This document provides guidance on developing an effective publication strategy. It discusses why publishing is important for both career advancement and sharing new knowledge. Key points covered include determining what and when to publish, choosing appropriate journals and co-authors, responding to reviewer feedback, and ways to raise one's research profile. Developing a clear publication plan and tracking outputs can help achieve research and career goals.

1. Publication Strategy
Dr Manju C.Pallam PhD,MSc, BSc
(Hons),Fellow HEE

2. Overview
▪ Why Publish?
▪ What and When to Publish?
▪ Who Should you Publish With?
▪ Where to Publish?
▪ Raising your Research Profile
▪ Reviewing your Publication Strategy
▪ Workshop

3. ▪ Regular publication – an essential part of an academic career.
▪ Key part of any University’s mission is the creation of new knowledge
and understanding for public benefit.
▪ Reputation and prestige – both for the individual and institution – relies in
large part on published output.
▪ Publication potential and track record are important criteria for academic
recruitment and promotion.
▪ Successful grant applications typically underpinned by a strong
publication record.
▪ Publishing is usually a condition of grant awards
Why Publish?

4. ▪ Raises your profile.
▪ Exposes your arguments/ideas/hypotheses to scrutiny/critique.
▪ Gets your findings into the public domain – users and beneficiaries can
then ‘potentially’ use them, if they notice them!
▪ Intellectual curiosity.
▪ Increasing h-index.
▪ Improving job prospects.
▪ Making a difference - adopted as policy recommendation,
commercialised, impact case study, used by practice community.
▪ All of the above should be personally satisfying and career supporting…
Why Publish? – Personal Objectives

5. ▪ Research integrity – conform to institutional best practice and comply
with any terms and conditions from funders and sponsors.
▪ Avoid under-reporting of research findings leading to publication bias –
particularly tempting when your study shows null or negative results.
▪ Avoid salami-slicing your publications - each new dataset and/or
methodology should form the basis of one discrete publication.
▪ Timescales… be mindful of the requirements – have a broad plan for
your research ca. 5 year into the future.
▪ Give yourself time for - planning, design, funding bids, ethics
applications, literature review, data collection, analysis, drafting,
conference papers, writing a final version, peer review and publication.
What and When to Publish?

6. ▪ Authorship guidelines – you need to have made a substantial
contribution to all of the following…
▪ Conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation
of data
▪ Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content
▪ Final approval of the version to be published - accepting public responsibility
for what it says
▪ Other contributions should be recognised through acknowledgements.
▪ Grey area… but claiming authorship when criteria haven’t been met
could be deemed as research misconduct.
Who Should you Publish With? 1

7. ▪ Strategic partnerships.
▪ Co-authorship is the norm in most disciplines, exceptions include the
humanities and social sciences.
▪ Co-authorship enables…
▪ Pooling of skills and resources
▪ Gives ECRs/junior researchers the opportunity to gain knowledge and get
published, but doctoral and ECRs should be the principal author of all
outputs substantially based on their work
▪ If possible collaborate with colleagues at other institutions - allows all authors
to submit the same output to the REF
▪ Get it agreed early on in the process – don’t be shy about discussing
authorship during the planning stage of research.
Who Should you Publish With? 2

8. ▪ Choice of journal – can be a challenge, but try and make a shortlist…
▪ What journals do you know and read in your research area
▪ Draw on colleagues/collaborators recommendations
▪ Look at databases listing journals in your discipline – Scopus, NCBI, CINAHL
▪ Academic or professional body guidance
▪ Look for articles similar to the one you want to publish – usually a good guide
to add suitable journals to your shortlist
▪ Shortlist of potential journals…
▪ Publishing there will fulfil your publication goals
▪ Reputable journal(s)
Where to Publish? 1

9. ▪ Checklist to narrow down your final journal list…
▪ Requirements of funder, grant etc. – T&Cs of your research grant or contract
▪ Journal scope and content – original research, qual vs. quant, article length
▪ Audience – general/specialist, academics/professionals, geographic reach,
▪ Discoverable – is the journal indexed in relevant databases in your discipline
▪ Access – Green/Gold Open Access, cost, funder rules, HEFCE and REF
▪ Review process – peer reviewed, acceptance rate, timescales
▪ Prestige – ‘who’ publishes there, editors, professional body publication
▪ Metrics – journal impact factor, SJR, SNIP, discipline ranking
▪ Trustworthy – beware of unsolicited emails offering to publish your research
Where to Publish? 2

10. • Ghost journals / Predatory journals

11. Bibliometric:
• Provide evidence of the impact of your research outputs when
applying for jobs, promotion or research funding
• Find new and emerging areas of research
• Identify potential research collaborators
• Identify journals in which to publish.

12. Bibliometric measures
• Citation counts: the number of times a research output appears in
the reference lists of other documents (articles, books, reviews,
conference proceedings etc). Found in: Google Scholar, Scopus
and Web of Science.
• H-index: designed to measure an author's productivity and
impact. It is the number of an author’s publications (h) that have h
or more citations to them. Found in: Google Scholar, Scopus and
Web of Science.
• Field-weighted citation impact: the ratio of citations received
relative to the expected world average for the subject field,
publication type and publication year. It can apply to a research
output or group of research outputs. Found in SciVal.

13. • Outputs in top percentiles: the number or percentage of research
outputs in the top most-cited publications in the world, UK, or a
specific country. Found in Scopus and SciVal.
• Journal Impact Factor: based on the average number of citations
received per paper published in that journal in the preceding two
years. Found in Journal Citation Reports.
• CiteScore: the average number of citations received in a calendar
year by all items published in that journal in the proceeding three
years. Found in Scopus

14. • SCImago Journal Rank: places a higher value on citations from
more prestigious journals. Found in Scopus
• Scopus SNIP: a ratio of a journal's citation count per paper and
the citation potential in its subject field. The Scopus SNIP
normalises citation rate subject differences. Found in Scopus.
• i 10 Index: Created by Google Scholar and used in Google's My
Citations feature. the number of publications with at least 10
citations.
(Adapted from the Metrics Toolkit licensed under a CC-BY 4.0
licence.)

15. Indexing
• Citation index is a kind of bibliographic database, an index of
citation between publications, allowing the user to easily
establish which later documents, cite which earlier documents
• A reflection of its quality.

16. Indexing Agencies
• Google Scholar, JSTOR, PsycINFO, PubMed/Medline,
ScienceDirect, Scopus, Web of Science
• UGC indexed

17. Title and Abstract
▪ Title…
▪ Concise, accurate and informative
▪ Titles describing main findings of a paper stronger than those describing
methods, e.g., “Gross motor function is an important predictor of daily
physical activity in young people with bilateral spastic cerebral palsy”
stronger than “A study of gross motor function and physical activity in
children in cerebral palsy”.
▪ Abstract…
▪ Probably first thing a reviewer will read – key part of the whole paper
▪ Make sure that the originality, significance and rigour are clearly reflected
▪ Select accurate keywords – will be used to index your article
▪ May be a conflict between what reads well to a REF reviewer vs. what
stands the best chance of getting published

18. Authors and Figures
▪ Co-authors…
▪ Science is objective – but subjective factors can’t be ignored in REF
▪ If you’ve collaborated with a leading figure – include them on author list
▪ Slightly grey area around offering vanity authorship – think about this before
you even start the research
▪ Figures…
▪ Time constraints may prevent reviewers reading all of the text as carefully as
they should
▪ They’re more likely to scan pictures – so use them to illustrate methods used
or reinforce the most important results

19. Reviewers’ Feedback
▪ Hopefully not rejected outright – revise and resubmit.
▪ Don’t be too disappointed if rejected outright – revise, re-target and send
somewhere else.
▪ Be realistic and expect positives and negatives.
▪ Carefully analyse what reviewers really want you to do.
▪ If you’re unlucky enough to get a review with overly emotive and
overheated comments – ignore it.
▪ When you send in your revised manuscript include a separate document
clearly outlining your revision actions.
▪ If you have good reason to disagree with a reviewer don’t be shy arguing
your corner – include comments to the editor if appropriate.

20. Raising your Research Profile
▪ Plan ahead – think about how to communication and promotion beyond
the output itself, raising interest prior to publication
▪ Get an ORCID ID - uniquely and unambiguously identifies you as a
researcher. Useful for funders, automatically updates works in connected
databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, Europe PubMed Central.
▪ Keep your profile up to date – Symplectic + academic networking sites
such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu.
▪ Consider sharing research data - increases citation impact, research
funders encourage it, but establish research data management early on.
▪ Consider writing/blogging about your research – pre/post-publication.
▪ Use social media to build research network - academic conferences +
ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Twitter etc.

21. Reviewing your Publication Strategy
Comments:
Reviewed by (line manager/research mentor):
Date:
Working title or broad
topic/theme
Publication
type (e.g.
journal article,
book chapter,
practice-focus)
Approximate
completion
date (e.g. Q3
2020)
Co-author(s)
and/or other
contributors
Target journal
or journals /
Publisher(s) /
Other audience
Context (e.g.
link to dept. or
faculty
research, REF
contribution)
1
2

22. REF Criteria
▪ Originality…
▪ What is different about your research?
▪ What have you done that has not been done before?
▪ Have you used a new technique or modified an existing one?
▪ Have you studied a cohort of individuals that haven’t been studied before?
▪ Significance…
▪ What will people do differently as a result of your work?
▪ Implications for other researchers and for people in the wider world?
▪ How has our knowledge of the world changed?
▪ Rigour…
▪ Have you chosen a sensible research question?
▪ Have you used the best methodology to answer that question?
▪ Applied standardised techniques or properly validated innovative techniques?
▪ Have you presented your results as clearly and convincingly as possible?

23. Further work
▪ Departmental strategies/support for the long term:
▪ Writing groups, retreats etc?
▪ Journal clubs?
▪ Analysing published work?
▪ Working paper repository?
▪ ‘Pre-peer review’?
▪ Protecting writing/revising time?

24. References
• Metrics Toolkit (2020).Available from https://www.metrics-
toolkit.org/. Accessed on 15/7/2020
• Content Courtesy:
• Dr David Lee