Making a shortlist

Before investigating the details of potential journals, it is a good idea to identify a list of likely candidates.

Your references – The references you have based your own work on are likely to provide good potential journals.

Suggestions from colleagues – Your colleagues who have published themselves are likely to have some helpful suggestions for you, especially if they can read your draft paper.

Indexing databases – searching for the title of your article and key terms can produce some good journal candidates.

Publisher websites and suggestion tools – these are becoming increasingly successful at matching the abstracts and titles of a paper to similarly themed journals, often with percentage scores for relevance.

You can quickly make a long list of journals from these few sources to begin investigating further. You can shorten the list by considering your priorities or funder/institution requirements, like the speed of publication, the extensive reach of readership, open access, or the journal’s reputation.

Download our journal selection spreadsheet for tracking journals you may be interested in submitting to, and complete it with the type of information suggested in this guide.

Use in conjunction with the EASE Quick Check Table for Submission to record all detailed instructions of each journal and ensure you have all the required material ready before starting your submission.