Research and Publishing. 2: Where to Publish

In the previous post I wrote about why psychologists should be doing research. That post was particularly aimed at students so that they learn the proper way to be professional psychologists. This post is about where to publish research, and so may be of more interest to already qualified psychologists who are planning investigations, or are already doing it.

The issue of where to publish is an important consideration. Research that is never published is likely to be of very limited impact. Research that is published could be influencing practice not just in Ecuador, but globally, for many years. So research should be published. And by publishing I am mainly talking here of journal articles. Working with other media is OK, but it has to be carefully managed, and undertaken responsibly. Newspapers and magazines are about entertainment not truth, and journalists don’t care whether the person they are quoting is an expert on not, they just want a ‘Dr’ to say something interesting. I know, I’ve been there. Whether or not you work with the popular media, that can’t be all you do. The fact is that to be considered internationally relevant as a psychologist you have to be producing data-based journal articles.

It is best to think of where your research may be published very early in the research process. You can then tailor the research to the outlet. For example, the Journal of Adolescence has a special section for research from developing countries, these are very brief reports of up to 1000 words. Knowing that, Ecuadorian researchers could plan their investigation to nicely fit the requirement of the journal, thus maximizing the chance that the research will eventually be published. And if the research is already complete, you still need to find a very appropriate journal for it. You’ll waste everybody’s time by sending manuscripts to inappropriate journals.

In general, it is also good to think about the international outlook of the journal. Some journals are, shamefully, very euro- or gringo-centric and prefer not to publish work from countries such as Ecuador. On the other hand, some journals are proudly international. Obviously, being Ecuador-based, we will have better chances of success if we submit to journals that specifically describe themselves as being internationally focused, or at least have a history of publishing work from around the world.

Nowadays we don’t need to worry much about the impact factors of the journals. This is because the impact factor is an old metric that just tells you how successful, on average, papers in a journal have been in the past. The most basic calculation is the number of citations to the published works each year divided by the number of papers published each year. For example, on average, any paper in a journal with an impact factor of 3 will be cited about 3 times per year. However, these days we have article-level metrics, it is now more important that your work actually gets cited, regardless of the average success of the journal. Getting your work cited is the number one issue.

To do this you should try and publish in journals which are widely indexed. for example, if you publish in a journal that is indexed in Medline, PsychINFO and Scopus, it will be very accessible by other people. This will maximize the chances that your research becomes popular, is cited, and doesn’t just disappear. For researchers in Ecuador, publishing in journals that are at least indexed in Scopus is important, as this criterion is used across the country to define ‘good’ research. If you want to impress your bosses, the work must be in a Scopus-indexed journal. Good journals will list the databases that they are indexed in on their websites. And you can check some of the main database journal lists, you can download the lists of journals indexed in Scopus and in PsychINFO. So ignore the impact factors and just aim to publish in a journal which is well-indexed.

The other main issue to consider is whether your research will be locked behind a paywall. It may surprise some people, but the authors of journal articles never receive any payment for their writing. The fees charged are profits for the publishing companies. In fact, some journals now charge the authors a fee to publish, and this can be as much as $3000. These pay-to-publish journals then give away the research as free PDF downloads. So although it’s very expensive, it will help your research to get cited if it is freely distributed in this way. This method of charging the authors for the costs, not the consumers, is better for people in less-developed countries who want to access research information, as they get free access to science. Anybody with computer access can get it.

However, for the researchers in less-developed countries, such as Ecuador, this model can be a problem. In the rich countries researchers often have large research grants, and they budget in advance for these publication costs. Then their research benefits from being open-access. In Ecuador such large grants are rare so there is usually no money available to pay the publication fees. The publishing companies are somewhat sympathetic to this, and will often waive the fees for researchers based in low-income countries. However, Ecuador is considered upper-middle income, so waivers are not available. Nevertheless, if you can find ways to publish in open-access journals, this will help to get your research used and cited.

But be careful about which pay-to-publish journal you submit to. Since this publishing model began, many fake journals have appeared. They look (somewhat) like real academic journals but have very low or no publication standards, they exist mainly to take fees and care nothing about quality. These are called predatory journals, they exploit the vane and the naive, and they distort science. They get business by spam emailing people and requesting manuscripts quickly. Sometimes they don’t even read the material before publishing it. Take the example shown below, an article accepted by the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology. The article consists of these words repeated over and over “Get me off your fucking mailing list”.

This paper was accepted by a predatory journal. Also shown is one of the figures from the paper. Avoid predatory journals at all costs. If in doubt Google the journal name with the word 'predatory'.

Not all pay journals are predatory, in fact some of the best journals either use this economic model solely are partially. It is now an essential skill that psychologist be able to distinguish the real from the predatory journals, and the best universities are now incorporating this training into their degrees.

It's important to learn to distinguish between real and dubious quality journals. One obvious clue is usually in the quality of the presentation. Good journals will have professional looking layout. Avoid journals that look like they were DTPed by your mum. 

Ollie is a Staffordshire terrier owned by Mike Daube, a public health expert in Perth, Australia. With Mike's help Ollie has been accepted as an editor on several predatory journals, such as Global Journal of Addiction and Rehabilitation Medicine.

Other than predatory journals, there are other places you shouldn’t be considering. As I said above, the primary route for psychological research publication is academic journals, not newspapers, magazines etc. Books are of course useful, and may be essential to have on your resume if you want to gain tenure in the USA. If you do want to publish a book, it must be with a reputable academic publisher. These are often associated with universities. Don’t be tempted into vanity publishing. Anybody can publish a book with a vanity publisher. They take a fee and they publish your book. There is nothing particularly wrong with that. Lots of very niche works are published in this way, autobiographies of people who are not at all famous, guides to restoring mid-twentieth-century rocking chairs etc. But it is not appropriate for academic work. If you do vanity publish academic work It might impress your friends and naive colleagues. But well-educated and reputable psychologists will not be fooled, and will see it as a form of charlatanism. It’s better to have no books on your academic resume than vanity published books. The problem is that vanity publishing doesn’t really need any peer reviewing. It is this peer-review process which maintains standards.

That is why journal articles, whether pay-to-publish or not, are considered so highly. They are very selective, if the research is not good, or not well analysed, or not well written, it will be rejected. The peer reviews will be done be anonymous experts, and these are generally very strict and very critical. But it is this quality control that makes them generally trustworthy, considerably more trustworthy than journalism. They form the basis of evidence-based practice. Which is what all psychologists should be striving for.

Which leads me to my final point. Getting published in academic journals is very difficult, the work must be very well produced, and even then you can expect rejections. The best scientists in the world receive lots of rejections. You just have to persevere. But the good news is that every time it gets a little easier. Though it never gets easy. Do it.