Choosing a research publication outlet

I’m reluctant to post this. It’s part of a pragmatic approach to figuring out where, as an Australian academic, I should try and target publications. It seeks to identify publications in the higher education and educational technology areas that would be “best”.

I’m well aware of the questionable aspects of this approach, but if this is the game…. Especially when your institution is starting to discuss definitions of research active staff – the implication being that if you aren’t research active you don’t get time to do research – that include requirements for fixed numbers of A and A* journals within a 3 year period.

My mitigation strategy against this type of pragmatism is that I am fairly open when it comes to my research. Much of it gets an airing here first. It’s not much, but better than nothing (or at least that’s what I keep telling myself).

For my immediate purposes, it looks like AJET is a good fit. A journal that is open access.

Work to do

• Find out how much value is placed on the difference between A and A* journals.
• Check the final lists from the government to see if rankings have changed.

What’s your suggestion?

What’s the “best” publication outlet?

I’m assuming that when it comes to writing a paper based on that research that the first step is to choose the outlet. Which journal or conference are you aiming the paper at? I think you need to answer this question as there is a part of the writing process that has to respond to the specifics of the outlet (e.g. address the theme of a conference etc.).
In answering this question, I can think of at least the following dimensions to consider:

1. Quality.
   There are two common strategies I’ve heard: top down or bottom up. Bottom up folk go for the “worst” journal based on the hope that their poor article will get accepted. The top down folk suggest starting at the top because you never know, you might get lucky, and if you don’t you will at least get good feedback to improve the paper. At this stage you prepare it for submission to outlet #2.
2. Fit.
   i.e. the one which best fits the topic or point of your paper. Which may be to visit Hawaii (conference) or might be a topic match (the paper “Gerbils preference in social software” might be a good fit for the journal “Studies in Gerbil Selection of Social Software”.
3. Speed of review.
   How quickly will the journal accept and publish your paper.
4. Openness.
   Are the papers published in a closed or open manner? Can you circulate copies? Is the journal an open access journals .

The rankings approach that is increasingly prevalent tends to suggest that “Quality” is the first choice. The following focuses on the quality dimension, however, in operation there needs to be an appropriate balance with the other factors.

How to judge the top quality publication?

The “top quality publication” dimension begs the question, “How do you know what is the top quality publication?”. In some disciplines this is a clear cut thing. You can’t be a researcher within a field without knowing. The trouble is that in some other fields, it’s not so clear. Especially if you’re new to the field.

Those wonderful folk in the Australian government, following the lead of their British colleagues, are making it easier for us poor Australian academics. As part of this work they are developing “discipline-specific tiered outlet rankings”. i.e. if you want to play the game, you follow their rankings – while trying to balance the other dimensions.

While the Oz government lists are still under development John Lamp is providing a nice interface to view the rankings as part of his broader site. There’s a but field of research method and a search. This is provided for two lists from the Australian Research Council – an early draft one and a more recent one. The recent one isn’t that integrated into the database – so the following information is a bit out of date, but it gives an indication.

In the following I’ve selected those journals of potentially most interest to me – I could be mistaken and have left some important ones out – but it’s a start. I’ve added a link to the journal home page and made some comments from my look at their online information.

My main interests are in educational technology within higher education, so that’s the focus. Suggestions and comments welcome.

One of the outstanding tasks I have, is to determine how much of a difference folk are making between A and A* journals.

Higher education

Most of these are selected from this list

Coming out of that table, the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education sounds interesting, at least for me. It’s open access, shortish review times, promise of good feedback, has a couple of types of articles and is related to the scholarship of learning and teaching which is connection to an aspect of my current position.

Educational technology journals

Most of these came from this list

Discipline specific and curriculum

Sometimes I do work with discipline folk, some of the following might be interesting. More of these journals here. I’ve only included links for these.