Given the huge number of journals around, it can be hard to even draw up a shortlist of possible journals for your research article. As well as talking to colleagues and investigating journals that you read and cite papers from, there are some tools that will help narrow down your search.
One initial strategy is to conduct a document search in Scopus or Web of Science using keywords and phrases from your own manuscript. The results of this search could give you an indication of the journals that publish research in your research areas. It is also worth looking that the literature that you are citing in your paper - where has previous research on this topic been published?
If you are looking only for Open Access journals, there are also ways of searching for these by filtering your search results in bibliographic databases and journal comparison tools. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a useful tool for searching for fully open access journals.
When you've come up with a shortlist, don't forget to 'Think, Check, Submit' and to check out journal metrics and costs before you finally click on submit.
For more help and advice on choosing the right place to publish your work, contact the University's Research Publications Adviser.
The JANE tool can help suggest a suitable journal for your paper based on the title and the abstract. The tool searches journals that are included in Medline, so is only really suitable for papers in this subject area. You can also use this to find possible reviewers for your manuscript if a journal is asking for suggestions.
There is a helpful FAQ section on the JANE website. The background to the development of the tool is explained in a paper by Schuemie and Kors (2008), DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btn006.
If you are worried about disclosing the contents of your abstract, you can choose to scramble the text. You can also use keywords or just the title of your paper to conduct the search.
The results page from a JANE search. Journals are ranked by confidence level and open access journals are clearly flagged. The article influence score from eigenfactor.org is also given.
Many publishers provide tools to help you find journals that might be relevant for your manuscript. These use titles, keywords and abstracts to match your manuscript to possible journals.
Some of the tools will also provide acceptance rates, handling times and the costs of Open Access.
The Manuscript Marcher uses algorithms and data from the Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports to identify the most relevant journal for your manuscript. Manuscript Matcher is available in EndNote 21, EndNote 20 & EndNote X9.
A video describing how to use the tool is available from Clarivate using the link below.
Manuscript Matcher will display up to 10 journal matches for your manuscript as well as detailed information about each journal. A match score is calculated to determine how closely your article matches with published content in a particular journal. Other information provided includes the Journal Impact Factor, journal homepage, subject category, links to the journal submission page and the publisher's address.