Contact Publishing & Repository Services for Assistance:
Think. Check. Submit. also offers a series of checklists that can help you evaluate whether a journal is a good fit for your work.
For additional information about research impact, see this guide.
For information about authorship at Ohio State, please see the Authorship Guidelines.
For information about avoiding plagiarism using iThenticate, an anti-plagiarism software for use in screening scholarly research documents for possible copied or plagiarized text, please see this site.
The Committee on Publication Ethics, the Directory of Open Access Journals, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association and the World Association of Medical Editors are scholarly organizations that have collaborated to identify principles of transparency and best practice for scholarly publications.
Whether you are considering publishing in an open access journal or a subscription-based journal, it's important to evaluate the journal.
Generally speaking, if you or your colleagues are familiar with the journal, have published in it, or have cited work from it, it's most likely a good journal to choose. For additional guidance, your subject librarian is a great resource. You can also watch this panel presentation that discusses navigating the publishing process using real-life scenarios as examples.
Some additional criteria to consider include:
List adapted from Research Guides@Tufts' Identify and Evaluate Journals.
What is Open Access (OA)?
Why Should I Consider Publishing in an Open Access Journal?
What is Gold Open Access?
What is Green Open Access?
What is Hybrid Open Access?
Additional Information about Open Access:
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
Whether you choose to publish in an open access journal, it's worthwhile to consider sharing your work in an institutional repository (IR), like Ohio State's Knowledge Bank. Even if the journal requires a paid subscription to access its articles, you may be able to share the final published version, accepted manuscript, or pre-print/author's manuscript version of the article in an institutional repository, which expands its impact and reach. If you know you are interested in sharing your work in an IR, it's important to know your rights as an author and to closely read and potentially modify your publication agreement.
In addition to Ohio State's institutional repository, you can also consider submitting your work to disciplinary repository. A directory of disciplinary repositories can be found here.
If you have created data associated with your article, you can also consider sharing your data. Also, many funding agencies and journals are now mandating that data also be shared. The Ohio State University is a member Dryad Open Data Repository, and data publishing charges, including large file costs, will be waived for research data submissions made by researchers affiliated with Ohio State. If you have questions about depositing your data, please contact us.
While many journals may be supported by an institution or sponsor, some open access journals pay publishing costs by charging authors article processing charges, or APCs. The amount journals charge varies, and some journals have a waiver option for authors who can't afford to pay an APC. Some funding agencies that require researchers to make their published work and/or any supplemental data openly available also offer financial assistance to authors to cover an APC.
The Ohio State University Libraries has recently entered into a Read and Publish Agreement with Taylor & Francis Group. This agreement greatly increases Ohio State's access to Taylor & Francis journals, while also supporting Open Access publishing for Ohio State authors. Under this three-year agreement, Ohio State will have ongoing access to Taylor & Francis's collection of more than 2,300 journals and Open Access publishing costs of articles published by Ohio State corresponding authors in Taylor & Francis journals will be covered.
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