Here is a work flow for generating a list of potential publication targets.
1. Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE) – Plug your abstract into JANE and clicked find journals. You can experiment with the text input, for example including all or just certain sections of your abstract and seeing if/how it affects the journal suggestions the tool spits out. Review the resulting suggestions with an eye towards relevance, field and journal impact. JANE is a free tool and they don’t license the official journal impact factor (IF) data, so they use the alternative measure of “Article Influence” score, but it largely tracks with IF so if a journal has a higher article influence score, it is likely to have a higher IF as well.
2. PubsHub – Once you've selected a number of journal suggestions from JANE, plug them into PubsHub, a licensed tool available via the library, that allows you to compare journals based on various features including readership, rejection rates, impact factor, and publication turnaround time. You can compare up to 5 journals at a time on PubsHub. PubsHub can help you determine the best target(s) depending on your goal. For example, if you have a tight timeline, you may want to prioritize publication turnaround time over impact factor. If you have already received a few rejections and want to look for a journal that's more likely to accept your article, you may prioritize a journal with a low rejection rate over other factos.
3.Using the suggestions from JANE and information from PubsHub, create a list of possible targets. Visit each journal's website to ensure that your article fits within their Aims & Scope and that they accept the type of article you've written (e.g. case series, review article, etc.).
By the end of the process, you ideally want to have a list of 3-6 journals. If you need help with any steps in the process, feel free to email us at RefDesk@mssm.edu and we'll be happy to schedule a meeting to assist you with the process.
