Scholarly Publishing Resources
Deciding Where to Publish| Impact Factors | Rankings | Acceptance Rates | Peer Review | Impact Factor | Writing | Citations | Copyright | Publication Process | Scholarly Publishing & Scientific Research | Dissertation Research and Writing| Ebooks |
Deciding Where to Publish
Publishers/Submission Guidelines or Author Instructions
Publisher web sites are the best source for information about journals. However, there is no single webpage listing links to all publishers. One of the best ways to find a publisher website is to use Google. Enter the name of the journal into the Google search box using quotation marks. When a list of matches appears, look for the link to the publisher. For example, enter "Journal of Reading Research", then select the publisher's link, International Reading Association, from the list. The publisher's website provides links to instructions for authors, the back issues (archives), editorial board members, how to obtain permission to use copyrighted material in this journal, and more.
Handbooks are essential resources in the field of education. Because of the extensive references found in handbooks, they can be a great source for the names of journals important in a particular field of research. Be sure to go to the publisher's website for that journal to verify submission guidelines and addresses.
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory
This online directory offers users access to periodicals information. It provides links to tables of contents, article abstracts, journal full-text, reviews,and document delivery. It also indicates whether the journal is referred, available electronically, or Open access. If the journal is indexed by ISI there may be a link to the Journal Citation Report included as well. There is also information on where the title is indexed. This can be an excellent source for determining publisher contact information, which will lead to the submission guidelines for a particular journal.Cabell's Directories - Educational Set
Cabell's Directories provide information about journals such as editorial board members, acceptance rates (usually not available on publisher web sites), percentage of invited articles, and what type of review process is used to evaluate submitted manuscripts . There are three separate directories in the Educational Set:
Call for Papers from a Journal
Conferences are not the only places that "call for papers." Journals may also put out a "call for papers" and this may be just your ticket to finding a publisher for your research. The practice of soliciting papers for theme issues varies from journal to journal, with some journals having every issue centered around a theme to infrequent or non-existent theme issues.How do you find journals that are soliciting articles? The best way is visiting the journal publisher's web site. Some publisher's post "calls" for all journals on one website, for example, Routledge Publishers and Elsevier. In another example, the publisher posted the "calls" on the website for each journal, for example, Early Education & Development or The Journal of College Science Teaching.
How can you find these "calls"? One good starting point is Google. Try searches such as the following and note the dates as Google will also post "calls" for which the date is past. Who knows, publishers may be "calling" for papers just like yours!
"call for papers"
"call for papers" education
"call for papers" psychology
"call for papers" preschool
Impact Factors
The Impact Factor is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), now part of Thomson Reuters. Impact factors are calculated yearly for those journals that are indexed in Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports.
Journal Ranking
Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
This companion publication to the Web of Knowledge can provide interesting and informative measures that complement citation counts compiled for individual publications or authors. JCR offers analysis of data gathered from 9,000 source journals carefully surveyed by ISI. Among the attributes that can be identified through the JCR, the most frequently discussed is the "impact factor" associated with each journal. By indicating the frequency with which the typical article in a particular journal is cited in subsequent years, impact factors provide one measure of the influence and reputation of the journal that has accepted an author's contribution. High impact factors generally correlate with low acceptance rates, and the highest impact factors are usually found in widely recognized journals such as Science and Nature.
eigenFACTOR.org: Ranking and mapping scientific knowledge
Eigenfactor.org is a non-commercial academic research project sponsored by the Bergstrom lab in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. The Eigenfactor algorithm, somewhat like the Google algorithm, corresponds to a simple model of research in which readers follow chains of citations as they move from journal to journal. This is one of other potential methods for evaluating the influence of scholarly periodicals and for mapping the structure of academic research that the Berstrom lab hopes to develop.
Acceptance Rates
The journal's publisher may provide this information online or you can contact the publisher directly for that information.
Education Journal Acceptance Ratings. This is an Excel file compiled by Judy Walker from University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Data is from 2007.Cabell's Directories (Print only). Cabell's Directories provide information about journals such as editorial boafrd members, acceptance rates (usually not available on publisher web sites), and information in these print volumes may be dated, so please also consult the publisher's web sites (see the Publisher web sites listing above).
Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Educational Psychology and Administration Z286 .E3 C323 7th 2005/2006 --Reference area
Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Educational Curriculum and Methods Z286 .E3 C322 7th 2005/2006 --Reference area
Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Education Z286 .E3 C32 5th 1998/99 --Reference area
Peer Review, Blind Review, Editorial Review, etc.
There are various ways to determine the type of review process used by a journal. If you know the specific name of the journal, you can simply look up the journal on the publisher's webpage and read the author submission guidelines. The guidelines usually provide information concerning the type of review process used by the journal.
Many databases provide review information about the journals they index. Those databases that do, usually give you the option to limit your searches to only peer reviewed or referred journal articles.
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory
This online directory offers users access to periodicals information. It provides links to tables of contents, article abstracts, journal full-text, reviews,and document delivery. It also indicates whether the journal is referred, available electronically, or Open access. If the journal is indexed by ISI there may be a link to the Journal Citation Report included as well. There is also information on where the title is indexed. This can be an excellent source for determining publisher contact information, which will lead to the submission guidelines for a particular journal.
Articles Discussing Impact Factors, Citation Analysis, etc.
Method or Madness? Educational Research and Citation Prestige
This article by Kate Corby, one of the top education librarians in the country, points out that only 27 per cent of the 1,124 journals indexed by ERIC or Education Index/Abstracts are indexed in Social Sciences Citation Index. An argument is made for why an assessment of a researcher's stature, based only on citation counts recorded in SSCI would potentially miss far more than it found.
The Agony and the Ecstasy--the History and Meaning of the Journal Impact Factor
Eugene Garfield, the founder of ISI and a noted bibliometrician, discusses impact factor. He has long held that it must be used discretely. He is a noted authority and his writings are available at the ISI Web Site
The Number That Is Devouring Science
An October 14th 2005 article from The Chronicle of Higher Education that includes an in-depth study of the rise of the impact factor's importance.
The Rise and Rise of Citation Analysis
An interesting article about standard and new tools for citation analysis.
The Tyranny of Citations
Inside Higher Education. May 8 2006 article takes the position that citation prestige has been taken to extremes both for the assessment of individuals and of the productivity and influence of entire universities or even academic systems.
Writing the article
ANSI/NISO Standards for Abstracts
The appendix has many examples of different kinds of abstracts in various fields.
Structured Abstracts for Education Research - An ERIC Initiative
The education community has become increasingly focused on evidence-based decision-making and is seeking a concise way to rapidly identify, locate, and evaluate education research. Structured abstracts encourage explicit, factual reporting, with concrete details about study design and outcomes. They may be used for both qualitative and quantitative research. Structured abstracts differ from traditional narrative abstracts by including pre-defined headings, or elements, within the body of the abstract. They serve as an overview to the full research study.
Citations
RefWorks
RefWorks, an online research management, writing and collaboration tool, is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies. This web-based software is available free of charge to U.Va. affiliates. If you need assistance learning to use this software, contact the library at 434-294-7039.
Landmark's Citation Machine
Citation Machine is an interactive web tool designed to assist high school, college, and university students, their teachers, and independent researchers in their effort to respect other people's intellectual properties. Generates standard (MLA & APA) bibliographic and in-text citations.
APA Exposed: A How-To Video Tutorial on APA 6th Edition
This online APA tutorial developed by Harvard University has been designed to supplement the in-person workshop, to be a stand-alone resource, to provide point-of-need assistance, and to facilitate student access to citation "how-to" information for APA format. Additionally, the tutorial has self-checks and additional resources for APA citation information.
Who is citing your work
Web of Knowledge / Web of Science (WOS) database or view a WOS tutorial
Published by the Institute for Scientific Information, (ISI), this resource allows users to search for articles gathered from over 5,700 science and engineering journals, 1,700 social sciences journals, and 1,100 arts and humanities journals. It includes three indexes, Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. One can search all three or each database separately for authors, their articles, and who is citing those articles. Frequent updates make it a good source for very recent information.
Google Scholar
Type the author's name into the search box and you will get a list of scholarly publications by that author. Underneath the hits you will see "cited by 14" or "cited by 4" etc. Click on that link and you have the sources that cite the article.
ISIHighlyCited.com
ISIHighlyCited.com is a freely accessible website tool developed by Thomson Scientific that researchers can use to identify individuals, departments and laboratories whose collected publications have received the highest number of citations across the past two decades. ISI Thomson Scientific is the same group that created the Web of Knowledge/Web of Science databases. New researchers are added as Thomson Scientific completes analysis of successive 20 year files.
Publish or Perish
Offers free software you can download to your computer that will retrieve and analyze academic citations taken from Google Scholar. It presents the total number of papers, citations, average number of citations per paper, average number of citations per author, average number of papers per author and other parameters related to faculty productivity. An interesting alternative to ISI's Web of Science.
Google Book Search
Put author names in as keyword searches and you can track them as cited authors. Google Book Search includes full text books from the public domain, as well as sample pages and snippets from copyrighted materials. An excellent source to track references to various authors and titles.
Citation Alerts
Web of Science permits researchers to receive e-mail alerts on future citations to specific articles. The articles that interest you must be indexed by Web of Science or Science Direct. You will need to register to use these services. The registration is free.
Databases
Increasingly, we find vendors are including "cited by" information for the databases they provide our users. This option varies depending on the database you are using. See your librarian for assistance.
Copyright
Copyright Basics
Information from the United States Copyright Office
U.Va.'s Copyright PoliciesCreative Commons
Creative Commons supports open source publishing. Their tools give individual creators and large companies and institutions a standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work.
Council of Science Editor's White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications
Publish, Not Perish: Art & Craft of Publishing in Scholarly JournalsSherpa
Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.University of Texas, Austin: Crash Course in Copyright
The Publication Process
Publish, Not Perish: Art & Craft of Publishing in Scholarly Journals An online tutorial, including developing a publishing plan, from the University of Colorado Libraries. You will need to register to view, but there is no fee.
Peer–to–Peer: for peer reviewers and the peer review process. This is a blog, operated by Nature. The blog contains not only comments and discussion, but it organizes them into collections by topic.
Klingner, J. K., Scanlon, D., & Pressley, M. (2005). How to publish in scholarly journals. Educational Researcher, 34(8), 14-20. (UVa affiliates can click here to access the full text)
The Publication Cycle & Scientific Research
The Publication Cycle & Scientific Research: a video by the library staff at MIT. Includes an introduction to the publication cycle and scientific research, database search tips, evaluating information, and using and creating citations.
Dissertation Research & Writing
This collection of books to help you produce an award winning dissertation is shelved in the Curry Library Innovation Commons in Ruffner Hall near the Handbook collection.
