Where To Publish Research Papers – Early-Career Advice

Where To Publish Research Papers – Early-Career Advice
The current publishing climate for academic and scientific writing tends to be so narrowly focussed on landing textual space in prestigious journals with a high impact that the importance of establishing a body of published work can take a backseat. There is no doubt that it is a fine thing indeed if a scholar’s early publications appear in such top-tier journals, and employers, tenure committees and funding bodies certainly recognise publication in high-impact journals as an indication of current success and future promise. However, there are many other respectable journals out there that maintain the highest scholarly standards, and they are not the only options for publishing writing to establish a body of high-quality scientific or academic work.

Conference proceedings are, for instance, an excellent venue for a scholar’s early publications. For one, attending and participating in conferences is essential to becoming part of the intellectual community in an academic or scientific field. Conferences provide the opportunity to meet face-to-face the scholars whose work you read and cite, and to introduce them to your work, which they will ideally read and cite in turn. The exchange of ideas that usually occurs as you present your paper, listen to the papers of others and discuss both is invaluable and will almost always improve your work and help you achieve publication. Many conferences result in published volumes containing all or some of the papers presented by participants. In some cases, these volumes will be published in print versions only, but many conference proceedings are now available online or in electronic editions, rendering them as discoverable by potential readers as online journals are. In addition, by working with the editors and other participants while you prepare, proofread, edit and revise your paper, you will gain valuable experience of the academic or scientific publication process.

Edited collections of scholarly essays provide the same kind of publishing experience. Like conference proceedings, they generally gather the papers of early-career scholars with one or more advanced scholars whose work is well known and highly cited, and researchers consulting the more prestigious writing will be exposed to that of newer authors as well. Inclusion in such a collection can suggest to potential employers and funding bodies that you are a well-connected member of an important intellectual community. As with conference proceedings, the possibility of the collection being published only in a print version can mean your paper will be less accessible than it might be in a top-tier electronic journal, but such collections will usually be purchased by university libraries and many are now produced as e-books as well.

Open-access journals that observe the highest scholarly standards but have not yet achieved the impact ratings of top-tier journals are another effective publication platform. Published in such journals, your work will be accessible via online searches, and your research will be readily available to readers, including those considering you for employment, promotion and grants. You will also have begun to establish a body of scholarly work that will prove beneficial the next time you submit your writing to one of those top-tier journals.