At National Lab, where bean counting was becoming more and more important, the impact factor trumped all. All raises and promotions had to be justified to non-scientists and/or former researchers in a wide array of fields. To make things easy, they would rank papers by impact factor, regardless of field. This is hugely distorting, since a great specialty journal in physics can have a smaller impact factor than a decent specialty journal in biomedical research (just due to the number of researchers in the sub-field). To get ahead, many people would find the journal with the highest impact factor that would publish the research.
My preferred style is to find a journal where my target audience is likely to read it. So if I am doing physics-type measurements on a protein, I would prefer to put it in a physics-type journal (where others might pick up on it and find it useful) rather than a protein-type journal where most readers could care less about this physics-type measurement, even if the impact factor is lower. Even though my bean-counting impact might be lower, I am counting on the actual impact being higher. What is the point of a high-impact publication if no one reads it? That said, when DrugMonkeyasked people about their citation practices, many commenters said they prefer to cite papers from higher impact journals, so clearly impact factor must be balanced with target audience.
This type of selection is much easier when I am intimately familiar with the sub-field. In that case, I know well which journals I read and cite, and can select accordingly. In this particular case, I don't have any knowledgeable colleagues or collaborators I can talk to, but that is generally my first stop in deciding where. How do you all pick where to submit your work (especially work in a new area for you)?
7 comments:
I get from your post that you are thinking about reputable journals that feature solid and novel work but not necessarily GlamourMag flashy. I think the question is: where were most of the references you cite published? That is the likely the venue you want to publish in. I think there are other factors you may want to consider at your career stage, such as the speed of the editorial and review processes (i.e., total time to publication). Good luck!
Yes, that is it--this is solid and interesting work (at least we think so!), but nothing flashy. I hadn't thought about the speed of the editorial process, but I definitely should! Thanks for the tip!
The speciality focus of a journal has little impact on whether members of the scientific community will notice a publication. Most researchers find scientific papers of interest by queries of specialized key words in PubMed and other search engines and then directly download the papers off of the web. The name of the journal is not typically one of these search terms. The reputation of the journal, as reflected in its impact factor, may offer some extra measure of respectability for a scientific manuscript, but the hit and miss quality of peer-reviews renders this an illusion. The number of times a published paper is cited is ultimately best measure of its real impact. Selection of open source journals and making sure the paper has a PubMed ID number are probably the best ways to ensure broad exposure of one's work.
My two cents from a while ago.
I'd second GMP's about the speed of the editoral and review processes since I've got quite frustrated about the lack of a reply from several journal editors. On the one hand I don't want to get in touch with them..since I'd like my article to be considered but on the other I'm always concerned I don't want to sound pushy etc.
Thanks for the link CE. Great food for thought.
I will definitely consider that, Anthea. I hate to prod editors, mostly for the same reasons.
@S. Pelech
I am not in a PubMed field, so no luck there. I know that most people find papers from queries, but I also know that in picking between papers to cite, many people will choose to cite the paper from the better known journal (see the linked discussion from DM's site).
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