Publishing Journal Articles for Undergraduates

Learn how to identify relevant journals, avoid predatory publishers, and manage your citations

Identify Journals for Publishing

Talk to your mentor
Determine if your college or department has any specific publishing guidelines or requirements
Keep track of journals publishing articles in your area of interest
Set up alerts on publisher's websites
Sign up for calls for papers:
- Publishers' websites
- Professional associations
- Listservs and distribution lists
- Alerts via Facebook and LinkedIn groups, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) This link opens in a new window
A tool for evaluating and comparing journals. Metrics include journal impact factor, eigenfactor, and more. Citation data drawn from approximately 12,000 scholarly and technical journals and conference proceedings from more than 3,300 publishers in over 60 countries. JCR is a leading source of citation data on journals in the areas of science, technology, and social sciences. JCR includes data from Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index in Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics, formerly Thomson Reuters).
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory (ulrichsweb.com) This link opens in a new window
The standard source for publisher information on popular and academic journals, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and other periodicals. Worldwide coverage of all subjects. Indicates whether a journal is refereed (peer reviewed) and open access. Includes information on active and ceased periodicals, as well as monographic (book) series. Provides reviews for many titles.
Cabells Directory of Publishing Opportunities This link opens in a new window
Covers areas of Business and Economics; Education; Psychology and Psychiatry. The Journalytics provides journal publisher contact information; journal metrics and open access status; manuscript and publication guidelines, including a description of the review process used by journals editors; number of reviewers; acceptance rate; time required for review; availability of reviewers' comments; fees charged to review or publish a manuscript; copies required; and manuscript topics. UTSA does not currently subscribe to the Predatory Reports. Use Advanced Search to access journals by subject category.

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)
SJR is a measure of scientific influence of scholarly journals that accounts for both the number of citations received by a journal and the importance or prestige of the journals where such citations come from. Inspired by Google PageRank algorithm.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) This link opens in a new window
A directory to free, full-text, peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly journals published on the Internet in a variety of academic subjects. All journals included use a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access.

Tips for Publishing

ORCID

Why do you need ORCID?

ORCID has been adopted by published as a unique author identifier.
Disambiguate yourself from other authors with similar names.
Use your ORCID profile as a dashboard to keep track of your entire scholarly output including journal articles, book chapters, conference presentations, patents, and much more.