5 Steps To Publishing Your First Research Article
Steps to help you kickstart your research journey
Welcome to A Hitchhikers Guide to Publishing Research Articles!💡.
This is the first in a series of articles to help you launch your research dream. In this one, we are going to discuss how to publish your first research paper. Publishing your research is an important step in your academic career. While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, here are 5 typical steps you need to take to publish your first study.
Step #1: Choosing your target journal
Choosing a journal to submit your work is a crucial step that can make a big difference to the reach and impact of your research. One of the main advantages of choosing your target journal before you start writing is that this gives you the chance to tailor your work to build on research that's already been published in that journal. Secondly, since many journals only accept specific manuscript formats of articles, you can write your article to suit the format and ultimately improve your chances of acceptance. Being a beginner in the field, you should consult your advisor/mentor to help you in choosing a suitable journal for your work. One of the common ways to compare the journals is to take into account the metric of “Impact Factor” which is nothing but a metric to evaluate the relative importance of a journal within its field and to measure the frequency with which the “average article” in a journal has been cited in a particular time period. Journals with higher IFs are believed to be more important than those with lower ones. You can find a good guide on selecting the right journal for you here.
Step #2: Writing your research paper
If you’re new to putting together research papers, it can feel daunting to start from scratch. The good news is that if you’ve chosen the journal you want to publish in, you’ll have lots of examples already published in that journal to base your own paper on. Things to take care of while writing research articles include getting to know your target journal, understanding your audiences, how to choose appropriate keywords, and the right way to structure your manuscript. Some resources for writing your first research paper could be found here:
- How to Write Your First Research Paper
- The complete guide to writing a brilliant research paper
- Writing your research paper
- How to Write and Publish an Academic Research Paper
- Twenty steps writing research article
Step #3: Submitting your research
After deciding your target journal and writing your manuscript, the next step is to submit your work. Each journal will have specific submission requirements, so make sure you visit the journal website and carefully check through the instructions for authors for your chosen journal. Search for the “submit article” or “submit paper” page on your journal website to submit the article. As you reach the page, fill in all the details like names of author and co-author(s), article information, writing an effective cover letter, and contact information. Then attach your article and submit the details.
Step #4: Navigating through the peer review process
Most of the top journals are peer-review journals, but wait what is “peer-review”? — Peer review is the independent assessment of your research article by independent experts in your field. Reviewers, also sometimes called ‘referees’, are asked to judge the validity, significance, and originality of your work. This process acts as an important form of quality control for research papers as well as is a very useful source of feedback, helping you to improve your paper before it’s published. Before your submitted article goes for peer review, it goes through some initial processes like language proofing, paper format preservation, plagiarism check, etc. During the whole process, modifications are needed and the journal will communicate with you in form of revisions.
Step #5: Decision acknowledgement by the journal
Once the whole review process is over, the journal will send you an acknowledgement which would usually say one of the 3 things:
- Accepted: Hurray!! Give a pat on your back for you have done a great job in preparing your research work and paper which will now soon be published.
- Revise and Resubmit: Not bad!! This means you are close to publishing your article but the journal would need some modification from your end. These are generally termed as “major” or “minor” revisions based on the nature and number of modifications required. If modifications are suggested then you need to do and resubmit the manuscript in the given time frame.
- Rejected: Don't lose hope!! This is very common if you are just starting to get into the research community. Many times you will receive the necessary reasons for rejecting paper so you can have an idea for future paper preparation.
That’s all for this piece. I hope you have a great experience preparing your first research article!
Happy Researching!😄
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