. It is also not unusual in the review phase to receive a review back in which the reviewer has added up every reference to find your average, and either suggested you update your references and associated text, or reject your paper outright. Some journal editors take this very seriously!
14. Make every effort to provide English language references when possible. Remember, you are writing an English language paper for English language editors, reviewers and hopefully, the journal’s readers. If you must provide a reference to a non-English journal, paper, or book, make sure the reference is in English and you note what language the reference is in, such as Thai or Chinese. Providing a Thai language reference to a Thai language book is a no-go from the start.
15. Make sure you have approximately 8 - 10 references for every 1,000 words of text. Make sure they are in English with DOIs (digital object identifiers) or links to the original online document. Use a tool such as tinyurl.com, to make sure your links are brief, concise and short. If the referenced paper or book is in another language, make sure this is noted in the reference. Moreover, in most APA journals now, DOIs are usually considered a requirement. Moreover, if an editor sees a paper with 40 references and an 8,000 word count, this is a huge red flag. Once again, review the journal’s online papers and see what is typical and accepted.
16. Try to cite 1 – 2 papers from the journal you are submitting your paper to or from one of their sister publications. For some journals such as Germany’s iJET and iJOE, this is a requirement.
17. Be very aware of the number of tables and figures you submit with your paper. Simply stated, many journals prefer words over tables and figures, and often penalize the author for each table or figure they include, with 250 – 350 words deducted from the paper’s maximum word count allowance for each. Examples of this include JWL, JOM, and Urban Studies. Also, some social science journals such as APSSR in the Philippines, only allow a maximum of five tables and figures, which is strictly enforced. Finally, make sure your figures and tables are easy to read.
18. Did you run a Turnitin check prior to submission? If not, you might get a nasty surprise in the form of a rejection email because your score is higher than the journal’s screening cutoff (typically 15% or less now in 2020). Also, in many cases, the journal will simply reject your paper and not send you any email about their rejection. If they have no online tracking system, you might loose many months of time. The concept of a ‘customer’ and ‘service’ are unknown words within the academic publishing business.
19. If you did run a Turnitin report, make sure you edit it, then run another report (Turnitin refers to editing your submission a second time as ‘wordsmithing’, which we find sadly funny). Reasonably good editing should be able to reduce the score by at least 50%, which might be critical for your paper’s continuation in the submission/review process. Your target score for this process is a Turnitin cumulative score of 15% or lower. Higher than 15% puts your submission into the ‘danger zone’ of possible rejection.
20. Was your paper edited by a native English speaker prior to submission? Try to find someone at your university who can do this. If no one is available, use Grammarly’s free service at a minimum to identify problem areas. Finally, all major publishers have their own in-house or contracted editing services, with some publishers and journals suggesting very strongly that non-native English authors should use their service.
21. Will the journal give you an acceptance letter with an issue number and year for your paper? (Most journals will give you an acceptance letter if you state you want one when you pay your Article Processing Charge) Some such as Thailand’s Maejo International Journal of Science and Technology specifically state they will not: “The journal has no policy in issuing an acceptance letter before publication.”
22. If your paper has been accepted by an Open Access (OA) journal or submitted (and paid for) as an OA paper, publication dates are not a big worry. However, if your paper is not being published as an OA paper, the actual publication date is a serious concern if you are in a hurry or your faculty will not take an acceptance letter (most do not for tenure/rank). Once again, waiting for up to two years to see your paper published is not unusual. Do you have that much time to wait until graduation or promotion? This is one major reason students and academics now opt for expensive OA journals, as it speeds up the publication date which is required for either graduation or promotion.
23. Do you have an ORCID? If not go to their site and get one. This takes less than 60 seconds. Many journals require this number with many submission systems not allowing you to finish a submission unless you enter your ORCID.
24. Finally, choose a journal you honestly have a chance of being accepted by. Be honest with yourself, and don’t set yourself up for failure and the loss of many months of very valuable time and money. Getting your paper published in a Q1 or Q2 ranked journal is a great goal, but is your paper really that good? At a minimum, follow this list and you have increased your chances significantly.
25. The actual paper publication process can also take up to two years. If the journal does not issue an acceptance letter, you might have to wait a very long time to schedule your dissertation defense or apply for academic rank. Therefore, time to publish (not acceptance) in a non-OA journal can be a significant concern and part of the criteria you use for journal selection for your paper’s publication.
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