Submitting and publishing research articles in peer-reviewed journals can be perplexing for scholars of all levels, and junior scholars often have few resources to assist with navigating the process.
Step One: Identify potential journals in your scholarly area.
The following is a partial list of anthropology journal titles, organized alphabetically.
To locate titles of interest on the list, use Control+F and type in major subfields and related disciplines.
Subdisciplines are identified using the following keywords: all branches, applied, archaeology, biological/physical, cultural/social, folklore, linguistic, medical, methods, paleontology, theory and visual. If the journal spans additional disciplines, these fields are noted, such as: biology, cultural studies, education, economics, humanities, material culture, musicology, political economy, etc. If a title is heavily interdisciplinary across many of these, it is indicated as “social sciences.” If the scope of a journal includes literature and the fine arts, it is indicated “humanities.” If a geographic area is part of the scope of the journal and not in the title, major regions are included; some examples include: Africa, Asia, Circumpolar, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania.
Step Two: Rank these potential journals for your specific article.
We suggest four considerations for creating your shortlist.
1. Scope
Evaluate the manuscript against a prospective journal’s scope and article types. Click on the hyperlink or use a search engine to locate the Aims and Scope, an “About This Journal” page, and/or “Author Submission Guidelines.” Any of these documents provide details about the type of desired content and submission details. To locate these documents online, you may need to type in journal name and the word “journal.”
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- Tip: Journals may have similar titles so ensure that you are submitting to your desired journal.
2. Timing
Think about how much time you have before you need an acceptance letter. Scholars can submit a given paper to only one journal at a time. Editors have difficulty finding peer reviewers, and even more difficulty obtaining completed reviews. Time to publication may correlate with how well an editorial office is run and, if a journal is publishing late or an editor does not respond to an inquiry about average time ranges, this could be an indication that your manuscript may languish.
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- Tip: Journals with more frequency (more issues each year) may be faster and those with “online first” options may make your article visible sooner.
- Tip: Eliminate titles that do not adhere to their publishing schedule. You can assess a journal’s timeliness by checking that the online publication date of issues corresponds with the cover publication date. Additionally, email the editor and ask for the time range of their review process. Whenever possible, avoid submitting to any journal that is publishing behind schedule.
3. Visibility once published
If your article is a scholarly one, and you want it to have the best chance to be read by other scholars, you will want to look at the pages on the journal’s website that list where the title is abstracted and indexed. Typically, the more services that index a given journal, the more likely it is that the articles within will be located and read by various scholarly audiences. Abstracting and indexing information is often prominent on “About the Journal” webpages.
Tip: Keep in mind some specific things you can do as an author to increase the visibility of your research, including carefully crafting a title, subtitle, and abstract.
4. Reputation
If your goals of publishing are related to academic advancement, evaluate the reputation of the journal. Journal titles are sometimes very similar to one another, and deceptive (or “predatory”) journals may select titles that are extremely similar to legitimate titles. Among non-predatory publishers, there is still a wide range of scholarly reputations. To help assess reputation, four systems of evaluation are available on this list of titles. Which systems matter for your career depend on the nature of your employer and its geographic location. Ranking journals is controversial; no single system can determine a journal’s ranking in a fair or objective way.
If you are interested in a more comprehensive resource, you might also consider purchasing How to Get Published in Anthropology.
For authors interested in international journals, the World Council of Anthropological Associations maintains an excellent list of its members’ publications and other journals as well.
Please email corrections or suggestions to: gro.orhtnanacirema@sbup.