When you decide to publish, you need to think about the following questions:
- Why are you publishing?
- Who do you want to reach?
- Are you writing for practitioners or researchers in your field or are you aiming for a broader audience? Think about where your audience are most likely to read what you write.
- Do you prefer to publish a book, a chapter, a conference paper or a journal article?
- Are you expected to meet a scholarly quality or impact standard with your publication? These standards could be set by your supervisor, school, faculty or University. On a national level the Australian Research Council or the National Health and Medical Research Council also have recommended standards. You can use the tips on the next page to select a journal.
- Do you need to publish in a certain time period? It can often be a long time from submitting a paper to a journal, to it being published.
- Are you expected to publish in an open access journal?