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Strategic Publishing, Research Impact & Researcher Profiles: Strategic Publishing

This guide covers scholarly publishing strategies, how to choose a journal, discusses Open Access publishing models, how to evaluate research impact, and provides tips around managing researcher profiles

What is meant by 'Strategic Publishing'?

 

As a researcher, publishing is one of the main ways to make your work more broadly visible to other researchers and the community. Taking a strategic view of the publishing process will likely increase your visibility as a researcher and improve the academic and societal impact of your work. 

Why do you need a publishing strategy?  

 

Navigating the increasingly complex publishing landscape is not a simple task. Many considerations and decisions need to be made to ensure your work is published in the best place to achieve your personal and publishing goals.  

Developing a publishing strategy helps you ask the right questions and use the most appropriate tools to evaluate and select the journals best matched to your target audience, professional goals, and values as a researcher.   

This section of the guide will help you understand the different publishing models and outline the key aspects of journal selection. 

Understanding the publishing models 

 

An important starting point for your publishing strategy is deciding on your preferred publishing model. There are two main publishing models used for scholarly research: 

  • The traditional subscription-based model, and 
  • Open Access model.  

See the Open Access Publishing page in this guide for more information. 

Traditional vs Open Access models

The traditional, subscription-based model has been used to disseminate academic and scholarly information since the 17th century. In this for-profit model, researchers submit their articles to journal publishers for appraisal.

Articles that meet the journal's requirements undergo a peer review process and are then published. In most cases, researchers must give some or all of their copyright to the publisher.

Once the manuscript is accepted and published, it can only be accessed through an annual subscription or purchased as an individual article.  

The Open Access (OA) publishing model emerged in the late 1980s, made possible by the arrival of the internet and a shift to online publishing.

This model is characterised by making research publicly available to everyone free of charge. With significantly less copyright and licencing restrictions than the traditional model, this enables research authors to keep copyright of their work and readers to freely access and build on (where licencing permits) the published research. 

Other useful resources

UTS Publishing

The UTS Publishing site, is another valuable source of information, providing advice on many different aspects of publishing. It includes UTS Faculty White lists to support your journal selection process. 

UTS Bylines

There are personal and institutional ramifications of having your affiliation data misrepresented, so it is essential you accredit your link with UTS correctly using the byline shown below. 

Researcher name, University of Technology Sydney, Centre Name, [campus], Ultimo NSW 2007, Australia 

 OR 

Researcher name, University of Technology Sydney, Faculty, [campus], Ultimo NSW 2007, Australia 

 

Excellence in Research Australia 

Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) identifies and promotes excellence in Australian universities using international benchmarks. To maximise the chances of your research being used in the UTS ERA submission, you must publish in a journal found in the ERA Submission Journal List. This comprehensive collection of journals is created in collaboration with Australian universities and scholarly societies. You can search the journal list by 4-digit Field of Research (FoR) codes. 

Links:

Avoiding predatory publications

 

Predatory journals are publications that claim to be legitimate scholarly journals but misrepresent their publishing practices. Some common forms of predatory publishing practices include falsely claiming to provide peer review, hiding information about Article Processing Charges (APCs), misrepresenting members of the journal's editorial board, and other violations of copyright or scholarly ethics. 

Some resources to help you avoid predatory publishers:

Preprints