Presentation of scientific journals

Hello and welcome to our MOOC on how to publish in an academic journal by and for PhD students. My name is Alexandre. And in this video we’re going to talk about academic journals work. Understanding how academic journals work is important because it is through the process of paper submission that your work can get published. If you understand this, you improve your chance to avoid a desk reject. You will get a specific correction from each journal in answer to your paper submission. This reaction will depend on two things, the editor in chief and the reviewers that are asked to review your paper. Therefore, when submitting a paper to a journal, you really have to tailor this paper for that academic journal in particular, and to be sure that each feature that the editors are looking for is there. To better understand how you ensure that you target every important point, let’s take a look at what happens when you submit an article. What happens when you submit an article is this. The paper you sent arrives on the chief editor’s desk, where it can go in two opposite directions. First, the editor-in-chief can desk reject the paper, and you’re back to square one. You have to find another journal to submit the paper or extensively modify this version to resubmit. Or, the editor0in-chief will send this paper to one his or her editors for review. The chosen editor will be the ones with the most links to the academic field you have positioned your paper in. Why? Because this editor will be the most competent in asking peers to blind review the paper. We have already spoken about the peer review system so we won’t spend time on it. But keep in mind that as the editor is the one in charge of finding reviewers, it is very important that you learn as much about his or her views on your academic field as possible. After all, you all belong to the same scientific community, researcher, editor, and reviewers. To sum up, when submitting a paper to an academic journal, you have to look for, first, the editorial board and its composition. That allows you to look into the kind of research the editors are doing, and what their areas of expertise are. You can then check if the paper you want to submit is coherent with the editorial line of the journal. You can also adapt the paper so that it fits with what the editors are looking for. Second, look at the type of articles that are most referenced in the journal. It is essential that you include references that are most commonly cited in publications in this journal, especially in your field of interest. This shows that you share the same language and belong to the same scientific community. Think of it as a matching exercise. By tailoring your paper for one academic journal, hence one editor, you minimize the desk reject risk. There are several elements that are key in the communication with the editors in the submission process, namely, the abstract and the the cover letter. The cover letter will focus on your research and motivations and why you think that this journal is a good match for the publication of this research. It is a key element to give essential complementary information to the editors. The abstract, on the other hand, will sum up what is key in your research and will most of the time be the first thing people read when looking at your article, but more on that later. For now that is all. Thanks a lot for watching and see you soon, goodbye.