You want to share your research with the largest, most relevant audience possible for discoverability and impact.

Getting your research read and cited benefits your individual career, but also assists the whole of UWA in university rankings and ERA. These rankings are based on the quality of research papers. Equally, you need to ensure your quality papers are read by the research community! UWA's focus is to publish quality research in journals that are widely read and cited.

To identify relevant and quality journals to publish in, consider the following:

• Relevance - Does your paper match the aim and scope of the journal?
• Reputation - What are the key journals and publications in your area of research?  Where do those at the top of your field publish their work? What do you read? Which journals are included in key databases in your field?  Is your topic of local interest?  Are you an Early Career Researcher?
• Impact factor - Which are the high impact journals in your field? For more info about journal impact, see evaluating journals from our research metrics guide.
• Quartile rankings - Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), can be used to find the subject category and quartile ranking of a journal. Quartile 1 (Q1) is applied to journals ranked in the top 25% in their category. Identify top journals by viewing the Q1 Journals list.
• Journal Lists and Indexes - Which journals are indexed in Web of Science, Scopus, or other big databases used in your discipline? Is the journal you are considering marked as Refereed  in Ulrich's directory?
• Open Access (OA) publishing  - OA journal articles can reach an audience beyond academia, including practitioners, policy makers, not for profit organisations, researchers in developing countries and the general public - anyone with an internet access. Consider making your research findings openly accessible, at no cost to readers, where possible. 

  Go to the UWA Open Access Toolkit to:

  • learn about Open Access publishing and it's benefits.
  • see whether the journal you wish to publish with provides a cost effective OA publication option, or allows you to self-archive an OA version of your paper in the UWA Profiles and Research Repository.
  •  The following questions may help to determine whether a journal's OA policy is compatible with your publishing goals: 
  • Is your audience mainly academic, or do you wish to reach practitioners, policy-makers or the general public?
  • How quickly does the research need to be disseminated beyond academia?
  • Are there funder mandates to be met regarding OA?
  • Can you afford the OA cost if no support is available?
  • Have you shortlisted a few journals, and can therefore aim for one that affordably enables your work to be OA ?

These resources can be used to find quality Open Access journals

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAG)

An independent, community curated directory that indexes and makes accessible high quality, open access peer reviewed journals. Use it to find open access journals in which to publish or search for journals and articles you wish to read. It includes search functionality that allows you to find journals that do not charge article processing fees.

Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory 

An easy to search source of detailed information on more than 300,000 periodicals of all types. Conduct an initial keyword search and then use the narrow results feature to limit to open access publications.

UWA Open Access Journals

Cerae: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Australasian journal of medieval and early modern studies.

CygnusUWA

Showcases the research of first year students at The University of Western Australia (UWA) enrolled in a biology unit.

Education research and perspectives

A multi-disciplinary open access journal, published continuously UWA Education academics since December 1950. All contents from 2000 are now available as OA articles.

Limina: a journal of historical and cultural studies

A refereed academic journal of historical and cultural studies based in the Discipline of History at UWA.

Westerly ​(issues become Open Access after three years)

Since 1956, Westerly has been publishing lively fiction and poetry as well as intelligent articles. It covers literature and culture throughout the world, but maintains a special emphasis on Australia, particularly Western Australia, and the Asian region.

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