Choosing a Journal

Next, we want to familiarize ourselves with the article types published by a journal and any specific guidelines. Each journal provides author instructions or submission guidelines. These guidelines often cover the journal's purpose and scope, the types of articles a journal publishes, any page restrictions, the number of figures and tables allowed, and any other requirements you mind to keep in mind. Especially if you plan to publish a case report, a specific type of review, or any other special type of research, you should review what types of articles the journal accepts and see if you can find those article types recently published in the journal to make sure it is a good fit for your work. Most author guidelines are easily found from the journal's homepage. The University of Toledo Mulford Health Science Library has a repository of links to author guidelines for over 6,000 journals in the health and life sciences. 

Journal editors consider many things when deciding whether to accept a submission: the readership of the journal, its impact, and yes, the quality and relevance of the article submitted. An article is more likely to be accepted if it follows not only author guidelines set out by the journal or publisher but also makes it easier for the editor to give the green light. Ensuring that the article is of publishable quality - correct grammar, clear language, well-formatted citations - is key.

English is a dominant language used in scientific writing but if it is not your native language, writing can be tricky: English is a difficult language to learn and master, and discursive language if difficult even for native English speakers. Researchers are encouraged to read widely and write in English as early in their careers as possible and to have proficient English speakers look over and edit their work, especially ahead of submission. There are editing services provided by independent editors and scholarly publishers, for a fee of course, but when it comes to editing and translation, it's important to rely on humans rather than word processing online resources, as they cannot convey the nuances of the English language.

There are helpful resources here at Northwestern: The Writing Place offers writing services that are tailored to graduate students, faculty, and staff, and additionally, Feinberg trainees can access research support through the Starzl Academy.

Being positively responsive to peer review and respectful of timelines and protocols is also important. Of equal importance is know what NOT to do: don't haggle the editor for a response or complain if your work is rejected, don't leave out any requirements in your submission, don't ask for information that you can discover on your own, like where the the journal is indexed and what its impact is.

Making yourself familiar with journals' expectations for an editor and getting perspective from the other side may also help to increase the chances of a successful submission.