LibGuides: Health Law & Leadership of Healthcare Organizations Program: Publishing Resources

Publishing Resources

A few questions that come up every so often deal with how to publish a manuscript. It starts with choosing a journal to submit it to, but which one to choose? The Impact Factor (commonly refered to a measure of a journal's influence) is one way to target a journal. Another is to use the JANE tool to find journals that are publishing articles on similar topics. Of course, don't forget to seek the advice of your mentor.

Impact Factor
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Find out if the journal you like is highly used in within the discipline. Some may argue that articles in high impact factor journals are more influential.
The online version includes the most recent year and the past 5 years. It also has the EigenFactor data.
The print version is one year only - ask for it at the main desk.
Also available is a convenient list of journals within specific fields.
JANE - Journal and Author Name Estimator
Identify possible journals that have published on your specific topic by searching with your manuscript title and/or a portion of your text. They use the Medline database for identifying similar articles.

Results will include a list of journals publishing on your topic, and the Article’s Influence (based on Eigen Factor analysis). Eigen's Article Influence score is similar to the Impact Factor. For more details, see their FAQ:
http://www.eigenfactor.org/faq.htm
Open Access Journals
An additional consideration to the prestige and “impact” is breadth of readership. Most journals restrict online access to institutional or personal subscribers, so some readers may not be able to get access to your work.

UC has agreements with some publishers of open access journals to reduce or eliminate the author charges – more information is available at the link above.

Use the info button above for more information.
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Open access is a movement in publishing that changes the business model to shift costs away from readers. Publishers have different ways of recouping their expenses but in many cases, it puts costs onto you, the author.

Pros: with open access you could retain more of your copyrights to your work for future use.

Cons: potential added expense of publishing as the cost moves from reader to author.

Something else to think about!