Publishing journal articles

Reasons to publish include:

• Build your academic profile and establish your reputation.
• Communicate new knowledge and increase the impact and visibility of your research.
• Register your research results, the time frame and who conducted the research.
• Preserve a record of your research for the long term.

Publishing in scholarly journals

A scholarly journal publishes high-quality academic or scholarly content that includes original research articles, written by researchers and experts in a particular academic discipline. Generally, scholarly journals follow the peer review process where manuscripts submitted for publication are evaluated by editors and selected experts (peers).

How can I tell if a journal is scholarly?

• Check to determine the peer review status of the journal via Ulrichsweb (UQ login required).
• Check to ensure it is not a potential unethical publisher.
• Verify it has a list of editorial board members in the inside front cover or first few pages of an individual issue.
• Make certain the journal provides information on author submissions, including the peer review process.
• Ensure the journal publishes articles that offer new theories, report primary results of original research in an academic field, or summarise previous research.
• Confirm articles include the source of information, such as author/date references in the text, footnotes or bibliographies.
• Verify articles include the name and academic affiliation of the author at the beginning or end of the article. Articles in an academic journal are never anonymous.

The Think section of Strategic scholarly publishing outlines factors to consider when choosing which journal to publish in, including journal quality, publisher reputation and practices and relevance to your topic.

High impact publishing

The Nature Index provides an overview of publications produced by individual Institutions, drawn from a selected group of 82 high-quality science journals evaluated by a panel of active scientists, independent of Nature Research. The Nature Index provides a snapshot of high-quality research output at the institutional, national and regional level, and provides guidance for the following questions:

• How much high-quality scientific research tracked in the Nature Index is produced by my institution?
• How does this compare to other research organisations across the world, in my region or in my broad field?
• Which institutions make the biggest absolute contribution to high-quality scientific research tracked by the Nature Index globally, in my region or in my broad field?

See The University of Queensland research profile on the Nature Index to discover:

• Research highlights
• Top articles by Altmetric score
• Counts of research outputs
• Domestic and international collaborators
• Relationships and affiliations