Leveling the playing field in the journal publishing game
Jinfo Blog

By Joanna Ptolomey

Abstract

You know the saying – not all research is equal and that is one significant factor that can be reflected in which journal opts to publish your research. But what if you don’t know how to play the game, have limited knowledge of western publishing, few contacts and English is not your first language – what are your options?

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We have been ruminating and cogitating the stellar Chinese presence in the scientific publishing world here on the LiveWire. Whilst it may be true that China may be on track for the second most influential country in scientific publishing, it does leave some questions.

What is the quality of scientific research coming from China and how does that influence or affect an author’s journal selection and acceptance?

A recent press release from the Nature Publishing Group showed that China now publishes more than 10% of the world’s most cited scientific research from analysis of ISI Web of Knowledge data.

High quality research is obviously coming out of China, and with national investments for research institutions and cities the rapid rise should not be a real surprise. This data comes from Nature branded journals, high quality research journals, and the top ten Chinese institutions are well represented especially the big three: Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Peking and Tsinghua.

You know the saying – not all research is equal and that is one significant factor that can be reflected in which journal opts to publish your research. But what if you don’t know how to play the game, have limited knowledge of western publishing, few contacts and English is not your first language – what are your options?

The answer for authors could lie in a new tool, EDANZ, a journal selector that helps authors overcome publication barriers and match their manuscript to suitable journals.

EDANZ Group Ltd. Established in Japan 1995 and China 2006 provides English language editing and related services for the worldwide scientific community. They are also the exclusive partners for major publishers such as Springers, BioMed Central and the American Institute of Physics. They help authors reach their publication goals by raising language quality of manuscripts required for acceptance.

EDANZ is a free to use tool launched as part of their Journal Advisor platform especially for non-native English speakers.  Journal Selector indexes over 18,000 journals and uses semantic technology to match an author’s research to journals that publish articles on similar topics.

Journal Selector allows authors to enter a brief description of their research – either a whole abstract or a few keywords/phrases. The tool then matches the author research to journals publishing on similar topics. After selecting a journal the author can use the educational resources and services to improve the language of the manuscript, write a cover letter and prepare for submission and peer review.  

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