Finding a “home” for your manuscript

One of the most important tasks for any author, new or seasoned, is finding a place to have your scholarly work published.  These days one “criteria” that many authors use is to find out which journals have high impact factor scores, and then pursue publication in one of those journals.  While there are many reasons that authors start here, it is not always the best place to begin!

The Impact Factor scoring system is managed and reported by Thomson-Reuters through their Web of Knowledge service.  While this is a valuable resource, the fact is that some very high quality and important journals will never be represented in this system.  Any journal that publishes work that has a very narrow audience – scientists and scholars working in a very focused field of study – will never attract others to their publication, and therefore their publications will not be widely cited.  This is actually a dynamic that effects scores for nursing journals, since our journals have not yet attracted widespread use by scholars outside of the field of nursing and some related health professions.  A journal such as the New England Journal of Medicine, for example, that many people both in and outside of the health professions use and cite, will carry a much higher impact factor score than any of our nursing journals (yet!).

However, back to the focus of this blog — what is the best way to find a “home” for your manuscript?  The first and most important task is to consider which journals reach the audience that you want your article to reach.  You can browse a comprehensive list of nursing journals, with links to their “Information for Authors,” on the Nurse Author-Editor web site.   Once you find journals that might reach your intended audience, the next challenge is to study the journal’s statement of purpose, recently published issues, and requirements for manuscript preparation and submission.

Like most other journals,  ANS has everything you need right at your fingertips on line!

• To determine if your manuscript is appropriate for the journal, check out the list of future issue topics in the right column of the home page. Since we are a topical journal you need to first determine if your manuscript has a good fit with our future topics.  You can find a description of each of the topics when you click on any of the listed topics.
• For detailed information about the purpose of ANS, go to the “For Authors” tab of the home page.  Here is the direct link to the “ANS Information for Authors.”
• On our home page, you can also browse the Table of Contents for each issue ever published in ANS, as well as abstracts of the articles.  All articles are available for online purchase if you do not have access through a library.

Questions?  Post them here in the comments for this post, and we will post the answers!