Publishing an article comes with associated costs and fees. Different journals charge different prices. The example journal that was explored during the program, Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, had APCs of $1,950. This is just one example, but it can give you a rough idea of what to expect. Make sure to check the APCs for each open access journal you are considering for publication and ensure you have sufficient funds to cover the fees if your article is accepted. The APCs should be listed in the author submission guidelines on every open access journal website, under the section related to publication costs. Remember that even traditional, subscription-based journals may have publishing fees related to the number of pages and print color.

Most of the resources that were used during the demonstration are freely available and do not require a Columbia affiliation. The Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE), National Library of Medicine Catalog, and Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) can all be accessed for free by anyone. The one resource you would need institutional access for is Web of Science, including the Web of Science Journal Citation Reports. To access Web of Science, you need to go to the Health Sciences Library website. If you are not a Columbia affiliate, check with your home institution to see if they have access to the database.

There are many resources available through the Health Sciences Library website:

GrantForward is a web-based discovery and workflow tool that combines a comprehensive source of global funding opportunities with the largest collection of scholar profiles into one intuitive solution. Search this database for funding opportunities and potential collaborators based on your research topic.

If you search for the keyword “Publishing” on our website, you will find knowledge base articles, tutorials, and insights on topics like: publishing open access for free with Cambridge University Press, what is a preprint?, how to write an op-ed, understanding journal impact indicators, how to write a scientific paper, and much more;

Lastly, on the homepage of the library website you can find resource spotlights and announcements that can include journals, conferences, and calls for submissions for work on particular topics.

There are other resources available through Columbia University that you may find helpful:

The Sponsored Projects Administration (SPA) serves as a central resource to support the research community at Columbia University by providing guidance and stewardship for the researchers and administrators on all campuses. Their mission is to provide excellent administrative support to investigators in their pursuit of research and other scholarly activities while ensuring compliance with federal, University and private sponsor regulations, terms and conditions;

Columbia Research administers the policies governing the conduct of research at the University and the management of its research programs. It assists investigators seeking external funding, promotes interdisciplinary research, and provides seed money for innovative early-stage research. It also works to promote an institutional environment that sustains the high quality of the University's research programs, while ensuring that research is conducted in compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and University policies;

Finally, Columbia Copyright Advisory Services helps address issues surrounding the use of scholarly materials by faculty and students in the course of research, teaching and communicating scholarship. The office promotes awareness and education about copyright to the greater scholarly community.

It is important to recognize the differences between being a first author, middle author, and last author on a publication. The first author is typically the lead person, taking on most of the responsibility for writing the manuscript and potentially for carrying out the research. The last author is typically the senior author. They could be the principal investigator or mentor for the research team or lab, whose expertise and funding is supporting the work being published. Any author listed between first and last authors is considered a middle author. A more detailed explanation can be found in this article published in Science, written by Elisabeth Pain.

In addition to considering authorship order, it is important to be familiar with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship. Lastly, understanding the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) can be important, especially if the journal you are submitting your work to requires specification of author contributions.

I think it would be reasonable to assume that first author papers are considered more valuable than middle author papers, in the sense that you have more ownership and responsibility of the work that was produced. In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that being a middle author lacks value. In fact, it very well could be the case that you will need to work as a middle author on one or more publications to gain experience before you get an opportunity to take the lead as first author. When applying for something like promotion, tenure, or a job, you can expect that your first and last author publications will carry the most significance.

When you are ranking your list of target journals, I would not recommend using the publishing model as one of your first criteria. I would argue that it is better to start by thinking critically about:

• the audience you are trying to reach;
• the topic area of the journal;
• the indexing of the journal in places like MEDLINE and Web of Science; and
• the Journal Impact Factor.

Once you have narrowed down your choices based on some of these criteria, then you can think more about the publishing models for each of the journals. You want to publish your work in an important journal in your field that will reach the audience you want to reach. That may mean that a traditional, subscription journal is the best fit. You will avoid having to pay article processing charges (APCs) but may still need to pay other publishing fees related to pages and color printing.

If you value reaching the largest audience possible and you have an option between subscription and open access, in theory the open access journal would make your research more widely available. In gold open access journals, this will require you to pay article processing charges (APCs). You will need to make sure you have sufficient funding available to cover the cost. Alternatively, if you have an option to publish in a green open access journal, you may be able to avoid APCs. Green open access journals are subscription journals that allow you to make a version of your work available in an open access repository after an embargo period.

There is not necessarily a right answer. You will need to think about the options you have for target journals, your sources of funding, and your personal beliefs about publishing models to make the correct decision for you.

It can be difficult to tell if a journal is from a predatory or legitimate publisher. Hopefully the strategy that was laid out during the program can help you be confident in your journal selection. Doing a thorough investigation using sources like the Web of Science Journal Citation Reports, National Library of Medicine Catalog, Directory of Open Access Journals, and looking at the journal website can help you establish whether a journal is legitimate. Remember, you should always use the Think, Check, Submit checklist to verify the credibility of a journal.

Clinical cases can be a good introduction to publishing for clinical students. Typically, these students will be working with a clinical mentor and are charged with writing up the history of a particular patient. There needs to be relevance and a purpose for writing up a case report, but it is a valid type of publication for someone new to publishing. There may also be opportunities during your time as a student to get involved with review projects and original research, regardless of your discipline (i.e., medical, nursing, public health, etc.).

In many cases, commentaries will be requested of a researcher by a journal. The journal may ask them to write a piece on a particular topic or comment on an article in a previous issue. There are cases where you can write a commentary that is uninvited, but you would need to have a clear rationale and point of view for why you think the commentary is important. It may not be as easy for younger career researchers compared to more established, senior researchers in a field. You can definitely consider writing one, but just keep this perspective in mind.

In terms of being preferable, I don’t know that one is inherently better than the other. They are both valid types of publications. I think that any sort of experience that you can get in research is good for your career development. Not just for the purpose of getting a publication, though I do know that this is important, but to build your skills and to learn how research works. While you may not get that first author publication if you join a team working on an original research study or review, the experience you gain from the process is going to be beneficial.

There’s a lot of ways that publishing is going to help your career as a researcher. This topic will be covered during the last program of our Get Pumped for Publishing Series, called Build Your Reputation and Expand Your Network. The program will be taking place on Thursday, May 9th. My colleague Madeleine Grace will be providing more information about the different ways that publishing can impact your career development. You can register for the program on the Health Sciences Library website.

The program is being recorded and will be made available on the Health Sciences Library website at a future date. You will need a Columbia UNI and password to be able to access the recordings. That being said, the resources discussed will be sent out in an email this afternoon to everyone that registered for the program.

Let’s differentiate between author-level metrics and journal-level metrics.

The h-index is an author-level metric. It is a measure of the research production of an author. Let’s use an h-Index of 10 as an example. A score of 10 means that the author has at least 10 papers that have been cited 10 or more times. The higher the h-index score, the more papers the author has published that have been highly cited.

Journal Impact Factor, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), and the Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) are all journal-level metrics:

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is the average number of times an article in a journal is cited over a specified time period. The Impact factor scores, quartiles, and percentiles are available for journals via searching the Web of Science Journal Citation Reports;

The SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) is a metric that takes subject field, journal quality, and journal reputation into account when considering the effect on the value of a citation. It is available through the Scopus Database, by searching for the journal title in the Sources section on the Scopus database;

The Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) is a contextual measure of citation impact that weighs citations based on the total number of citations in a subject area. The SNIP is higher for a subject area where citations are less likely, and lower for areas where citations are more likely. The SNIP is also available by searching in the Sources section on the Scopus database.

When gathering information about journals for your ranking list, you can definitely consider adding the SJR and SNIP in addition to the JIF.

1. Selecting a Journal for Publication is a knowledge base article on the Health Sciences Library website that can help you explore potential journals to publish your manuscript in.
2. Open Access by Peter Suber (2012) is a book available through the library catalog CLIO that explores the history and current day status of open access publishing.
3. SPARC Open Access is a resource that explains open access policy and provides further resources for more information.
4. Creative Commons is an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture we need to address the world's most pressing challenges and create a brighter future for all.
5. Web of Science is a database that is available through the Health Sciences Library website. You can use the database to do literature searches, cited reference searching, author searching, as well as access stools like the Journal Citation Reports and Manuscript Matcher.
6. Web of Science Journal Citation Reports is a tool available through Web of Science. Please access this tool by going to the Web of Science home page and clicking on the tools option on the top right of the screen. Here you can search for specific journal titles or search topic areas to discover journals. You can learn about journal impact factors, publishing models, and much more.
7. Journal Author Name Estimator is a tool that can help you brainstorm journals to publish your manuscript in. Enter in information about your manuscript and review the potential journal list provided by the tool.
8. Manuscript Matcher is a tool available through Web of Science. Please access this tool by going to the Web of Science home page and clicking on the tools option on the top right of the screen. Select Master Journal List, and then look for the Manuscript Matcher tab. Here you can create an account and then enter information about your manuscript in order to search for possible journals to submit the manuscript for publication.
9. Directory of Open Access Journals is a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a growing community, and is committed to ensuring quality content is freely available online for everyone. You can search to see if an open access journal you are considering is included in this trusted resource.
10. Think, Check, Submit Checklist is a tool that will help you discover what you need to know when assessing whether or not a publisher is suitable for your research.
11. Excel Template for Ranking Journals (please download file from OSF to use on your computer) this tool was created by an Informationist at the Health Sciences Library to help you organize and document your journal selection process.
12. Columbia Library Catalog (CLIO) is a great resource to access full text articles, books, ebooks, databases, and more.