Scopus & Web of Science: How to Choose the Best Journal Based on its Indexing?

Scopus & Web of Science are great allies of every researcher in the database industry. While Scopus is widely recognized and used by researchers trying to search backward and forward in time, WoS stands for its citations and publications. WoS and Scopus are the biggest platforms with active features to help enhance your research and publish your content without any complications. You must choose the right journal to execute the publication of your article safely.

 

Scopus vs Web of Science

Scopus Base Benefits

• It gives back the result of scholarly articles compared to the most competitive ones. Even though you get the perfect high-quality research result, you will also be notified when compatible research is popping up.
• Being able to easily search and measure the research with proper citations and publications makes Scopus unique.
• With proper knowledge of what is being searched by whom, helping you discover collaborators, you would never have to worry about more accuracy with Scopus.
• Dating back to 1970, Scopus gives out the best help in funding, giving worldwide content coverage to ease down the research crucial to funding.
• Scopus is the most accurate platform if your organization requires you to work with proper research.

 

Scopus Base Drawbacks

• Many have found the citations covered by Scopus negative and without a peer review.
• Some of the content coverage takes months to be updated.
• Scopus cover only a small part/portion of scientific literature.

 

WoS Base Benefits

• The best part about executing your research with the help of the WoS journal, you can cover deeper results for your research.
• WoS’s full database used to bring the results dating back to 1945, which now brings the results from 1900.
• It works mostly in the academic industry, indexing its search in a timely manner.
• It updates its search result daily from Monday to Friday, the business hours.

 

WoS Base Drawbacks

• Since WoS is one of the most famous citation databases, it is costly, too, when it comes to running it for major firms like universities.
• Even by research universities, the citations for conference proceedings and books are not displayed as a separate product or even held widely.
• When researching the authors’ names, WoS is not very friendly and can mix up the same names.
• Not even the author’s affiliation to the institute is properly researched by the database.

 

The most essential criteria for selecting a journal:

1. First check your indexing preferences

SCI/SCIE/SSCI/ESCI indexing can be found at http://mjl.clarivate.com/, Scopus indexing can be found at https://www.scopus.com.

2. Make a list of available journals in your subject area and look through the types of articles published in them

Make a list of journals with a suitable impact factor range and compare the quality of your article with the quality of those published in the selected journals.

Assess the quality of your article. It is necessary to review the level and quality of publications in selected journals (scientific novelty, methods used, experimental technique) and evaluate the quality of your article to be accepted in a particular journal. It is not simple! Unfortunately, there are no universal assessment methods here. It is a matter of experience and professionalism.

If your article has scientific novelty and modern research methods, you can publish an article in leading specialized journals on your subject.

It is more complicated with peer-reviewed journals (Nature, Letters, etc.). It requires rather “special” relevance, which is evaluated very subjectively and considers your previous publications and affiliation. Therefore, the submission of articles to these publications should be postponed. Or entrust the evaluation of your article to professionals who will be able to assess the quality of your article and recommend these journals.

 

3. Make sure the purposes of the journals comply with the purpose of your research

The most common reason for publication rejection is a mismatch between the subject matter of the manuscript, and the goals and scope of the journal.

You should primarily determine whether the subject of your article matches the subject of the target journal. Journals are usually very specific in their subject domains. Finally, make sure the target journal accepts the articles of the type you are going to submit. For example, if your article is a case study, make sure the journal publishes reports by topic. Submitting to a journal that does not accept articles of the type you have written gives you an almost 100% chance that the manuscript will be rejected.

 

4. Check for typical articles published by journals

To understand whether your article can suit any journal, you need to:

1) Read the general information about the journal on the website (may be called “about the journal”, “journal scope”, “aims & scope”, etc.).

2) Look through several issues of the journal – article titles and abstracts. It is free.

3) Think and conclude.

 

5. Check the following aspects of the journal functioning

Examine the review process, instructions for authors, open access options, audience/readership of the journal, publisher information, review time, acceptance/rejection rates, journal fees, etc.

 

Learn the rules for writing articles and ethical guidelines.

Each journal on the website has a “For Authors” section (For Authors, Authors and Referees, Author Guidelines, etc. depending on the publisher). It contains instructions for formatting an article, general rules of the journal (Scope, Policy, etc.) Also, do not forget to read the ethical guidelines, especially if your work is related to experiments on animals or people. Generally speaking, the latter is a good practice to do before starting your research. In any journal, such articles require the opinion of the Ethical Committee, which must be given to the research plan, i.e., before starting actual experiments.

Often (though not always) modern journals have their own article templates. Template files can always be downloaded from the journal’s website (usually in the sections Author Guidelines, Templates).

• The reputation of the journal must be considered.

Indexed peer-reviewed journals usually have distinguished researchers as members of their editorial board. Visit the journal’s website to check the names on the editorial board. Are editors well known in your research domain?

• Sponsorship of the journal.

Is the journal owned by a publisher or sponsored by a reputable community in your research domain?

• Peer review or review period.

Very often, the authors of articles have certain deadlines for the publication of an article – a grant, a dissertation, management requirements. Therefore, it is important to know whether it makes sense to contact a particular journal or it is better to find another one.

• The number of the journal issues published per year?

A monthly journal is much more likely to review your article quickly compared to a journal that only publishes once a year. Some journals indicate the date of article submission and acceptance. Comparing these dates will give you a rough idea of the deadline for the article completion.

• Does the journal publish online articles; does it post accepted articles online after they are approved for publication?

If so, this means that your article will be published on the Internet shortly after it is accepted (and for practical purposes, will be treated as a published article), even if it appears in print much later. Publishing in print-only journals can severely limit the number of people who meet or read your article. For those who want to publish promptly (less than within two months), open access may be the best option.

• The need to pay a publication or review fee.

As a rule, publications in the majority of reputable foreign scientific journals are completely free (for authors), however, they have significant reservations:

1. As a rule, you still need to pay if you want to publish an article in an open-access mode. What does it mean?

Reading scientific journals costs money. When you enter a website, such as Science Direct (a portal for one of the largest publishers of scientific periodicals) and want to view or download an article in a journal, you will be asked to pay a certain amount.

However, when you publish an article, the editors may offer you to pay a certain amount – and then your article will be available for reading for free to anyone. This is open access – you pay for the right of others to read your article for free. Or you do not pay, but those who want to read it will pay the publisher.

2. Some journals charge money for printing color illustrations. The fee can be quite noticeable (100 or more US dollars). You may be asked to pay for additional printing services. And you can refuse.
3. Top multidisciplinary journals (Nature, Science, etc.) may charge publication fee, which is (almost) mandatory. This may be a direct publication fee or a fee for reviewing your article.

And remember, if you were able to get into the journal, of course, you should not refuse because of the money.

 

6. Make a final list of journals and select a journal that meets all of your criteria

Prepare your manuscript in compliance with the journal guidelines and submit your manuscript.

Write a clean copy of the article in the journal template. Write a letter to the editor (cover letter).

The cover letter is written in free form. The main thing is that it should contain a rationale for why, in your opinion, your article is worthy of being published in this particular journal (the importance of the topic, etc.). The more serious and respectable the publication to which you submit the manuscript, the more seriously you should regard this step. In particular, here you can directly write why the article will be interesting or useful to the readers of the journal (this is usually inappropriate in the body of the article). It is especially good if you can argue (or hint) that the article will have many potential readers.

Another aspect at this step is the recommendations of potential reviewers. Typically, journals offer about 5 nominations, from which the editor can (but is not required to) select reviewers. Naturally, you need to indicate those who understand your topic, the simplest thing is to look for publications. At the same time, choose rather young scientists (the first authors) than professors (the last authors on the list). In general, professors are overloaded with reviews worldwide; therefore, a thoughtful review (rather than aa formal reply) is much more likely to get from the young reviewers (although there could be their own problems with them).

 

7. Submit your article

Nowadays, the great majority of journals accept articles through their web interfaces (submission systems). To get into it, you should just follow the link Submit Article (or Submit Manuscript, etc., the keyword is submit/submission, which in this case means “send/sending”).

It is necessary to register in the system using your relevant email address – you will be sent notifications about how your manuscript is doing to this mailbox.

Further procedures may be different for different journals, but in general, all systems are built in such a way as to be as intuitively comprehensible as possible. There should be no problems, but otherwise, there is always a Help section.

And most importantly, after your article is published, it should be easily found by other researchers. The visibility of the journal plays an important role in this regard improving the visibility of your research in your chosen field, and it can also increase the number of citations of your article.

Thus, now you know “How to choose an indexed Scopus and Web of Science journal for publishing your article” and we can formulate the main questions that the author has to answer before choosing a journal.

 

The main criteria for choosing a journal:

• Does the subject matter of your article comply with the scope of the journal?
• Does this journal accept the type of article you are going to submit?
• Does your target audience read this journal?
• Is this journal included in bibliographic and subject databases?
• Does this journal publish articles online?
• Does the impact factor of this journal meet your requirements?
• Is this journal considered reputable in its field by peers and co-workers?
• What is the deadline for completing articles submitted to the journal?
• How many times a year is this journal published?
• What is the publication fee?
• Are the size and structure of your manuscript acceptable for the journal?

 

However, you should not forget that the scientific level of your research should correspond to the level of the journal. This will help to avoid many disappointments and successfully publish the results of your work.

The task is not an easy one, even for experienced article writers. We are ready to answer these questions!

Our company is a leading international scientific publishing service for authors of articles, and we have rightfully secured the status of a brand proven over the years and a reliable partner in the research community.

Our team of experts can select 5-10 of the most suitable journals for your manuscript and prepares a report containing all the pros and cons of submitting to a particular journal. By submitting to a journal that matches your research, you can avoid unwanted rejections.

This service is also available in our publication support service packages.

 

Our experts review your manuscript and requirements. Their analysis includes:

• The scope of the journal (whether it fits your research).
• Your requirements (for example, “I only want to submit an article to journals that have a Science Citation Index/Extended Science Citation Index”).
• Citation rating (indicates how often articles from the journal are cited).
• Target audience.
• Type of manuscript (original research or review).
• The popularity of the journal in the relevant literature.

 

If you are in doubt about choosing the right journal for your manuscript, the journal selection service is just what you need.

We cooperate and are in partnership with more than 500 editors of journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science!

We would like to cooperate with you to help with the selection of journals and the publication of articles in the Scopus and Web of Science rating journals. No predatory journals.

We will take care of choosing a journal and offer you the best options for publishing your article.

 

For details, please contact us:

+371 283 48 407 (WhatsApp)

mailbox@science-publisher.org