HSCI 4204 (Kethireddy) - Research Methods and Evaluation in Public Health: Publish Student Research

There are many reasons you might choose to publish a scholarly article, including:

1. Publishing is a way to disseminate your thoughts and/or research findings to a larger research community.
2. It looks great on a resume, curriculum vitae, or graduate school application. It shows that you are capable of creating high-quality academic content.
3. If you are a professor, publishing is likely part of your job. Professors often need to publish scholarly articles in order to get tenure or promotion.
4. Research can change or even save lives! A published study about a revolutionary new medical procedure, for example, can have a direct and important impact on society.

This recorded webinar hosted by one of our librarians covers great information on how to get started with the publishing process.

If you have a manuscript you think is worthy of publication, you will want to identify an appropriate venue based on the following criteria:

• The journal's scope (this will tell you the type of subject matter, articles, studies, etc. that the journal publishes)
• Journal impact factor or ranking (the higher the impact factor or ranking, the more influence the journal has in the field)
• Journal acceptance rate (the lower the acceptance rate, the more prestigious the journal)
• The timeframe/frequency of publication (some have a quick turnaround and publish many issues per year; others can take years to publish accepted articles, especially if only one or two issues are published per year)
• Where the journal is indexed (through which databases the journal's content can be accessed)
• Whether it is an open access publication (open access typically means that anyone can read a publication's articles for free; otherwise, they would have to either pay for the articles or access them through a library database)

You can typically locate this information on a journal's website. You can also use the Cabell's database (link below) to retrieve information on specific journals.

You might have decided to publish in a journal that uses or offers an open access publication model, which makes your article freely available (rather than require that people pay for it or retrieve it through a library database).

Check out the video below for more information about open access versus traditional publishing models.

If you are unsure if a journal is open access or have questions about its publishing model, feel free to contact us.