connecting you with information, support and your community More and more journal articles… World average growth in volume of articles published since 2006: 4% per year. 2010: over 1.9 million articles were published. UK share of the world’s top 1% of most highly cited papers 13.8% in 2010, 2nd only to the US. SOURCE: International Comparative Performance of the UK Research Base Report prepared by Elsevier for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

connecting you with information, support and your community UK research context (Finch report facts!) 28% of UK R&D is conducted in the HE Sector There are 250,000 researchers in the UK: 6m in the World. UK researchers produce just over 6% of the peer reviewed papers published each year “The rise in the no. of articles published by UK authors has not been as fast as in the very high-growth countries such as India and Brazil…” “UK researchers’ rate of productivity is more than 50% above the world average.” “citations to UK articles increased between 2006 and 2010 by 7.2% a year, faster than the world average of 6.3%” “..part of the explanation for the UK’s success is that it attracts internationally-mobile researchers. UK researchers are also more likely than those in almost any other major research nation to collaborate with colleagues overseas: almost half (46%) of the articles published by UK authors in 2010 included a non-UK author.”

connecting you with information, support and your community Your own publication strategy 1.How are you going to make your work stand out? –Type of output: journal, book, conference, blog, combination… 2.How can you make sure that your journal article is read and cited? –Choose a journal: which measures and features matter. 3.How to publicise your work once it is published? –Combination of outlets

connecting you with information, support and your community RIN (September 2009). Communicating knowledge: How and why UK researchers publish and disseminate their findings, Research Information Network; JISC. 1. Publication practices…types of output connecting you with information, support and your community

Types of publishing and dissemination channels (listed in order of importance, as rated by researchers in RIN survey) 1.Peer reviewed journals 2.Conference presentations 3.Posters 4.Monographs 5.Book chapters 6.Professional journals 7.Open access repository 8.Reports 9.Datasets 10.Working papers 11.Creative works (including exhibitions & performances) 12.Internet blog/forum 1. Overview of Publication types… connecting you with information, support and your community

RAE: what was submitted? Warwick 2008 RAE journal articles: 3014 Warwick 2008 RAE all types: 3923 All institutions 2008 RAE journal articles: 167,831 All institutions 2008 RAE all types: 222,177 Merit/Merit-Search/ Merit/Merit-Search/ 1. Overview of Publication types… connecting you with information, support and your community

How do I choose the best journal to send my article to? 1.Publication practices in your field 2.Citation based measures like the impact factor: 3.Rejection/acceptance rates: 4.Other factors to consider

connecting you with information, support and your community What is the Journal impact factor? Measurement of citations to articles in a journal. Based on a particular data set: –Thomson Reuters’ JCR, found on Web of Knowledge (WoK) selects journals for indexing in this way. –SciMago is an alternative source to Thomson Reuters - (Based on Elsevier’s SCOPUS citations data) Google Scholar also track citations but have not ranked journals Not all journals have one! Other journal rankings: European reference index for the humanities:

connecting you with information, support and your community COMPARE LIKE WITH LIKE –TR ation/#presentations ation/#presentations Impact Factor

connecting you with information, support and your community Reasons to cite: Paying homage to experts Giving credit to peers Criticising/correcting previous work (own or others) Sign-posting under-noticed work Provide background reading Lend weight to own claims Self citations! BEWARE: Impact Factors are based on citations data connecting you with information, support and your community

Not only the JCR 2 year impact factor… JCR is part of Web of Knowledge: On JCR you can also look at: No. of articles per journal the 5 year impact factor, an immediacy index, cited half-life, the Eigenfactor and ArticleInfluence. Also see SJR: Uses Elsevier’s data 3. Journal publication: measures of a journal connecting you with information, support and your community

Other than Impact factors - Authors’ experience Is it peer reviewed? (Type of peer review & time it takes: who are the reviewers?) Timeliness of their publication processes? (time ‘til acceptance/rejection! From acceptance to publication?) Clear information about the journal and about how to submit on their website? Contacts amongst their existing authors or reviewers or editors? connecting you with information, support and your community

Other than Impact factors… Is it online? Distribution/readership/web statistics Is it abstracted & indexed – where? Peer opinions : of journal : of editorial board! SUITABILITY – subject, style, length, diagrams, etc Is it Open Access? Or is there an OA policy?

connecting you with information, support and your community Sources of data when evaluating a journal Ulrich’s periodicals directory records “300,000 periodicals”: (Library subscription) Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) :5700+ titles: SherpaRoMEO (OA deposit policies of 799 publishers): Journal Home pages (not host sites) People! to find Warwick authors. MLA Directory of Periodicals give submitted and published stats connecting you with information, support and your community

Peer Review (aka Refereeing) processes Open: both authors and reviewers know each other. Blind: author doesn’t know reviewer. Double blind: neither author nor reviewer known to each other. (Often difficult to hide author/institution!) –Nature use blind peer review Peer review in other contexts than journal publication: eg REF! Number of reviewers per article? They may disagree: Editor final decision? Outcomes: 1.to unconditionally accept the manuscript or proposal, 2.to accept it in the event that its authors improve it 3.to reject it, but encourage revision and invite resubmission, 4.to reject it outright. connecting you with information, support and your community

Rejection: Resilience & persistence! Journal rejection rates are high: they may be explained on journal home page. Editors will know. Some over 90% “Rejection rate” depends on what they consider to be a rejection. Some give an acceptance rate instead! Vary with discipline. Speed of publication may be a factor: better to get a swift rejection! No.s of articles submitted are increasing. PLoSOne rejects about 30% BUT this is not a probability rate: You can influence your chances! connecting you with information, support and your community

Tips for getting accepted Other than ensuring that your article fits the aims and scope of the journal and is formatted according to instructions, you can: –Make your abstract exciting! Explain what your article brings to knowledge in this area. –Include a covering letter tailored to the editor/journal you are approaching. –Make it easy for the editor to notice and remember your article. Introduce yourself to an editor at a conference or any other opportunity, and make a good impression!

connecting you with information, support and your community Vancouver protocols for co-authorship authorship credit should be based on all of these: (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis of and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published.

connecting you with information, support and your community Copyright… & Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Don’t publish if you intend to patent! Expect: –Permissions clearances for content in your publication –Indemnity clauses: nothing the author has written is libellous / infringes IPR / is contempt of court. Warwick guidelines: pyright pyright Theses & third party guidelines: s/theses/ s/theses/ Publisher Agreements on SherpaRomeo connecting you with information, support and your community

Payments to publishers Open access fee –Vary by country. –Limited sources of support for paying these Article processing charges Per-page fee (often if you go beyond a set number) Per colour illustration Cost of permission to include others’ copyright content in your article. connecting you with information, support and your community

After your work is published… Publicise it! Deposit in repositories (institutional/subject) –OpenDOAR directory: List your publications online: department page, own page, profile/networking sites like LinkedIn & Academia.edu Send print copies to other researchers/authors Network to find researchers with interest in your work – real world & online. Blog or tweet? Citation alerts to see who is citing your article Self-citation! connecting you with information, support and your community

UK Research Integrity Office & Committee on Publication Ethics: RetractionsCorrections Seriously flawed or erroneous data such that findings/conclusions cannot be relied upon – honest error or misconduct. Proven and justified authorship claims “Redundant publication” (more than one journal!) Small part of article reports on flawed data, as result of genuine error PlagiarismAuthor errors: not production errors (those are Erratum) Unethical research - failure to disclose conflicts of interest connecting you with information, support and your community

5 Dos and Don’ts for authors Do look at journals in your own bibliography. If you are citing from them, your work could be of interest to other readers. Do check the websites of suitable journals. Journal guidelines on preparing your article will help you tailor your writing to match the style and language of other published pieces. Do send your article first to friends and peers for informal review. Don’t let rejection knock your confidence – learn from the peer review process and revise your article in light of it. Don’t underestimate the length of time it takes – calls for rapid responses and online publications might be a faster route. …from the Research Exchange article Finally… connecting you with information, support and your community