This document provides guidance on targeting core journals for publication, retaining copyright as an author, and making an impact. It defines what makes a journal core based on acceptance by scholars, impact factor, visibility and acceptance rates. It also discusses determining a journal's quality, retaining full or partial copyright, and alternatives to impact factor for evaluating journals, including Eigenfactor and SCImago. The goal is to help authors select the best journals for their work and understand copyright issues to maximize the impact of their research.

1. Article Publication: Targeting Journals, Retaining Copyright, and Making an Impact

2. Targeting Journals

3. Core Journals Journal Publication Information guide provides subject specific listings by college http://libguides.unco.edu/jpubinfo What makes a journal core? Acknowledged by scholars in the field Impact factor High visibility Low acceptance rate/high invited article rate

4. Quality indicators for journals Scholarly or professional audience Peer reviewed Visibility Indexing Circulation Open access Acceptance rates Editor/editorial board

5. Ulrichsweb - Articles & More By subject identify titles Active Refereed (peer reviewed) Academic/Scholarly Circulation Indexing Reviewed (Core) Link to journal’s information page Impact factor Journal ranking

6. Types of review processes Editorial Peer Open Single Blind Double Blind

7. Cabell’s Directories - Articles & More Editor(s) Acceptance rate and % of invited articles Type of review Number of reviewers and time to review Submission and manuscript guidelines Link to journal information site Publication fee Call for submissions

9. Directory of Open Access Journals -http://www.doaj.org/ Scientific and scholarly journals Editorial or peer reviewed Topics for each journal Languages Link to journal information site

10. What is an open access journal? No charge for readers or their institutions to access Users have the right to “read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles” (Budapest Open Access Initiative) Research is showing that open access articles are cited significantly more than non-open access.

11. Retaining Copyright

12. Congratulations! Your article has been accepted for publication What happens next? You will be asked to sign a publication agreement But don’t be in a rush to sign it There are some important considerations . . .

13. What are your rights as an author? You, as the author -- a person who has created an original expression of ideas -- automatically hold copyright once that expression is fixed in tangible form

14. And what is copyright? Copyright is the exclusive legal right granted for a specified period (author’s life + 70 years) to print, publish, perform, film, or record original material A Fair(y) Use Tale http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

15. Let’s repeat those rights again: To publish and distribute a work in print or other media To reproduce it (e.g., photocopying) To prepare derivative works (e.g., translations) To perform or publicly display the work To authorize others to exercise any of the above rights

16. Rights retention & transfer Carefully read the publication agreement with your future career in mind Which rights should you retain and which rights should you transfer? It doesn’t have to be all or nothing It can be a compromise It can accommodate the needs of information users

17. Full transfer: the traditional agreement Status quo: transfer all rights to publisher No posting on your web site No distribution to your colleagues No use (outside of fair use) without publisher’s permission Ignores the needs of the information user

18. A compromise agreement Author transfers copyright to the publisher; in exchange, publisher grants the author the following rights, for example: Copies for colleagues Copies for teaching duties (e.g. course reserves) Inclusion on personal web site or in institutional repository

19. Full retention: the limited license The author retains copyright ownership and licenses to the publisher a specific right (such as the right of first publication)

20. Open access: creative commons The author retains copyright ownership and licenses to the publisher a specific right (such as the right of first publication) The information user is granted rights beyond those typically granted for fair use Proper attribution is often the only caveat

21. Where to find publishers’policies re copyright Sherpa/Romeo web site: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ Interactive database created by a partnership of research libraries Summarizes standard permissions in publishers’ copyright transfer agreements Focuses upon self-archiving

22. The right to post on a web site There are several versions of your submitted work: The “pre-print” version of your work before it is refereed and published There are two “post-print” versions of your work: Post-refereed (but not typeset) The publisher’s “official” typeset version

23. My non-legal advice Read the contract when you are in a rested, analytical frame of mind Be assertive in asking for what you want Ask for clarifications and changes Get clarifications and changes in writing Keep copies of everything (email correspondence, guidelines posted on web pages, contracts, etc.) Keep copies of all submitted versions of your work

24. Impact

25. Impact factor

26. What is an Impact factor? The journal impact factor measures the importance of a journal by calculating the times it’s articles are cited. Year 2008 citations to 2007 + 2006 articles _____________________________ Total no. of articles published in 2007 + 2006

29. Journal Citation Reports

30. Journal Citation Reports

31. Journal Citation Reports

32. Impact factor: Use Evaluating individual scholars Evaluating institutions Evaluating journals Subscription decision

33. Impact factor: limitations Only a limited subset of journals is indexed by ISI Only uses the articles cited by the ~10,000 “ISI journals” Some disciplines are especially poorly covered Database is dominated by American publications Journals in database may vary from year to year

34. Impact factor: limitations Self citations are allowed Review articles are heavily cited and inflate the impact factor Long articles collect many citations Short publication lag allows short term journal self citations Biased toward English-language journals

35. Impact factor: Alternatives

36. A free and searchable database EigenfactorTMscores and Article InfluenceTM scores rank journals much as Google ranks websites. Covers the natural and social sciences http://www.eigenfactor.org/

37. The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a portal that includes the journals and country scientific information A free source that uses data from Elsevier's Scopus database http://www.scimagojr.com/

39. International/multilingual coverage

41. Coverage is uneven across different fields of study

42. Doesn’t perform well for older publicationhttp://scholar.google.com/

43. What makes a journal core : A review Acknowledged by scholars in the field Impact factor High visibility Low acceptance rate/high invited article rate For more information: http://libguides.unco.edu/jpubinfo

44. Question? Comment? Thank you ! Bette Rathe, Education Librarian Bette.rathe@unco.edu Wendy Highby, Social Sciences Librarian Wendy.highby@unco.edu Jayati Chaudhuri, Science Librarian Jayati.chaudhuri@unco.edu