As an academic in general and as a PhD student in particular, it is important to communicate your research to other scientists. In many research areas, scientific journals are the most reputable outlet for communicating your research. Your academic career trajectory can be heavily impacted by how many journal articles you publish as well as by the reputation/ranking of journals you have published in. For PhD students writing a compilation thesis at TME, the (implicit) expectation is commonly to produce articles which are “publishable” in scientific journals of a certain reputation/ranking. Accordingly, better understanding why, where, and how to publish in scientific journals is valuable.
<aside> 💡 A good overarching guide on why, where, and how to publish in journals is available in text here and on YouTube here.
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Most scientific journals work with a so-called double-blinded peer review process. “Peer review process” means that submitted articles will be reviewed by peers (i.e., other researchers with knowledge on the topic) before being published. “Double-blinded” means that neither the authors' nor peer reviewers' identities are shared with each other. Consider that the review process of scientific journals can be very selective; some journals accept less than 1 percent of submissions for publication.
A prototypical depiction of the review process can be found below. The general logic of the review process and the actors involved are as follows:
Depending on the field and journal you aim to publish in, the review process might heavily vary in length - from a few weeks to several years. In the area of management and organization studies, you can expect a time frame of 6 to 24 months from first submission to acceptance.
The ranking and reputation of journals matters a lot in academic circles. If you tell another academic that “My paper just got published!”, chances are that they will respond with something like “Congrats! In what journal?”, with a potential follow-up question like “What’s the journal’s ranking/impact factor?”. Generally, the ranking of the journal you are publishing in can strongly boost your academic career (and your ego, if that’s what you care about).
That said, there is no universal ranking of scientific journals, and no generally accepted understanding of what can be considered a sufficiently good journal. Most journal rankings are based on metrics which account for the number of citations a journal has received in a certain time frame, such as Journal Impact Factor and Google Scholar metrics. These metrics then typically serve as the basis for journal rankings such as the SCImago Journal Ranking. Similar to Scopus, SCImago differentiates between journals based on which quartile of quality they belong to within a certain field, from Q1 (top 25% journals) to Q4 (bottom 25% journals). Several fields have field-specific rankings, such as the AJG ranking for research in the area of management and organization studies.
While metrics and rankings may vary in both their approach and outcomes, a general indication of a journal’s quality can often be deduced. Most researchers in a field will have relatively strong agreement on what the “top journals”, “good journals”, “okay journals”, and “bad/predatory journals” of their field are.
With all the talk about journal rankings though, consider that your research is about more than the journals it has been published in. Given the acceptance rates and process times of some top journals, not all PhD students (same as not all senior researchers) manage to publish in top journals. A good journal might be good enough. For some topics, it might even be a better choice to “aim lower” - if that is where the conversation is going on. That said, a common strategy is for researchers to identify multiple potential target journals and aim for them from the top down: First submitting to a top journal, then (if rejected) moving on to a good journal, and so on.