Publish: Publication process

There are many factors to consider when deciding where to publish including:

• Evaluating the credentials of a journal.
• Finding the most appropriate journal to publish in.
• Using journal metrics to find appropriate Highly Ranked Journals to publish in.
• Authors may wish to take into consideration the prestige or importance of journals in their subject area.
• Check out the ECU Strategic Plan 2017-2021: World ready for metrics being used to measure research impact, ASPEO.

Considering Open Access options:

• Publishing in an Open Access journal allows your paper to be read by anyone in the world, thereby increasing its impact.
• The two options of Open Access are to either pay up-front for open access or use the free "green open access" version (where the publisher allows authors to make the Author Accepted Manuscript version of the published paper available for all to read in ECU's institutional repository Research Online).
• ECU also offers the Open Access Funding Support Scheme which allows research staff to fund the cost of publishing open access in quartile 1 journals.

Considering your target audience:

• Selection of a publication may be related to the audience the author an author would like to target. For example if you wish to reach a wide spectrum of the public it may be appropriate to publish in an online newspaper or magazine such as the Conversation.

Publishing your thesis as a book or other publication may be something that appeals to you. Many thesis end up as popular science books, textbook chapters or even long form articles. A thesis is a very particular type of publication designed for its purpose, the format of a thesis does not generally appeal to a wide audience. If your aim  is to publish your thesis careful consideration should to be taken in editing and rewriting your thesis to a new audience.

If you are considering publishing your ECU thesis please contact the ECU Library- Research Services team to discuss options for your thesis being included in our repository.

Useful links

Check out the resources available to you as an ECU researcher on BrightTALK. 

Introduction to writing research articles
Join Dr Trevor Lane as he hosts a webinar covering an introduction to writing research articles. In this webinar, you will learn how to write original research articles clearly and concisely and use an appropriate writing style for journals. You will also gain valuable insight into making strategic publication decisions that will help increase your chances of publication success.

There may be future copyright issues if you are reusing figures, images and other media that you have previously published. Even if you created these items yourself. Depending on the publisher and the copyright agreement you signed you may no longer have the right to publish them freely. If you would like to re-use figures you will need to check your copyright agreement to see what is allowable, and you may need to ask the publisher for permission.

There is a way to avoid this. Before you publish through a traditional publisher you may choose to self publish your figures, using a platform such as figshare and a creative commons license of your choosing. This will enable you to reuse these figures as you desire, provided you cite your work. Read the blog post "How to legally re-use your figures" for more information.