Systematic Reviews & Other Syntheses

One goal of most systematic review projects is publication in a scholarly journal. In some cases, members of a review team might already be aware of scholarly journals that would be relevant to target for publication. If not, one potential strategy for identifying target journals is to check where the articles included in your review were published.

There are also journal matching tools, such as Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE), that compare the keywords or text entered (a summary or abstract for example) to find the best matching journals. Reviewers who use EndNote citation manager to write and cite can also take advantage of its Manuscript Matcher feature. Once potential journals have been identified, you can do a deeper dive into the suitability of each journal.

Check the websites of prospective journals for details about:

• Aims and scope (e.g., general interest vs. specialist journal, regional vs. international journal, etc.),
• Article types and preparation (i.e., do they publish systematic review research, what is the word limit for a systematic review, do they include plain language summaries),
• Where the journal content is indexed (e.g., MEDLINE database),
• Policies, procedures, and timelines (e.g., using AI in research, peer review, etc.),
• Rejection rates (medical journals with the highest impact factors often have rejection rates around 95%),
• Open access (including any associated article processing charges).

Keep in mind that journal rejections happen. Reduce the likelihood of having your manuscript rejected by ensuring your systematic review topic is suitable for the scope of the journal. If your manuscript is rejected by a journal, consider any feedback provided by the editors or peer-reviewers and make necessary changes and revisions before submitting to the next journal. 

There has been a growing movement in science and research towards making research outputs, including journal articles, free to read online (i.e. open access) to remove barriers to knowledge discovery, uptake, and application. For example, many funding agencies in Canada, the United States, and worldwide now require any journal articles arising from supported research be open access. Making your systematic review research open access removes paywalls for readers, which can increase the audience and impact of your research.  

One way to do this is by publishing your article in an open access or hybrid open access journal. In contrast to the traditional publishing model for journals which charge institutions or individuals to read content (via subscriptions or pay-per-view), open access and hybrid journals generally require authors to pay an article processing charge (APC).

In this way, some open access journals are shifting the financial burden from readers (“pay to read”) to authors (“pay to publish”), costing them anywhere between less than a thousand to over $16,000 CAD per journal article.

Queen's authors may be able to avoid or reduce a journal’s APC if there is a transformative agreement or other discounts in place with the publisher. Check out open access discounts available through Queen's.

If paying to publish your journal article in an open access format is not feasible, paywalled journals may allow authors to deposit or “self-archive” a version of the final manuscript in an open access repository [3].
 

Options for Making Your Research Open Access:

Pay-to-publish models of open access have led to the rise of predatory journals and publishers. These for-profit entities purport to follow accepted scholarly publishing best practices such as performing peer review, but they have low editorial standards and are deceptive in their claims about journal impact factors and database indexing, for example. Predatory conferences, which typically include weak or no peer review for presentations, poor organization and a focus on profitability, are also a widespread and pervasive problem [5-6]. Being associated with a predatory journal or conference can result in financial loss due to paying fees for illegitimate meetings/publication, lead to research waste by producing unverified results, and/or be harmful to your reputation and that of your institution.

Both predatory journals and conferences are becoming more sophisticated in concealing their exploitive nature [6].  Being able to recognize predatory tactics and how to scrutinize and verify conference/journal claims are essential skills for avoiding deceptive and fraudulent journals and conferences. While there is no single criterion that can confirm whether a journal or conference is predatory, an accumulation of red flags can indicate deceptive and fraudulent practices.

Tips for Identifying Predatory Journals [7-8]:

1. The journal name is not unique and could easily be confused with another (reputable) journal.
2. The scope of interest combines non-biomedical and biomedical topics.
3. The website contains spelling and grammar errors.
4. Images are distorted/fuzzy.
5. The website homepage language targets authors rather than readers.
6. There is no information about the editorial board.
7. The articles published do not match the journal’s scope.
8. Copyediting of the published articles is poor.
9. The Index Copernicus Value is promoted, which is not a recognized methodology.
10. A description of the manuscript handling process is lacking.
11. Manuscripts are requested to be submitted via email.
12. Rapid review time and publication is promised.
13. The article processing charge is very low (below $500, whereas legitimate journals are usually >$2,000).
14. Journals claiming to be open access either retain copyright of published research or fail to mention copyright.
15. The contact email address is non-professional and non-journal affiliated (e.g., @gmail.com or @yahoo.com).

Some of the claims that journals make on their websites can be verified. To help avoid publishing in a predatory journal, see if you can verify a journal’s claims about indexing in databases such as MEDLINE (using the NLM Catalog) or Scopus, which have a process for evaluating journals. Also check for affiliations with scholarly organizations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) or the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), an index committed to ensuring quality open access journal content.

Tips for Identifying Predatory Conference [5]: