Surgery Resources: Journals & Databases

Vetting Journals to Find Appropriate Places to Publish

Finding an appropriate journal to publish your research ensures that your research will be discoverable and have an impact in your field. New journals and new publishers are being launched annually, so it can be difficult to determine which journals are reputable and which are suspect. Before you submit your articles to a journal, consider using the following resource:

Selecting a Journal with an Appropriate Impact Factor

The impact factor of a journal is a measurement that reflects the average number of times that articles in a particular journal have been cited. The measurement changes from year to year, and is based on data from the previous two years, so new journals--while potentially still relevant and reputable--will have low impact factors due to the small amount of available data. This measurement is often used to estimate the relative importance of a journal in its particular science or social science field.

A higher impact factor predicts that your research is more discoverable and more likely to be shared widely in the field if you publish in that journal. However

• for early career researchers, journals with lower impact factors might be more reasonable places to publish as they are less competitive than the more well-known journals and can still be vetted as reputable
• for very specialized areas of research with small pools of global researchers, journals will always have smaller impact factors, as fewer people are citing this more specialized work

Please note: Not all journals are included in JCR and so every journal may not have an impact factor. There are also many other considerations for determining the importance and quality of a journal beyond the impact factor.