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Things in the Illingworth Library February 2024

 Library Things 

Find the library at our temporary home on the first floor of 26 Northumberland Road (the Estates offices) Our study spaces with laptops are popular, please email illingworth.library@nhs.net 

or call 0114 27 17347 to book a study space.

We get all sorts of queries in the library, this month our blog focuses on a recent request for guidance on publishing research.

Focus on: publishing your research

Congratulations! You’ve submitted your thesis and passed your degree. Then your supervisor says, "you should submit this to a journal". Or maybe you’ve introduced an innovative way of working that you think could work for others in your field. Your first thought is probably: "Where do I start?" 

We've broken this journey down into five steps.

Photo Credit: Wes Hicks

Step one: Find journals in your field

Use your local contacts: which journals have you referred to in your research? Which journals in your field does your institution subscribe to? Talk to your colleagues or supervisor, look at where they have published. 

The Illingworth Library maintains a register of research published by authors affiliated with Sheffield Children’s, accessed via the YorCat catalogue.

Use online tools: The Public Library of Science (PLOS) has a good general guide to selecting ajournal. Over at JANE (the Journal/Author Name Estimator) is a useful tool which searches PubMed via your abstract. Its search page hasn't changed much since 2007, so it's also a bit of a time machine to transport you to the olden days of the Internet.

Publisher tools: Many publisher sites, such as Wiley have a journal finding tool, where you can paste your abstract and retrieve suggestions of the journals they publish which could be a good match for your research. If you don't have an abstract for your research, there is plenty of guidance available, including this recent article in 'The Clinical Teacher'

Perhaps your research could fit into a 'themed issue' where all the articles are about one topic, these are often publicised via a ‘call for papers’ on the publisher's website.

Step two: filter out predatory journals

The unwary writer may be preyed upon by bogus journals which charge for publication without providing the infrastructure (peer review, editorial services) which you would expect from a reputable journal. Charging for publication is not in itself a red flag; this is common practice in academic publishing. The site ‘Think, Check, Submit’ provides excellent checklists to lead you away from the potential pitfalls. These checklists are also useful for assessing the trustworthiness of journals you are consulting during your research.

You may have heard that there are online lists of predatory journal publishers, but these lists should themselves be handled with care, as they can go out of date quickly and there is limited information on the identity of the compilers.

Step three: remember Open Access

Before you commit to a particular journal, check if you have an obligation to make your research available as Open Access. If your research was supported by a grant, you may be required under the terms of the grant to publish your article on an Open Access platform.

Open access publishing makes research available to all for no fee. It seems contradictory, but Open Access publishers often charges hefty fees, because that’s how they’re paid for making research freely available to all. It’s always worth checking if there are grants available to cover the publishing fees. Traditional journals may have an open access option, but the charges for this can be high.

Step four: tailor your writing for your target journal(s)

Once you have narrowed down the journal(s) you are considering, check what their ‘house style’ is, to make sure that your references are in the style that they expect. The home page for any journal should include a section on Instructions for Authors, with guidance on how to write for that publication.

Step five: submit your manuscript with a covering letter

Your covering letter needs to sell your manuscript to prospective publishers, so make sure it's a zinger! It is absolutely essential that you submit your work to only one journal at a time. Taylor and Francis provide a useful guide to writing cover letters, including a template. The author’s instructions on the journal homepage may include details of what is expected (such as disclosures of possible conflicts of interest).

And finally: two last thoughts

Thesis copyright

If you are publishing part of your thesis, it’s worth checking how the journal publisher approaches the question of who retains the copyright of your research. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) publishes a useful checklist. If in doubt, ask the editors of your target journal.

Letters to the Editor

One way in to publication is via a Letter to the Editor. These are generally written in response to a published article: if you can respond to a journal article in your field from an interesting and informed perspective, then consider writing an ‘LTE’. These are indexed in many research databases. Check out this useful guide to writing a Letter to the Editor.