When publishing at Charles Sturt it is recommended that you first check that the journal is in:

• The SCImago Journal and Country Rank (SJR) is publicly available and includes journal Quartile ranks developed from the Scopus database.
• The Charles Sturt Publication Ranking Lists (CSU login required)

The CSU Research Productivity Index (CSU login required) allocate points depending on type of publication. 

Peer reviewed / refereed journals.

Some research disciplines can be disadvantaged by reliance on metrics alone. When considering the quality of appropriate journals in which to publish your research include:

• Use SCImago Journal and Country Rank to compare journals in most disciplines. SCImago illustrates Journal quality or ranks, often determined through use of metrics.
• The journal's inclusion in the Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) List of Eligible Journals
• Peer Review or Refereed journals, and the prestige of the editorial team or contributors.
• The relevance of the journal to the discipline. Will the article reach the desired audience?

For more information on how to evaluate and compare journals and their metrics see Journal Ranking on our Research Metrics, Impact and Engagement Guide

Is the journal relevant to your research audience?

Consider:

• The relevance of the scope and audience of the journal.
• Is your article adding to a conversation occurring in the journal? Are you citing articles from that journal?
• Is the journal peer reviewed?  Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory lists peer reviewed journals in your discipline. It is useful if your research is cross disciplinary and you are not familiar with potential journals in related areas.
• Ranked Journal Lists by Discipline.
  • Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) Journal Quality List.  The list is divided into four categories of quality denoted as A*, A, B, C. It is a journal quality list ranking journals in 15 sub-disciplines in business, economics and law.
  • Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Quality Guide.
  • Australian Political Studies Association (APSA)   Updated preferred journal rankings for the 1606 and 1605 FOR codes by APSA.
  • ERIHPLUS  European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
  • Core Rankings Portal Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia publications in Computer Science and Information Technology.
• Using Scopus or Web of Science to find journals with highly cited articles on your topic.
• The CSU Research Outputs Collection (ROC) criteria for journals.

Check the publishers website for:

• Journal acceptance rates
• Time taken for peer review
• Time taken to publish accepted articles

Discoverability

Is the journal:

• Indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, CABI, ABI/Inform or another reputable database?  Non indexed journals are less visible to the international research community.
• Included in the Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory? The Ulrichs directory will indicate the online availability of Journals in a range of scholarly databases.
• Available in full text online and can the full text content be accessed by the intended audience?

Consider publishing in an Open Access journal in order to:

• Remove barriers to accessing your research
• Enable worldwide collaboration with other researchers
• Increase the impact of your research
• Showcase Charles Sturt University's research outputs

• Meet funding body requirements

The ARC and NHMRC have adopted policies requiring research outputs to be freely accessible / open access. 

You can make your work open access by one of two ways:

• publishing in a journal that is free to readers, but may be subject to article processing charges (APC)
• self-archiving a copy of the author accepted manuscript on your institutional repository, such as CSU Research Output (CRO) repository. Self-archiving is sometimes referred to as Green OA

The Open Access Publishing Scheme for 2023 is open to Charles Sturt researchers in all faculties, whilst funds are available. 

A maximum of $4,500AUD is available as a contribution to article processing charge (APC). To be eligible for this scheme, the article must be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Please read the guidelines before applying.

The guidelines and application form are available to download below:

In January 2023, Charles Sturt signed several Read and Publish agreements.

Read and Publish agreements provide authors with the opportunity to publish Open Access in subscription journals immediately on acceptance, and free of any transactional Article Processing Charges (APCs). Articles published under these agreements are made Open Access in journals that operate under either the Gold or Hybrid models.

Read and Publish agreements represent a shift away from the traditional subscription model where institutions pay a subscription to read content that is published behind a paywall. To read the articles published under the traditional model, the reader must pay a fee to read an article or belong to an institution that has paid the subscription.

Read and Publish agreements, on the other hand, broaden access to the published articles through Open Access publishing. By incorporating the Article Processing Charge (APC) into the institutional subscription fee paid to the publisher, the Read and Publish deals provide academic authors from Charles Sturt with the opportunity to increase the reach of their work by publishing Open Access. Under these agreements, authors can often choose which Creative Commons licence they wish to apply to their work.

More information on the Read and Publish agreements available to Charles Sturt authors can be found on this guide's Read and Publish tab.

List of Read & Publish agreements that Charles Sturt has signed:

• Cambridge University Press
• CSIRO Publishing
• Elsevier
• Oxford University Press
• SAGE
• Springer Nature
• Wiley

Use Think, Check, Submit. This website can help you to make an informed decision on where to publish.

Tools for Journal Rankings

• Use Scopus to find highly ranked journal articles on a topic - look at where are they published
• The SCImago Journal and Country Rank (SJR) is publicly available and includes Journal Quartile Ranks developed from the Scopus database.
• Use the Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory to find out more about peer reviewed journals in your discipline - it includes links to publishers' websites, refereed status and list of indexing services.

Directories

• The Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) List of Eligible Journals
• Web of Science Master Journal List
• Google Scholar Top Publications
• Elsevier Journal Finder
• Jane  Journal/Author Name Estimator
• CWTS Journal Indicators
• The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Journals in this directory must meet criteria prior to being listed.
• SHERPA/RoMEO is a searchable database of publisher policies on the self-archiving of journal articles on the web and in Open Access repositories.

These tools aren’t perfect. For example, Ulrichsweb includes some journals that publish peer reviewed + non-peer reviewed content; the DOAJ might not include all quality open access journals, and recently de-listed 900+ journals that did not meet its published Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing