When and where to publish research paper

Where to publish research paper?

Here are some of the places where you can publish your paper

1. Conferences

The internet has not stopped traditional face-to-face meetings, but conferences still provide valuable networking opportunities and feedback for improving studies or manuscripts. 

Journals allow research to appear as posters or abstracts in peer-reviewed proceedings, but may not allow republishing after publishing a full or partial version. Some journals may require new content before submission and require copyright permission. 

The Ingelfinger Rule protects the public from misinformation and allows journals to publish full reports. Some countries and journals have media embargo systems to allow for accurate news writing and wider distribution. However, the internet has made it easy for fake conferences and proceedings to be organized. 

2. Blogs, social platforms, and own websites

Blogs, general social media, scholarly collaboration networks (e.g., ResearchGate, Academia), researchers’ own websites, and institutional websites are popular for sharing research ideas and findings widely, especially as nontechnical summaries after formal publication.

However, whether the full text of a published journal article can be shared directly on those sites depends on the copyright and licensing arrangements of the journal.

Postpublication promotion of your research in the form of lay summaries and news stories can also be done on dedicated news sites such as EurekAlert! and AlphaGalilieo, and other platforms such as Kudos and OurResearch.

A problem for people who share research findings in websites and social media before formal publication is that these postings are not peer reviewed, may constitute prior publication, and could be plagiarized by others but not be detected by text-matching software because they may not be included in the comparison database.

Two cases reported to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) have involved a research paper that plagiarized blog content and an author who posted the accepted version of a paper on a website without permission.

Again, it’s best to check with the journal what they deem as prior publication and what versions of a paper can be self-archived and when.

 3. Trial registries

Reputable journals that publish prospective human trials require the advance online registration of the study protocol in a clinical trials database/registry (e.g., www.clinicaltrials.gov), before the actual study started.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors does not consider trial registration and certain registry declarations of the results to be prior publication. The norm is for interventional (experimental) clinical trials to be registered, but some journals also encourage human observational (nonexperimental) studies to be registered.

4. Data repositories

Online repositories such as Dryad, Figshare, and Zenodo accept data files, slidesets, papers, media files, posters, and other research outputs. Some repositories, including the three named examples, are integrated with ORCID, where you can keep a complete research record under a unique personal number.

The objects that you self-archive are not peer reviewed but receive digital object identifiers (DOIs) and are hence persistently findable and linkable. Files are citable, can be freely shared, and can be used as supplementary files during journal submissions. Some repositories may be partnered with journals.

5. Preprints

Preprints (or “working papers”) are drafts of manuscripts that authors may upload/post/deposit to general or discipline-specific preprint servers, or to own websites or institutional or commercial/noncommercial data repositories.

Preprints have not been formally peer reviewed and must not have been formally published by a peer-reviewed journal. Using preprint servers, authors can usually post revisions of preprints but previous versions are retained for reference.

The arXiv site is the most well known preprint server and was established in 1991 for physics, mathematics, computer science, and other disciplines. Newer preprint servers include bioRxiv (for biology), PsyArXiv (for psychology), SocArXiv (for social sciences) and engrXiv (for engineering).

6. Open access repositories

Some funders require that research outputs be made freely available, so “green open access” journals may allow authors to self-archive preprints and accepted versions – but not the final published article (“version of record”). “Gold open access” journals allow self-archiving of the final version, for noncommercial use or also commercial use. Please consult individual journal policies for special arrangements to comply with open access mandates of research funders.

For example, if research was funded by the US National Institutes of Health, publishers or authors would need to upload relevant accepted manuscripts or final published articles to the PubMedCentral repository.

 7. Theses and dissertations

Although not formally published, student theses and dissertations may be available online via university libraries or national repositories. Generally in the UK, theses are what PhD candidates write and dissertations are what Master students write, but in the US, the terms are switched around. In some countries, the terms are interchangeable.

Most journals allow manuscript submissions that have been derived from degree work, but be sure by checking journal guidelines and by declaring the origin of the work in your cover letter.

Beware of unethical vanity presses and print-on-demand/print-to-order services that may invite you to self-publish your thesis as a book without peer review or editing, and maybe after copyright transfer and payment.

8. Books

Some researchers, especially in the humanities and social sciences, formally publish their work as book chapters, books, and monographs rather than journal articles. After obtaining necessary permissions, some authors publish books containing all or parts of previously published journal articles. Academic books of reputable publishers undergo peer review, but books tend not to be cited as much as journal articles.

9.Journals

Formal publication of research is most often done in peer-reviewed journals of publishers, companies, societies, and universities. There is more to selecting the best target journal than simply looking at the Journal Impact Factor. Some institutions, publishers, organizations, and individuals have signed the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) statement and are moving away from tracking journal bibliometrics.

Many types of journals exist — for example, by topic and readership, by article type (e.g., review journals and some methodology journals do not publish original research), by mode of peer review, by medium (print, online, or both), and by publishing model (open access, subscription, pay-per-view).

A major difference between some journals is their selection criteria. In addition to assessing academic/scientific quality (which could be called objective or technical peer review), some journals emphasize potential importance or impact, or newsworthiness (which could be called subjective, nontechnical, or journalistic peer review).

 When to publish research paper ?

 The timeline for publishing a research paper can vary depending on the field, complexity of the research, and the specific journals review process. However, many researchers are able to complete their research, write the paper, go through the peer-review process, and have it published within a year.