Learning how to choose the right journal for your research paper is one of the highest-leverage skills in academic publishing. Studies of editorial workflows consistently show that a large share of rejections happen before peer review even starts — the manuscript simply does not fit the journal. That is not a judgement on your science; it is a targeting mistake, and it is entirely avoidable. Run the seven checks below before you submit, and you will save months of delay.
Fit beats prestige, every time. Read the journal's aims-and-scope page carefully, then go further: skim the titles and abstracts of the last two or three issues. Ask yourself whether your paper could plausibly sit next to them. If the journal publishes clinical veterinary trials and your work is a theoretical model with no animal data, you are heading for a desk rejection no matter how good the paper is.
Also check the article types the journal accepts — original research, reviews, case reports, short communications — and confirm yours is on the list. A review article sent to a journal that only publishes original research will be returned without review.
A legitimate journal describes its peer review process in writing: single-blind, double-blind, or open review, and roughly how it is managed. At Global Academic Publishers, for example, the Global Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences uses double-blind peer review, where authors and reviewers remain anonymous to each other.
Be cautious of journals that mention "peer review" only as a vague slogan with no policy page, no description of who reviews, and no mention of editorial decision-making. Genuine peer review is a documented process, not a marketing phrase.
Before you trust a journal with months of your work, verify five things, all of which should be visible on its website:
1. Named editorial leadership. Real journals list an editor-in-chief and editorial board members with affiliations you can verify. Anonymous or unverifiable boards are a warning sign.
2. A physical contact address. A street address and a working institutional email — not only a web form — signal accountability.
3. A written publication ethics policy. Look for statements on plagiarism, authorship criteria, conflicts of interest, and corrections. Membership of, or alignment with, bodies such as COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) is a good sign.
4. Transparent ownership. You should be able to tell who publishes the journal.
5. Realistic promises. Guaranteed acceptance, publication within days with "no revisions needed," or aggressive spam email solicitations are classic hallmarks of predatory journals. Read our full guide on how the legitimate publication process actually works so you know what normal looks like.
Indexing determines whether other researchers will ever find your work. Established journals are listed in databases relevant to their field, and open access journals may appear in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Check the claims yourself — visit the database and search for the journal rather than trusting a logo on the journal's homepage.
One honest caveat: every journal starts somewhere. A new, legitimate journal in its launch phase will not yet be in every index — what matters is transparency about its status and a clear, credible path forward, not inflated claims. Be deeply suspicious of any journal that claims indexing it cannot demonstrate.
Look for published timelines: average time from submission to first decision, and from acceptance to publication. Journals that publish this data are showing confidence in their process. If you are working toward a thesis defence, a grant report, or a promotion deadline, a journal with a six-month backlog may be the wrong choice even if it is otherwise perfect.
Balance speed against rigour. Extremely fast "peer review" — a decision in two or three days — usually means no real review happened, which damages the credibility of your own paper.
Many open access journals charge an Article Processing Charge (APC). That is normal — what matters is transparency. The charges, and any waiver policy, should be stated clearly before you submit, not revealed after acceptance. Our explainer on APC waivers in open access journals shows what a fair waiver policy looks like.
Watch for journals that add surprise fees at proof stage, charge for "mandatory" services you never requested, or tie editorial decisions to purchased extras. And confirm whether a fee waiver applies to you — during its launch phase, for instance, GJVAS has announced an inaugural fee waiver for authors, which is worth confirming with the journal before you submit.
Read the copyright and licensing terms before submitting. In open access publishing, articles are often published under a Creative Commons licence such as CC BY 4.0, which lets anyone read, share, and reuse your work with proper credit to you — while you retain your rights as author. Make sure the licence is stated explicitly and that you are comfortable with what it permits.
Turn your research into a shortlist of three journals, ranked by fit: your best-fit first choice, a strong alternative, and a safe fallback. Then submit to one journal at a time — simultaneous submission to multiple journals is an ethical violation everywhere.
Before you hit submit, format the manuscript to that journal's author guidelines (reference style, word limits, figure format). Editors notice, and reviewers are kinder to papers that respect their time. If a rejection comes, treat the shortlist as a plan, not a failure: revise, move to journal number two, and keep going.
Green flags: verifiable editors with real affiliations; a written peer review and ethics policy; clear aims and scope with recent issues you can browse; transparent APCs and waivers stated before submission; a real street address and working contact email; honest statements about indexing status.
Red flags: guaranteed acceptance or "publish in 3 days" promises; no named editors, or board members who don't know they're listed; charges revealed only after acceptance; spam email invitations flattering your "eminent" work; copied website text or a journal title confusingly close to a famous one; indexing logos that don't check out in the actual databases.
Once you have a favourite, spend ten final minutes before submitting: open three recent articles from the journal and compare their structure, length, and reference style with yours; confirm the editor's name and the correct submission portal (never submit through an email address harvested from a spam invitation); and re-read the author guidelines' checklist, ticking off each item. These ten minutes catch the formatting and routing errors behind a surprising number of desk rejections.
Most authors start with the wrong list. They start with the journals they have heard of, or the journals they wish they could publish in, rather than the journals that actually publish work like theirs. A better starting point is your own reference list. Go through the papers you cite most often and note where they were published. Those journals have already shown, issue after issue, that they welcome your topic, your methods, and your kind of argument. If several of your key references cluster in two or three journals, those journals belong at the top of your longlist — not because citation is a guarantee, but because it is evidence of fit.
Then widen the list deliberately. Ask your supervisor, co-authors, and colleagues in your department where they would send a paper like yours, and ask them why. A suggestion without a reason is not very useful; a suggestion with a reason — "they publish a lot of field trials in small ruminants" or "their reviewers are strong on this statistical approach" — tells you something you can test. Browse the Directory of Open Access Journals by subject area if you are looking for open access venues, and browse recent tables of contents rather than relying on a journal's homepage description alone. Homepages describe aspirations; recent issues describe reality.
Aim for a longlist of about eight to twelve journals at this stage. That sounds like a lot, but most will fall away quickly once you apply the checks above. The point of a longlist is to prevent the most common error in journal selection: choosing from too narrow a set, getting rejected, and then having nowhere sensible to go next. A shortlist of three, built from a longlist of ten, is a plan. A single favourite, chosen in isolation, is a gamble.
Scope is not only about topic; it is about audience. Ask yourself who needs to read your work for it to matter. Are they researchers in your narrow subfield, practitioners such as veterinarians or animal health officers, policymakers, or readers across several disciplines? A paper written mainly for practitioners will be wasted in a highly theoretical journal, even if the topic matches, because the readers who could act on it will never see it. Conversely, a paper that advances a method will be undervalued in a practitioner journal whose reviewers judge papers mainly by immediate practical application.
Read recent articles in each candidate journal with the reader in mind. Look at the language they use, the length of their introductions, how much background they assume, and whether they include practical recommendations. If your paper would need a completely different introduction to make sense to that journal's readers, that is useful information: it may still be the right journal, but you should count the rewriting cost honestly. A journal that requires you to reframe your whole argument is not necessarily wrong for you — but it should not be your first choice if another journal will take the paper largely as written.
Also think about where your work will be found after publication. Researchers discover papers through databases, reference lists, and alerts from journals they follow. Publishing where your intended readers already look is worth more than publishing somewhere with a bigger name that your readers never visit. This is why fit, again, beats prestige: a well-matched specialist audience will read, use, and cite your work, while a mismatched general audience will scroll past it.
Specialist journals publish a narrow field in depth. Their editors and reviewers know the literature, the methods, and the open questions, so their feedback is usually precise and useful. Their readers are exactly the people most likely to build on your work. The trade-off is reach: fewer people overall will encounter the paper, and if your work crosses disciplines, a specialist journal may judge it by only one of its disciplines.
Generalist and broad-scope journals publish across a field or across many fields. They offer wider visibility, but their reviewers may come from a neighbouring discipline and may miss the nuances of your subfield — or may ask you to broaden the paper in ways that dilute its contribution. They also tend to receive far more submissions, which can mean longer waits and a higher chance of desk rejection for reasons of priority rather than quality.
Neither type is inherently better. The right question is what your paper needs most at this stage of your career and this stage of the research. An early-career author establishing expertise in a subfield often benefits most from a respected specialist journal, where the paper will be read by the people who matter for future collaboration and employment. A paper with a genuinely cross-disciplinary message — for example, work that links animal health, human health, and environmental health — may need a broader venue to reach all of its audiences. Be honest about which case yours is, rather than defaulting to the broadest journal you can think of.
When several journals all look plausible, a simple scoring exercise can clarify your thinking. It does not make the decision for you, and the scores are your own judgement, not objective measurements — but writing the judgement down forces you to compare journals on the same criteria instead of being swayed by a single attractive feature, such as a fast timeline or a familiar name.
Score each candidate journal from 1 to 5 on six criteria: scope fit, audience match, peer review credibility, transparency (charges, policies, and timelines stated in writing), publication speed relative to your deadline, and cost and licensing terms. Then weight the criteria. For most authors, scope fit and audience match should carry the most weight, because a paper that does not fit will not be published at all, however good its other scores are. If you have a hard deadline, speed deserves extra weight; if you have no funding for charges, cost deserves extra weight. Multiply each score by its weight, add them up, and compare the totals — then, importantly, check whether the result surprises you. If the "winner" feels wrong, examine why: you may have under-weighted something that matters to you, such as the quality of reviewer feedback or the journal's readership in your region.
Use the framework as a discussion tool, not a verdict. Show it to a co-author or supervisor and ask where they would score differently. Disagreements about a score are usually disagreements about what the paper is for, and resolving those early saves far more time than any formatting fix later. Keep the completed framework with your submission records; if your first-choice journal rejects the paper, you already have a ranked, reasoned fallback, and you will not be starting from scratch under disappointment.
Consider a hypothetical author with a field trial of a vaccination protocol in dairy cattle, conducted on working farms, with practical recommendations for veterinarians. Her reference list clusters in veterinary and animal science journals. A specialist veterinary journal scores highly on scope fit and audience match: its readers are veterinarians and animal scientists who will understand the farm conditions and use the recommendations. A general science journal would offer wider visibility but would likely require her to reframe the paper around a general biological mechanism, which is not its main contribution, and its reviewers might judge the farm-based design against laboratory standards it was never meant to meet.
On cost and speed, she checks the stated charges and timelines in writing before deciding, and confirms whether any waiver applies to her circumstances. She also checks the licensing terms, because she wants practitioners to be able to share the recommendations freely. The specialist journal, in this illustration, is the better first choice — not because it is more or less prestigious, but because it matches the paper's contribution, its audience, and its practical purpose. If it rejects the paper after review, her second choice is another veterinary journal with a slightly broader animal science scope, and her fallback is a broad-scope animal science journal that also publishes applied field work. Each step down the list preserves as much audience match as possible, rather than jumping to an unrelated venue.
Now consider a hypothetical paper that combines animal nutrition, environmental sampling, and a small survey of farming practices. No single specialist journal covers all three strands. The author's mistake would be to send it to a journal covering only one strand and hope the reviewers forgive the other two. A better approach is to decide which strand carries the paper's main contribution. If the central claim is about nutrition, a nutrition-focused animal science journal is the natural home, and the environmental and survey material should be framed as supporting evidence. If the central claim is about the interaction between the three strands, a broader journal that explicitly welcomes interdisciplinary work may be a better fit, even if its audience is less specialised.
In this case the author should also read the journal's recent interdisciplinary articles closely. Does the journal actually publish work that crosses methods, or does its "interdisciplinary" scope statement sit alongside issues full of single-discipline papers? Again, recent issues are the evidence. She might also consider whether the paper should be split — a decision that needs care, because splitting one study into overlapping papers without clear justification can raise duplicate-publication concerns. If the work genuinely forms one argument, keep it as one paper and choose the journal that can judge the whole argument, not just its most familiar part. When in doubt, a brief, polite pre-submission enquiry to the editor, summarising the paper in a few sentences and asking whether it fits the journal's scope, can save months. Not every journal welcomes such enquiries, so check its guidance first, but where they are invited, they are an underused tool.
Single-blind review means reviewers know who you are, but you do not know who they are. It is the most common model in many fields, and its defenders argue that knowing the authors helps reviewers assess context, such as whether the work builds credibly on the authors' earlier studies. Its critics argue that it can allow bias based on reputation, institution, or geography to influence judgement. Double-blind review, used by the Global Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, anonymises both sides, which is designed to focus judgement on the manuscript itself. It requires care from authors — removing self-identifying references and acknowledgements from the submitted manuscript, as the author guidelines will explain — but many authors, particularly early-career researchers and authors from less well-known institutions, prefer it for that reason. Our guide to double-blind peer review explained covers how it works in practice.
Open review, in its various forms, makes reviewer identities, reports, or both visible — sometimes to the authors, sometimes publicly alongside the published article. Supporters argue that transparency improves accountability and gives reviewers credit for their work. Others worry that junior reviewers may be less candid when their names are attached to criticism. Post-publication review, where a paper is published first and reviewed openly afterwards, is a different model again, used by some platforms rather than traditional journals. None of these models is automatically a sign of quality or its absence. What matters is that the journal states its model clearly, applies it consistently, and gives you a fair process: competent reviewers, a reasoned decision letter, and a genuine opportunity to respond to criticism in revision.
Also check what happens after review. Does the journal allow appeals against a rejection, and under what conditions? Are reviewer comments shared with you in full? Is there an editor who takes responsibility for the final decision, rather than a purely mechanical accept-or-reject based on reviewer scores? A journal that describes these steps in writing is showing you how it treats authors. A journal that says nothing about them is asking you to trust a process you cannot see.
A journal's editorial board is one of the strongest signals available to you, and it is easy to check. Look up the editor-in-chief: are they an active researcher in the field, with recent publications you can find? Do board members list the journal on their own institutional pages, or does the journal list people who appear unaware of their membership? The latter is a well-known warning sign, and it is worth a few minutes of checking for any journal you are seriously considering, especially a new or unfamiliar one. A board full of genuine, active researchers who publish in the field is a green flag; a board of unverifiable names, or of eminent names borrowed without permission, is a serious red flag. Read our guide on how to avoid predatory journals for the full set of checks.
Board composition also tells you about the journal's real scope. If the board is dominated by researchers in one subfield, that subfield is probably where the journal's expertise — and its reviewer pool — actually lies, whatever the scope statement says. If the board includes researchers from several countries and institutions, the journal is more likely to handle international submissions fairly and to have reviewers who understand different research contexts. None of this is a guarantee, but together with recent issues, it gives you a realistic picture of who will judge your paper.
Finally, consider editorial stability. A journal that changes editors frequently, or whose website shows no recent issues, no recent announcements, and no sign of active editorial work, may be struggling — or may no longer be actively publishing at all. A journal that publishes regularly, announces new issues, and keeps its policies up to date is demonstrating the basic operational health your paper depends on.
Open access is not a single model, and the differences affect both cost and who can read your work. In gold open access, the article is freely available from publication, usually funded by an Article Processing Charge paid by the author, their institution, or their funder. In hybrid journals, which are otherwise subscription journals, individual articles can be made open access on payment of a charge. In diamond open access, the article is free to read and free to publish in, because the journal is funded by an institution, society, or other sponsor rather than by author charges. In traditional subscription publishing, readers or their libraries pay, and the article is not freely available unless the author deposits a version in a repository where the journal's policy permits it.
None of these models is inherently more legitimate than the others; legitimacy comes from peer review, transparency, and editorial standards, not from the business model. What you need to check is the combination that applies to your paper: will the published version be freely readable, what will it cost you, what licence will it carry, and can you deposit a version in your institutional repository? Our explainer on open access publishing explained walks through these options in more detail. If your funder requires open access, check its policy before you choose: some funders require a specific licence, or require deposit in a particular repository, and choosing a journal that cannot meet those requirements creates problems after acceptance that are painful to fix.
Publication timelines are often quoted as averages, and averages hide wide variation. A journal that reports an average of eight weeks to first decision may still take five months on a paper that needs a second round of reviewers, or when a reviewer withdraws late. Treat published timelines as a guide, not a promise, and build in contingency. If you must have a publication — or at least a decision — by a particular date, work backwards: allow time for a revision round, for proof corrections, and for the possibility of rejection and resubmission elsewhere. A journal that looks fast on paper but has no stated process for chasing overdue reviewers may be slower in practice than a journal with a longer stated average and a disciplined editorial office.
It is also worth asking, politely, about timelines at the point of submission or after a reasonable wait, rather than assuming silence means rejection. Editorial offices deal with reviewer delays routinely, and a courteous enquiry after the journal's stated timeframe has passed is normal professional practice. What should worry you is not a delay itself — delays happen at legitimate journals — but a journal that gives no timeline, no contact, and no response to enquiries. That is an operational warning sign, not merely an inconvenience.
The APC is the most visible cost, but it is not always the only one. Some journals charge separately for colour figures, for pages beyond a limit, for supplementary material, or for language editing services. Others include these in the APC. The distinction matters when you are budgeting, and it should be stated in writing before submission. If a charge appears for the first time at proof stage, that is a problem — not necessarily a scam, but a transparency failure that should make you cautious about the journal's other practices.
Before submitting, confirm in writing: the total charge that would apply to your article as written, whether a waiver or discount applies to you and how to claim it, what payment methods are accepted, and whether the charge is payable on acceptance or on publication. If you are relying on institutional or funder support, confirm that the support covers this journal and this charge; some agreements cover only particular publishers or particular journals. Keep the confirmation with your submission records. Authors who discover at acceptance that their funding does not cover the charge face an uncomfortable choice between paying personally, withdrawing, or seeking a waiver under time pressure — all avoidable with a check made months earlier.
Licensing affects what you and others can do with your paper after publication, so it deserves more than a glance. Under a CC BY licence, anyone may share and adapt your work, including commercially, provided they credit you. Under a more restrictive licence, such as one that excludes commercial reuse or adaptations, your work is less reusable but more controlled. Neither is right for everyone: an author who wants maximum dissemination, including reuse in teaching materials and policy documents, will usually prefer the more permissive licence, while an author concerned about commercial reuse of their figures or text may prefer restrictions. The key point is to choose knowingly, not by default.
Also check what rights you retain. Can you deposit the published version, or only the accepted manuscript, in your institutional repository? Can you reuse figures and text in your thesis, in teaching, or in a future book without seeking permission? Can your co-authors do the same? These questions matter most after publication, when it is too late to renegotiate. If your institution or funder has a rights-retention policy, check that the journal's agreement is compatible with it before you sign anything. A journal that explains its licensing in plain language, on a public page, before submission, is making your decision easier; a journal that reveals its terms only in a copyright form sent after acceptance is making it harder, and you should notice that.
Once you have chosen a journal, tailor the submission to it — not by misrepresenting the paper, but by presenting it in terms that journal's editors and reviewers will recognise. Your cover letter should state, in a few sentences, what the paper contributes, why it fits this journal's scope and readership, and that it is not under consideration elsewhere. Mentioning one or two recent articles from the journal that your work builds on or speaks to shows the editor that you have done the scope homework above, and it helps them place the paper with suitable reviewers. Keep the letter concise and factual; editors read many of them, and exaggerated claims about novelty or importance undermine credibility rather than building it.
Formatting matters more than authors sometimes assume. Follow the journal's author guidelines on structure, reference style, word and figure limits, and file formats, even where they feel arbitrary. A manuscript that ignores the guidelines signals to an editor that the author has not taken this journal seriously, and it creates extra work for reviewers who must read around inconsistent formatting. The same applies to ethical statements: include the required statements on ethics approval, consent, conflicts of interest, funding, and data availability, in the form the journal asks for, rather than assuming they can be added later. Missing statements are a common, avoidable cause of delay at the point where a paper would otherwise go out for review.
If the journal invites you to suggest reviewers, take the suggestion seriously and ethically. Suggest researchers with relevant expertise who have no conflict of interest with you — not collaborators, recent co-authors, supervisors, or personal friends — and provide institutional email addresses where possible. Suggesting only close colleagues, or suggesting reviewers with no relevant expertise, damages trust. Conversely, suggesting knowledgeable, independent reviewers helps the editor and can speed up the process. You may also, where the journal allows it, name reviewers to exclude for genuine conflicts, with a brief reason. Use that option sparingly and honestly.
Not all rejections mean the same thing, and your response should differ accordingly. A desk rejection — a rejection by the editor before peer review — usually means a problem of fit, priority, or basic suitability: the paper is out of scope, the journal has a backlog in your area, or the manuscript does not meet a stated requirement. It is not a judgement on your science in detail, because the science has not yet been reviewed. The correct response is usually to move to the next journal on your shortlist, after checking whether a framing change would improve fit, rather than to argue at length or to resubmit unchanged to a similar journal.
A rejection after peer review is more valuable, even though it feels worse. You now have detailed, expert criticism of your work. Read the reviewer reports after a day or two, when the initial disappointment has faded, and sort the comments into three groups: points you agree with and can fix, points you disagree with but can address with better explanation or evidence, and points that reflect a genuine difference of interpretation. The first two groups should shape your revision before resubmission anywhere. The third group should shape your cover letter and framing for the next journal, where you can anticipate the objection and answer it in the paper itself.
One caution applies to both cases: do not resubmit a rejected paper unchanged to another journal in the hope of a kinder set of reviewers. Reviewers at the next journal may raise the same issues, and repeated unchanged resubmission wastes everyone's time, including yours. A short, honest revision — tightening the framing for the new audience, fixing the clearest criticisms, updating the literature if time has passed — is almost always faster in the end than another rejection. Keep a record of each submission, decision, and revision, so that you can show, if ever asked, that each version was submitted to one journal at a time and revised between submissions.
Work through this checklist for your first-choice journal, and keep a copy with your submission records. If you cannot tick an item, find the answer before submitting rather than hoping it will not matter.
Scope and audience. Have I read the aims and scope and at least three recent articles? Could my paper sit plausibly alongside them? Does the journal publish my article type?
Peer review. Is the review model stated in writing? Is the process described, including who decides and whether appeals are possible?
Legitimacy. Are the editor and board members named, verifiable, and active in the field? Is there a real address, a working contact email, a written ethics policy, and transparent ownership?
Visibility. Have I checked any indexing or database claims myself, in the database, rather than trusting a logo? Am I comfortable with the journal's honest statement of its current status?
Timeline. Are timelines published? Do they fit my deadline, allowing for a revision round and a possible rejection elsewhere?
Cost. Is the total charge stated before submission, including any extra fees? Have I confirmed any waiver, discount, or institutional support in writing?
Licence and rights. Is the licence stated explicitly? Am I comfortable with what it permits, and does it meet any funder or institutional requirement?
Submission. Have I formatted to the author guidelines, included all required statements, written a concise cover letter, and confirmed I am submitting through the journal's official portal, to one journal only?
If every box is ticked, submit with confidence — not confidence that acceptance is certain, because no honest journal can promise that, but confidence that you have chosen well, presented your work properly, and given it the best chance the paper itself can earn.
| Criteria | What to check | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Scope match | Recent articles cover your exact topic | No recent related articles |
| Peer review model | Clearly stated review process | No review information at all |
| Indexing claims | Claims you can verify independently | Fake or unverifiable indexing badges |
| APC and waivers | Fee and waiver policy in writing | Fee revealed only after acceptance |
| Turnaround time | Stated review and decision times | Guaranteed acceptance in days |
| Open access licence | Licence such as CC BY 4.0 | No licence mentioned anywhere |
These authoritative external resources explain the standards and tools mentioned in this guide:
Should I always aim for the highest-impact journal first?
Not always. A paper that fits perfectly in a specialised journal will be read, cited, and published months sooner than the same paper languishing through rounds of rejection at a generalist title. Match the audience first; prestige second.
Can I submit the same paper to two journals at the same time?
No. Duplicate submission is considered misconduct by virtually all publishers. Submit to one journal, wait for the decision, and only then move to the next on your shortlist.
How can I tell if a journal is predatory?
Check for verifiable editors, a real address, a written ethics and peer review policy, transparent charges, and demonstrable indexing. Aggressive email solicitation, guaranteed acceptance, and hidden fees point the other way.
My paper was rejected as "out of scope." What now?
This is the most fixable rejection there is — it says nothing about your quality. Re-run Check 1 above against your shortlist and resubmit to a better-fitting journal, ideally after tightening the framing for that audience.
What if my paper doesn't seem to fit any journal I know?
Widen the search systematically: look at where the papers you cite were published, ask your supervisor or colleagues for two suggestions each, and browse the DOAJ by subject area. Interdisciplinary work often fits a specialised journal in one of its component fields better than a broad generalist title.
Does publishing in a new journal hurt my career?
What matters is legitimacy and rigour, not age. A new journal with transparent peer review, named editors, clear ethics policies, and honest communication about its indexing status is a sound venue. A journal of any age that hides this information is not.
How many journals should be on my shortlist?
Three is a practical number: a best-fit first choice, a strong alternative, and a safe fallback. Build them from a longer longlist of eight to twelve, so that a rejection does not leave you starting your search from scratch. Rank them by fit and audience match, not by prestige alone, and submit to one at a time.
Should I contact the editor before submitting?
A brief pre-submission enquiry can be useful, especially for interdisciplinary work or for a paper at the edge of a journal's scope. Keep it short: the title, a few sentences on the contribution, and a direct question about fit. Check first whether the journal invites such enquiries, and do not send the full manuscript unless asked. If the journal does not invite enquiries, rely on the scope check against recent issues instead.
What is the difference between a specialist journal and a predatory one?
Size and age are not the difference; transparency and rigour are. A small, new, specialist journal with verifiable editors, written peer review and ethics policies, transparent charges, and honest statements about its status is legitimate. A journal of any size that hides its editors, guarantees acceptance, reveals charges only after acceptance, or claims indexing it cannot demonstrate is not. Judge the process, not the profile.
Does open access affect how a journal is judged?
No. Open access describes how readers access the article, not how rigorously it was reviewed. There are rigorous open access journals and rigorous subscription journals, just as there are weak journals in both models. Judge each journal by its peer review, editorial board, transparency, and published work, not by its business model alone.
Can I change journals after submitting?
You should not submit elsewhere while a paper is under consideration, but you can withdraw a submission if you have a genuine reason — for example, a long delay beyond the journal's stated timeframe, or a discovered error that requires major revision. Withdraw formally, in writing to the editorial office, and wait for confirmation of withdrawal before submitting elsewhere. Never leave two submissions active at once.
How do I handle a rejection after peer review?
Separate the decision from the reports. The decision ends that submission; the reports are free expert advice for your next one. Fix what you agree with, address what you can explain better, and revise the framing for your next journal's audience before resubmitting. An unchanged resubmission usually earns the same criticisms from a new set of reviewers.
What should I check about APC waivers before I submit?
Confirm whether a waiver exists, whether you are eligible, how to apply, and by when — ideally in writing from the journal or publisher before submission. Do not assume eligibility from a general statement on a website, and do not assume a waiver promised at one journal applies at another. If you are relying on a waiver, that confirmation is part of your journal choice, not an afterthought.
Ready to find your journal? Explore the Global Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences — open access, double-blind peer review, and an inaugural fee waiver for authors — or return to our step-by-step guide to publishing your research paper and work through the full process.