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Publication strategies & Open Access: Choosing a journal to publish in

Choosing a journal to publish in

Where will you publish your next journal article? With thousands of journals available it can be hard to find the right journal for your work. At the bottom of this page you can find an overview of tools that can help you create a 'shortlist' of journals to publish in. Some disciplines or research schools have developed journal lists, providing an overview of the journals most relevant to them.

But also take into account: 

Aims & scope

After creating a shortlist of suitable journals you need to check the aims and scope of the journals. This helps you to find out 

  • The type of articles the journal accepts
  • The kind of research methodology the journal accepts
  • The topics covered
  • The peer-review policy

This information is available on the website of the journal, see for example Development or Journal of Adult Development.

Open Access options

When choosing a journal the options to publish in Open Access can be important as well. All EUR-researchers are required to make their publications Open Access and most research funders have adopted policies that make Open Access publishing mandatory.

In the Erasmus Journal Browser you can see if you, as an EUR-researcher, can publish in Gold Open Access in a particular journal for free or against reduced rates. You can benefit from the agreements the EUR has concluded with publishers.

Please note: to make use of the deal with the publisher, the EUR-researcher has to be the (submitting) corresponding author. The corresponding author should make sure to use their ERNA email address when submitting, so that the affiliation with the EUR is clear.

Abstracting and indexing information

Where is the journal indexed? In other words: in which databases will researchers and students be able to find your article in their search results? Are these multidisciplinary databases, like Scopus or Web of Science, and/or discipline specific databases like EconLit, ERIC, PsycINFO or Sociological Abstracts? Are these databases you and your peers use?

This information is shown on the website of the journal, under headers like 'Abstracted and indexed in', 'Abstracting and indexing information' or just 'Indexing'.

The database Ulrichsweb.com, where you can find detailed information on periodicals, also provides abstracting and indexing information per journal. You can also check the database(s) you use or know yourself. 

Tools to find journals to publish in

Several tools have been developed to help you find suitable journals: these tools allow you to upload title, abstract and/or keywords of your article and – using data of articles already published - matching journals are shown. Some of these tools are publisher specific, others are publisher neutral.

Tools per publisher

General tools, publisher neutral

Journal level tool

Journal lists

Some disciplines and schools have created list of journals to publish in. These list are sometimes also used to evaluate researchers. This is a selection:

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