Dr. Fahad Azam
Associate Professor,
Pharmacology and Therapeutics

(Read time: 4 minutes)
(Number of words: 686)

A lot has changed across the world in the last four months as the world faces the Covid-19 pandemic and social life in many countries has effectively come to a complete halt. Like many other fields, people related to the field of education are also required to work from home and are currently taking their classes online. This scenario presents a unique opportunity for faculty members as they now have more time to work on their pending research projects and can focus on increasing their research output. Academicians can utilize this time to analyze previously collected data and submit their research manuscripts to suitable journals.  

Finding a good, suitable journal is a complex task as many factors contribute towards selection for a suitable journal. Some of these factors are impact factor, visibility, outreach, quality, processing charges, and time taken for the initial decision of the journal. Moreover, matching the manuscript with the scope of the selected journal suitability of the topic of research are also important considerations. Fortunately this multi-faceted task can be made easy by artificial intelligence and application of appropriate algorithms.   

Many good reputable publisher websites have developed a portal to assist research authors to find suitable journals to submit their researches. In this blog I will present to you about two portals developed by two reputable publishing websites.  

The first website and the simpler of the two is developed by Wiley and its URL is https://journalfinder.wiley.com.  When you reach the website, all you have to do is to copy and paste the title of the manuscript in the first field and paste the abstract of the manuscript without keywords in the second field. Then you have click on the button “find” which is given on the lower right-hand side of the screen. (Fig 1)

Figure 1 (https://journalfinder.wiley.com)

As soon as you will hit this button, the portal will match your abstract with many suitable journals present in its database. The portal will also immediately present to you the impact factor, the comparative ranking of the journal in the ISI database and open access options of the matched journals. The most beautiful and convenient feature of this website is that you will also see an option to directly initiate the submission process to the journal of your choice right from this screen. (Fig 2)

Figure 2 (https://journalfinder.wiley.com)

A similar portal is developed by the famous publishing website Elsevier and the URL for its portal is https://journalfinder.elsevier.com. This portal requires more information than the previously mentioned portal. Here, besides entering the title and abstract of your manuscript, you will also have to enter keywords and choose a discipline. (Fig 3)

Figure 3 (https://journalfinder.elsevier.com)

In advanced search options, this website also gives you the option to select journals with time to take an initial decision and final publication, impact factor, and processing charges. As soon as you will click on find journals, this website will also give you multiple options for journals suitable for your manuscript and you can directly access the journal home page and other relevant details right from this screen. (Fig 4,5)

Figure 4 (https://journalfinder.elsevier.com)

Figure 5 (https://journalfinder.elsevier.com)

The ecosystem of conducting research and publishing in quality indexed journals is getting a lot more competitive with time and initiatives like these websites may prove to be of great assistance for researchers to publish their work in quality journals that closely match the topic of research. These websites can also save a lot of time which can be utilized to further improve the quality of research.

Even when it has become quite easy to use portals of publishing websites to find a suitable journal for your manuscript, it is noteworthy to mention that it is always a good idea to consider journals which have been cited in your own publications. Reading guidelines to authors as well as the aims and scope of the journal can be helpful. Lastly it is very important to submit your paper to only one journal at a time to avoid any controversy.