What is worth publishing?
Traditionally, academic publishing has referred to peer-reviewed articles and books. Today, technical development has enabled making more valuable research outputs accessible. You can for instance publish research data, pre-prints, software, methods you developed, survey translations, reports aimed at practitioners, conference talks and educational material. These research outputs may be formally published on appropriate platforms or data repositories, to be made as accessible and sustainable as possible and provide you with citation or download statistics. What, how and where you choose to publish depends on what can be considered a contribution to the knowledge in your field and what is valued there.
How to publish research data, software or other research outputs
Publish open access
Open science is practice at Stockholm University. In line with Research Bill 2020/21:60, fully or partially publicly funded research (scholarly articles, research data and other research outputs) should to the fullest extent possible be published open access. Open access publishing means that the material is published freely available online, under an open license. Creative Commons licenses are commonly used open licenses. You can read more about CC licenses at the National Library's website. To a large extent, the university funds your costs of open access publishing for scholarly articles.
Open Science at Stockholm University
Open Science Policy
Creative commons for researchers, National Library
Open access funding (APC)
Publish in line with the FAIR principles
You should publish in publishing channels (with publishers, journals, data repositories) that contribute to making your publication as FAIR as possible. FAIR means Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. Three features are core to FAIR:
- Rich, standardized metadata describing the publication.
- A unique persistent identifier for the publication (such as a DOI) to make it possible to find and link to the publication.
- A clearly stated license that states how the publication can be reused and should be cited (for example Creative Commons’ CC-BY).
These features make the publication easier to find, download, understand, handle and reuse, to both machine and human. It is also easier for you to preserve your research project if you already published your outcomes FAIR.
FAIR research data, Swedish Research Council
FAIR principles, National Library (only in Swedish)
Register an ORCID
Register an ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) and state it in connection to all your publications. ORCID is a persistent identifier that helps distinguish you from other researchers and enables the combination of data from various sources. If you fill out your ORCID profile and keep it up to date you can export the information to many other systems (e.g. to create a CV) and avoid unnecessary manual reporting in more than one system. If you apply for funding in Prisma an ORCID is required.
Strategic publishing - articles and books
Different fields have different practices in how they reach their relevant target groups and what publication channels are meriting. It is often meriting to co-author with other researchers and to publish in English, for greater international impact. When you are about to publish an article or a book there are a few things you need to pay particular attention to:
- Peer-review
- The status of the publishing channel in your field
- The possibility to publish open access
If you are unsure of the credibility of a journal, the campaign Think, Check, Submit recommends på control questions to ask yourself.
Peer-review
- Check the peer-review policy. The peer-review policy and process are often described on the journal’s website. It is important that the peer-review process is documented and according to the international standard procedures for quality assessment.
- Check that the list of people on the editorial staff and the editorial board seems reasonable. These are the people who will evaluate the review process.
- It is recommended that a publication channel or publisher is a registered member of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE), as this organisation develop international guidelines for review processes and good publishing practices.
- The journal shouldn’t frequently retract articles. Retraction Watch is a useful online resource that tracks the retraction of articles and explains why in blog format.
Committee of Publication Ethics, COPE
Retraction Watch
The status of the publication channel in your field
What makes a publication channel meriting varies between fields but there are common denominators.
- Does the journal or book series have a good reach?
In many fields, it is beneficial if the journal you publish with is indexed in SCOPUS or Web of Science, as this impacts your possibility to disseminate your research. You reach these databases via the university library website. Other databases that index the journal are typically declared on a journal’s website under ”Abstracting & Indexing”. Book series can also be indexed.
Other important databases are those that disseminate information to libraries and universities, e.g. EBSCOHost. The fact that the journal or book series is available in well-known databases typically means that it meets certain criteria that are important to ensure the quality of editorial processes.
Another indication of good quality is if the journal is included on lists of important subject-specific databases.
- Is the journal or book series prestigious?
The contribution of a publication can be assessed only by reading the publication in question. However, it is important to publish in prestigious journals for your future career. In many fields, it is beneficial for you if the journal you publish with has a high Journal Impact Factor (JIF). JIF is used in research evaluation as a proxy for academic quality and can affect your possibility to secure future funds from funders and your university. In research evaluation in the Human Science Academic Area at Stockholm University, ”the Norwegian list” is used to rank publishers and journals. The levels of the list are used similarly to JIF, as a proxy for academic quality. You can read more about these measures and how you make sure data are correct Research evaluation and bibliometrics at Stockholm University.
Search via the University Library
SCOPUS
Web of Science
EBSCOhost
Research evaluation and bibliometrics at Stockholm University
The possibility to publish open access
Both fully open access journals and subscription journals can offer open access publishing, sometimes against an article processing charge (APC). Stockholm university often funds your APC through one of the many negotiated deals for open access.
If you publish in a fully open access journal, ensure that it is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), or similar services with quality checked information. That means that the peer-review process is documented and according to the international standard procedures for quality assessment and that the journal makes their publications FAIR.
If you don’t publish open access, investigate your options to make a permitted version of your manuscript accessible by publishing it in DiVA without embargo (so-called parallel publishing).
The National Library presents national statistics for open access publishing.
Open access funding (APC)
Directory of Open Access Journals, DOAJ
Parallel publish in DiVA
National statistics for open access publishing, National Library (only in Swedish)
Contact
Publish research data, software or other research outputs: opendata@su.se
Publish scholarly articles, book chapters, books: publish@su.se
Nailing and dissertation support: avhandlingssupport.sub@su.se
Stockholm University Press: publish@su.se
Open access and article processing charges (APC): openaccess@su.se