Niven Library - FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology Library Guide: Publishing your Research

Wiley's tips on choosing the right journal in which to publish

Click on the image to view the infographic.

Postgraduate students are encouraged to publish in peer-reviewed journals which are approved by the DHET (Department of Higher Education and Training). There are two categories of approved journals - those published in South Africa and those published internationally which appear on the Thomson Reuters Science Citation Index list.

UCT's Research Support Hub publishes an updated DHET accredited journals list every year. Visit their site to download it.

Many journals make a submission checklist available along with their Authors Guidelines, or Instructions for Authors.

Elsevier has published a generic checklist for use when a journal does not provide one:

"Ensure that the following items are present:

• One author has been designated as the corresponding author in the manuscript and full contact details provided:
  • Email address.
  • Affiliation address/es (this should be where the research has been conducted).
  • Full current affiliation postal address for corresponding author if different to primary affiliation.
• All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:
  • Keywords on the title page.
  • All figures, with captions.
  • All tables (including title, description, footnotes), with legends.
• Further considerations:
  • Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar checked'.
  • References are in the correct format for this journal.
  • All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa.
  • Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet)."

Some publishers have made databases available that allow you to enter keywords about your research in order to find a suitable journal in which to publish:

• Elsevier Journal Finder
• Wiley Journal Finder
• Springer Nature Journal Suggester

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indexes "high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals". 

Use the box below to search the directory for an open access journal:

Also known as Article Publishing Charge or Article Processing Charge (APC), this fee covers the cost of publishing in an open access journal.

Some sites that will help calculate these charges:

bioRxiv (pronounced "bio-archive") is a free online archive and distribution service for unpublished preprints in the life sciences. It is operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a not-for-profit research and educational institution. By posting preprints on bioRxiv, authors are able to make their findings immediately available to the scientific community and receive feedback on draft manuscripts before they are submitted to journals.

Articles are not peer-reviewed, edited, or typeset before being posted online. However, all articles undergo a basic screening process for offensive and/or non-scientific content. No endorsement of an article’s methods, assumptions, conclusions, or scientific quality by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is implied by its appearance in bioRxiv. An article may be posted prior to, or concurrently with, submission to a journal but should not be posted if it has already been published.

Authors may submit a revised version of an article to bioRxiv at any time and can update the bioRxiv record with a link to a version of an article that has been published in a journal. Once posted on bioRxiv, articles are citable and therefore cannot be removed.

Apply for funding for these fees on UCT's electronic Research Administration (eRA) system.

Watch a how-to video or read the guide made available by the Research Office.

Free software packages for image editing:

• GIMP: Best for editing images and converting formats
  • View the User Manual
• Irfanview: Best for re-sizing images and bulk/batch processing