This page is designed to provide guidance on the process of getting your work published in an academic journal. Take a look below to find information about shortlisting relevant journals, identifying reliable publishers, funding for open access publications, compliance with funder and publisher policies, persistent identifiers and bibliometrics, and your rights as an author.
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Elsevier Journal Finder |
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Springer Nature Journal Finder |
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IEEE Publication Recommender |
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Taylor & Francis Journal Suggester |
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Sage Journal Recommender |
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Wiley Journal Finder |
Open access is becoming a standard practice in academic publishing. When choosing a journal, make sure that it offers a route to make your article available in open access. This can be done via the green or gold open access route. You can find open access policies of many academic journals via the Open policy finder.
Check if there are any diamond open access journals in your field as these will incur smaller publishing costs and are likely to offer higher quality peer-review service.
There are journals which seek authors to publish with them and charge publication fees but they do not provide robust peer review or editorial services. This is sometimes called 'predatory publishing'. It is not always easy to tell the difference between a genuine open access journal and a predatory one.
Before you submit your paper to a journal, consider the following:
Find more information on the Think. Check. Submit. website.
Read about the principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing on the Directory of Open Access Journals website.
Many academic journals offer to publish articles under an open access licence. This allows the readers to access your work instantaneously on the publisher's website without having to pay any fees. However, a payment of an article processing charge (APC) is usually required from the author or the author's institution.
Your library has a number of agreements with publishers in place, also known as Transformative Agreements or Read & Publish deals, which allow you to publish open access in selected journals. Further information on those deals is available on the Publisher Agreements page.
UKRI-funded authors can also avail of the UKRI open access grant. To make use of it, please complete the UKRI Block Grant Form.
If your research has not been funded by UKRI and you cannot avail of the open access grant, consider publishing your paper in a diamond open access journal.
Diamond journals do not charge any fees to either authors or readers. They are non-profit initiatives financed through various models of institutional crowdfunding or membership. If you get an article accepted for publication in a diamond open access journal, please contact our team to let us know, as in such case we would consider options for Ulster University to offer institutional support to the publisher.
You can also avail of any available agreements with publishers. Note that the information on the publishers' pages may be unclear. Check our Publisher Agreements page and contact our team if you are unsure whether the journal of your choice is covered by one of our deals.
Research outputs resulting from UKRI grants or UKRI-funded doctoral training programmes must comply with the UKRI Open Access Policy. This includes (but is not limited to) journal articles and papers published in conference proceedings which have an ISSN (international standard serial number).
If your paper, or the data that underpins it, result from a UKRI research grant, you must make the article available in open access. Click here for more information on the UKRI Open Access Policy for journal articles and conference papers.
If your research project is supported by a different funding body, read the funder's policy carefully. Most research funders have a form of open access mandate.
The following research funders require open access for publications resulting from their funding:
Bibliometrics is based on data about publications and citation frequency. Analysing such data helps to measure the impact of a research paper, an individual author, an institution, or a journal. When trying to decide where to publish, you may want to consider using bibliometrics to support your decision. Highly cited journals in your subject area may reach a wider audience.
You can find more information on our Bibliometrics & Citation Analysis guide.
Bibliometrics is an imperfect tool and must be used with caution. Highly cited publications are not necessarily the best quality publications as there is no way to differentiate negative or self citations. Specialist journals with robust peer review may be out-cited by journals covering a wider subject area. Bibliometrics should not be relied upon as the main indicator in any impact assessment or research evaluation process.
Ulster University signed the San Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment (DORA) and is committed to the principles of fair and responsible use of metrics.
To enable efficient citation tracking, research databases rely on persistent identifiers (PIDs) which are machine-readable, unique references for publications, journals, authors, and institutions.
The most commonly used persistent identifier for publications is DOI (digital object identifier). Most academic publishers generate DOIs for articles, books, and book chapters. You can also have DOIs generated for your preprints or datasets stored in subject or institutional repositories.
ORCID (open researcher and contributor ID) is used for individual authors. It serves to distinguish yourself from other authors who may have the same or similar name, and to share data between your publications, grants, repositories and other platforms featuring your work.
If you have not done it yet, create your own ORCID to ensure that your citation data is as accurate as possible.
When choosing a journal, check if it offers a route to make your article available in open access.
If you choose the gold open access route, your article will be freely available to the public on the publisher's website.
If you choose the green open access route, you will make the accepted manuscript of your article available via the Ulster University repository. This can be done in two ways:
1. Zero embargo green open access
Some publishers do not require any embargoes on accepted manuscript versions. However, regardless of the publisher's policy, you can assert your rights to the accepted manuscript version by inserting the following statement in the acknowledgement section of your manuscript and any submission cover letter or note:
For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any author accepted manuscript version arising from this submission.
If you choose to assert your rights in this manner, you will be able to make the accepted manuscript of your article available immediately upon publication by uploading it to the repository under a CC-BY licence.
2. Publisher embargo green open access
Most academic publishers have open access policies that allow authors to share accepted manuscript versions after a period of embargo.
Use the JISC Open policy finder to locate and consult publishers' and journals' policies on open access.
⇒ Explore the topic on the Intellectual Property Office website.
When submitting an article for publication, you need to consider how to manage the copyright. In most cases, the publisher will require you to either assign the copyright to them or pay an article processing charge (APC) for an open access option. See below for the most common copyright arrangements:
| Copyright option | Open Access option | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assign the copyright to the publisher with no open access policy | None | No (or very low) publishing costs |
No open access Reduced visibility and impact Lack of compliance with REF and/or funder requirements |
| Assign the copyright to the publisher who has an open access policy | Green OA with publisher embargo |
No (or very low) publishing costs Depending on embargo length, possible compliance with REF and/or funder requirements |
No immediate open access Delayed visibility and impact Possible lack of compliance with REF and/or funder requirements |
| Assign the copyright to the publisher but retain the rights to the accepted manuscript under an open access licence | Green OA with no embargo |
No (or very low) publishing costs Immediate open access, increased visibility and impact Compliance with REF and/or funder requirements |
Occasionally, publishers may reject the submission that includes a rights retention statement Very few publishers may attempt to charge fees for allowing rights retention |
| Retain the copyright and publish the final version under an open access licence in a commercial journal | Gold OA |
Immediate open access, increased visibility and impact Compliance with REF and/or funder requirements |
Potentially high publishing costs |
| Retain the copyright and publish the final version under an open access licence in a community-led journal | Diamond OA |
No cost to the author / low cost to the institution Immediate open access, increased visibility and impact Compliance with REF and/or funder requirements |
Small pool of publishers to choose from |
If your article contains images, maps, tables, musical scores, extensive quotations, etc., from works that are under someone else's copyright, you may need to obtain permissions from the copyright owners to include them in your publication. This includes your own works for which you assigned the copyright to the publisher.
Limited reuse of third-party copyright material is allowed under the so-called 'fair dealing' exception to the copyright law. However, in some cases you may want to include material that cannot be used without the copyright holder's permission.
If you need help in managing third-party copyright material or requesting permissions, get in touch with the Open Research Librarian.
Open access is a mandatory requirement for REF eligibility - click here for more details.
The REF 2029 Open Access Policy has now been published, and it will be implemented on 1 January 2026.
Until 31 December 2025, the REF 2021 open access requirements will continue to apply.
