【交流】】Nature Reviews Neuroscience 前任编辑 Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第六讲 ：“如何选择合适的目标期刊！”

Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第六讲

Choosing the right platform


“如何选择合适的目标期刊！”

Dr. Daniel McGowan
分子神经科学博士


Dr. Daniel McGowan曾任 Nature Reviews Neuroscience 副编辑，负责约稿，管理和撰写期刊内容。于2006年加入理文编辑（Edanz Group） 并从2008年起担任学术总监。Dr. McGowan有超过十年的博士后和研究生阶段实验室研究经验，主要致力于神经退化疾病、分子及细胞生物学、蛋白质生物化学、蛋白质组学和基因组学。

精彩系列讲座

第一期：Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第一讲： “How to write a world class paper”（标题练习）

第二期： Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第二讲：“摘要和关键词（附PPT和在线修改）”

第三期： Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第三讲：“cover letter的练习”

第四期： Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第四讲：“Nature Reviews Neuroscience 前任编辑帮您修改语言问题”

第五期： Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第五讲：“如何做好研究设计和预先规划工作。 ”

第六期： Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第六讲：“如何选择合适的目标期刊？”

第七期： Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第七讲：“如何撰写规范的IMRaD格式？”

第八期： Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第八讲：“如何完成一个出色的论文图表？”

第九期： Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第九讲：“让统计学告诉你的结果意味着什么？”

第十期： Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第十讲：“如何回复审稿意见? ”

第十一期： Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第十一讲：“科研伦理和论文发表道德”

第十二期： Dr. McGowan论文写作系列第十二讲：“投稿，最后检查”

编者按：在本帖中，理文编辑学术总监Dr. Daniel McGowan将向大家展示“如何选择合适的目标期刊！”。

请大家注意，尽管理文编辑设在中国，Dr. McGowan的母语是英语，因此请各位尽量使用英语交流，这也是一个很好的锻炼机会！

Choosing the right platform
选择重要的平台！

Selection of an appropriate journal and publication type is critical: get it right and you instantly increase your chances of successful publication and regular citation. By contrast, sending a manuscript to an inappropriate journal is a frequent cause of rejection. The aims and scope of the journal, the journal’s target audience and recent publication history, the significance and broadness of appeal of the findings described in your manuscript, and the type of study performed should all be considered before selecting your target journal.

Start by considering what the main focus of your paper is, and therefore, who you would expect to want to read it. This should have become clear while writing the paper, particularly the discussion section. Is there a clinical focus or do you describe basic science findings? Are the findings of relevance to a broad cross-section of the scientific community or will they only appear to researchers in a specialist field? Are the findings preliminary, with more work required to make an irrefutable and comprehensive story, or do you have multiple types of complementary data to support your hypothesis? Indeed, do you need to publish right away, or can you delay publication while collecting more data to try for a journal with a higher impact factor? By asking yourself these questions, among others, you will be able to build up a picture of the type of journal you should be targeting. Then, you need to generate a short-list.

An immediate source of potential target journals is in your own paper’s reference list. Any similar or related previous work should have been cited in your study; identify those studies and the journals they were published in. Some journals will appear more than once, and these are likely candidates. Another way to identify candidate journals is performing keyword searches in literature databases such as Medline and PubMed. Again, journals that appear repeatedly are potentially suitable. Of course, journals that haven’t previously published in the same area of research might equally be interested in your findings; the best way to identify these is to search or browse your library’s journal shelves, Thompson ISI databases, including the Science Citation Index, or the websites of major publishers (see below, but note that these are just a few of many publishers of academic journals). You should be able to recognise journals that might be appropriate based on your answers to the questions above.

Now that you have a short-list of possible target journals and a clear picture of the type of journal your study would be suitable for, you need to merge the two to see where they correspond. Journal websites generally contain and ‘aims and scope’ section and occasionally describe their target audience. They will usually also contain information on impact factor, publication types, publication frequency, time from acceptance to publication, rejection rates, and publication charges. All of these factors need to be weighed up. For example, if you require rapid publication, you should specifically look for journals that offer fast response times and short periods from acceptance to publication. If you are on a tight budget you may need to rule out open access journals or journals that have high publication charges.

If you require publication in a journal with an impact factor above a certain level, you can instantly rule out any with impact factors lower than that. Study the journal websites closely and consider why the editors and readers of each would be interested in your findings; as well as giving you an angle for the approach in your cover letter (see the previous post on journal cover letters and a free example letter here), this will help you decide which of the remaining journals in your short-list is the most relevant platform from which to disseminate your findings. When your short-list has been reduced to two or three journals on the basis of the above criteria, you should rank them as first, second and third choices based on your particular requirements. Then you are ready to write your cover letter and submit your manuscript!

To assist you in this process, Edanz has developed a Journal Selection Tool that is free to download.

以下是部分免费软件可供下载

To search or browse Science Citation Index journals:
http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jloptions.cgi?PC=K

Thompson ISI searchable databases:
http://science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/

US National Library of Medicine database PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Elsevier journal titles: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journal_browse.cws_home

Science Direct:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/

Springer:
http://www.springer.com/?SGWID=5-102-0-0-0

Wiley-Interscience journals:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/browse/?type=JOURNAL

Taylor & Francis:
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/sublist.asp

Liwen Bianji’s ‘Select your field’ page (find journals from a wide variety of publishers for your field):
http://www.liwenbianji.cn/selectyourfield

以下是一篇文章选择目标期刊的过程,供各位丁香园会员分享学习,如有疑问,欢迎积极提问!

Example

The following manuscript title was used in the exercise accompanying the section on writing a good title: “Region-specific neuronal degeneration after okadaic acid administration”. This imaginary study showed degeneration of neurons in the CA3 and dentate gyrus regions of the hippocampus after administration of the toxin okadoic acid, let us assume in mice. It also showed involvement of a MAP kinase-dependent pathway in this neurodegeneration.

Without a functional correlate of the neuronal cell loss, the study would be considered very preliminary and would be difficult to publish; thus, let us assume that behavioural studies were also performed and that these showed deficits in learning and memory in mice administered the toxin. Therefore, the data shown are histological, biochemical and behavioural.

A keyword search of the PubMed database throws out very little in the way of similar studies (not surprisingly given that the example study is imagined), but does point to potential journals such as the Journal of Neuroscience, European Journal of Neuroscience, Neuroscience, Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Neuropharmacology and the Journal of the Neurological Sciences.

Among these, the Journal of Neuroscience and the European Journal of Neuroscience are likely to require more data, perhaps showing relevance to a human disease or condition and/or an exhaustive analysis of the mechanisms involved in the cell death, although the latter journal is a possibility and might be worth an initial submission. The Journal of the Neurological Sciences has more of a clinical focus and should only be considered if administration of OA was known to provide a good model of a particular disease or condition. However, if such a link was shown, this journal would represent a good target. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications has a broad focus, publishing studies in diverse fields of biological research; however, neurobiology is one of their areas of interest and they claim to be devoted to rapid dissemination of results. For authors who want a quick answer or who need to publish soon, this could represent a good initial target journal. Depending on the novelty of the behavioural data, the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory could be a good target; with a rapid communications section, this journal could also suit those authors in need of immediate publication. Finally, Neuroscience represents a good target journal if the findings reveal aspects of ‘how the nervous system works’.

Thus, depending on the focus of the final paper (eg. clinical vs neurobiological vs behavioural) and the authors’ requirements (impact factor and time to publication), the candidate journals selected can be ranked in terms of their suitability.

以下是练习题

使用前面所讲的方法或者是理文编辑“目标期刊选定工具”为你即将发表的(或之前发表过的)文章列一个目标期刊清单，并按照优先性排序。请各位简单描述自己的研究内容，我会根据你的描述评价所选的目标期刊是否合适，排序是否科学；需要的话我还会帮助给出其他选择。欢迎大家踊跃参与。

更多精彩内容请下载完整的“Writing for Success”系列培训材料。