EFFICIENT WAY TO SELECT, SUBMIT AND

PUBLISH ARTICLE IN RENOWNED JOURNAL

Md. Mahmudul Alam, Ph.D.

Senior Research Fellow, Economic and Financial Policy Institute (ECOFI)
Associate Professor, School of Economics, Finance & Banking (SEFB)
Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)
Email: rony000@gmail.com , mahmudul@uum.edu.my
Website: UUM-Expert; SCOPUS; WoS; GScholar; ResGate; SSRN; RePEc;
Academia; MFPC; ADScientificIndex; Youtube; LinkedIn; Facebook; Twitter

Universitas Brawijaya
Malang, Indonesia
20 December 2023
Why do you want to publish?
Your motivations for publication is the most important matter
to determine your success! Why do you need publication?
Where will you use the publication? Who is your target
audience? Who will be benefited from the publication?

• To fulfil the requirement of degree or scholarship

• To get a better job in future
• To fulfil the KPI or promotion criteria
• To let other know about your invention/ ideas/
knowledge and become a renowned scholar
• To get project, funding and consultancy
• To fulfill self-actualization, public benefits, social
benefit, serving community, serving religion
Discipline Vs. Publication: Not Level Playing Field
• Discipline is a big matter for good publications.
• Normally science, medical, engineering has very high impact
factor journals and many journals.
• Social science, business, economics has very few journals and
also very low impact factor journals.
• Some discipline has no indexed journals at all.
• Better to work on multidisciplinary to link with science and
social science to get a chance in high impact factor science
journals.
• But don’t publish completely outside of your discipline !
• Knowledge & publication are different matters.
• Knowledge is long run and publication is short run issue.
• Good contribution in knowledge will give long run benefits
and bring real prestige.
Know the Direction of Future Publication World
▪ See Elsevier Report on “What will the world of research look
like 10 years from now?”
▪ China is coming in the leading role for funding, university
ranking, research; and already able to attract top researchers
and make a big syndicate among the top journals !
▪ Research and academia is going to more technology
oriented. Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, online
teaching, etc. will be leading and way to disseminate service
▪ Publications are more open source oriented, but Funder are
more from private sources.
▪ So, make future focus by linking/working/collaborating with
China, technology-oriented work, and link with industry and
try to publish in open sources.
Ethics, Reality and Gray Areas
• Is there any academic syndicate in the publication process?
• Is there any discrimination among discipline/ topics?
• Does network/ relationship help?
• Are boss, funding, project matters?
• Are corresponding author, corresponding organization matter?
• Student/supervisor author position, project member author,
ghost author has any role in publication?
• Do fees & waivers related to submission/ processing/
publication/ proof editing/ administrative/ open access/
conference linked journal/ special issues have any role in
publication?
How to Select an Appropriate Journal?

• Many factors are involved in the decision

- Impact of the journal vs probability of acceptance

- Number of Years in Publication (number of volume)
- Publisher (size, familiarity, prestige, continuity)
- Publication lag (forthcoming article queue)
- Number of articles published per year/ volume/ issue
- Frequency of publication (number of issues)
- Desired audience (academic, practitioner, policy)
- Circulation Count (subscribers, number of sales)
- Availability of electronic or print formats
- Open access & copyright
- The Language(s) of the Journal
- Publication or processing Fees or charge
- Quality of reproduction of figures
 Journal Quality, Indexing & Ranking
• Journal’s quality can be measured in many ways like
publisher, editorial board, h-index, citation or impact factor,
number of download, Eigen factor, indexing/ranking, etc.
• Journals with a high impact factor indicating a higher
prevalence of citations
• Impact factor is a shallow measure, but widely accepted,
indicator of journal quality.

• Frequency Example :
– Journal of Cleaner Production (annually publish 3900+ articles, 30
issue, 100-130 articles in per issue, 300+ in press)
– Environmental Science and Pollution Research (annually publish
3600+ articles, 36 issue, 100+ articles in per issue, 1000+ in press)
– American Economic Review (annually publish 120 articles, 12 issue,
10 articles in per issue, 40+ in press) 7
Journal Quality, Indexing & Ranking Cont…
• A high-impact journal might publish article which get few or
no citation - 23% articles of Nature are never cited !
• No/ low impact factor or even not listed in index -- does not
mean low quality. Don’t blindly judge according to the
process of academic business syndicates
• Understand the objective / purpose of knowledge
➢ Challenge is not indexed or even not a peer-reviewed journal
➢ Current editorial board includes Nobel Laureate economists --
Kenneth J. Arrow, Paul R. Krugman, Robert M. Solow, Joseph E.
Stiglitz
• What does your boss/supervisor want or what do you
want? -- Setup journal list based on specific target or
diversify based on different index?
• Diversity in different indices: ERA, ABDC, SCOPUS, WoS, ABS,
FNEGE, CNRS, HCRES, EJL, DEN, JOURQUAL, Financial
8
Times 50
Categories of Journals: Time, Fees & Quality
• First category journals are unpaid and good quality journal, but
these journals take so long time like 6-24 months to publish an
article.
• Second category of journals are those who maintain high
quality, with high rejection rate, and publish very quickly like
within one month, but charges very high such as €/£/$ 2,000-
5,000.
• Third category of journals publish very quickly like 1-2
months and too easy or almost no review process, take some
charges as processing fees to make article open access, which
are mostly considered as predatory journal as well as highly
discourage to publish.
• Again, three things are needed for good publications- good
manuscript (quality), fund (data/ fees/ proof-editing/ RA) &
network (time)
The Taboo of Open Access Journal
• Open access is another form of publisher’s business model
where author pays the fees instead of reader or institution
pay/subscribe!
• Some journals offer green open access, and some are golden
open access journal
• Open access journals actually target the author who can pay
from funded project or institution or doner agency. Because
many funder and doner agency wants to free dissemination of
knowledge. Similarly, institution and author also wants more
citation.
• Science/ medical/ engineering field offers open access
journals from long ago, but it is very new for social science.
• But due the profitable business model or demand, now a days
more and more journals are becoming golden open access,
but still many journals run both model at a time.
The Taboo of Open Access Journal Cont…
• Good open access journals charges very high fees like USD$1500
and more, but they have many discount policies. So, carefully read
option before submit.
• Stuey showed scientists paid large publishers over $1 billion in
four years to have their studies published with open access
• Some open access changes USD$200-$1000, which are mostly
predatory journals. So, be careful about these journals.

Source: Frontiers
Predatory Journals Must Be Avoided
• “Journals” that are paid for publication but are not peer-
reviewed academic publications
• Some indicators that a journal may be predatory:
▪ Unreasonably vast scopes
▪ The revie-publish timeframes are unreasonably short
▪ Webpages that are glamorous or poorly designed but with so
many English grammatical errors
▪ Show different fake matrices score
▪ Contact details is not adequate, such as no specific editor
▪ Inclusion in Beall’s List (questionable), List of Predatory
Journals, Black listed by Malaysia Ministry of Education (MOE)

12
Predatory Journals Must Be Avoided Cont…

Reference: Macháček, V., Srholec, M. Predatory publishing in Scopus:

evidence on cross-country differences. Scientometrics (2021 – 7 Feb).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03852-4 13
Motives behind Publishing in Predatory Journals
Many good authors and good articles are also published in
these low-grade journals, but why???

➢ Urgently need article to fulfill degree requirement or fulfill

KPI or fulfill promotion criteria
➢ Knowledgeable article but poorly written (organization &
English)
➢ Old-data article (old project or thesis, not possible to update
data)
➢ No time for further work so busy and find an easy exit
➢ Difficult to adjust review comments (a basic flow that needs
complete change)
➢ New author and no idea about journal quality or highly
impressed by receiving invitation email from these journal
Predatory Journals: The Death-bed Option
• If you has no other option except this toxic short-cut way to
get rid of the urgency, just consider it as “to save life, haram
(forbidden) food is also allowed to eat!”
• These predatory journals should be considered as the death-
bed option and before submit in these journals think thousand
times and check many issues including its survival time of
journal till fulfil your purpose !
• Prepare a normal/ descriptive/ review article to publish in
these journal just to exit the transition or fulfil the requirement
and one day you can remove this crap from your record/ CV !
• Never submit your good modelling or main article of thesis in
these journals
• Always make a good plan on time, and try to think
alternatives
Careful about Fake and Hijacked Journals
• Careful about fake journals
• Careful about hijacked journals
- Cyber crime as developing a website for an original
journal and uses every information same and publish
article with fees but their article does not show in Web
of Science & SCOPUS
Example: Sylwan , The Veliger , Wulfenia , Journal of Natural
Products

▪ https://beallslist.net/hijacked-journals/

16
The Taboo of Special Issue
• Special issues give future directions of knowledge !
• Special issues are prestigious, especially for editor !
• Special issue’s guest editorship is the way to become a
regular editor !
• Special issues are highly promoted and bring high citation !
• Special issues are time savers !
• Special issues are topic/theme oriented and attractive !
• Special issues are guaranteed if linked with conference !
• Special issues are money driven !
• Special issues are link/ network driven !
• Special issues are easy and low weighted !
• Special issues may have Special arrangement, but Quality
is as same as regular issue of the journal !
Find out a List of Good Journals
• First see the reference list of your manuscript
• Search journal title in science direct or Elsevier Journal
Finder , Springer, Wiley, Emerald, or SCOPUS by using key
words
• Download the journal list (excel/ pdf file) which are
indexed/enlisted in WoS Journal Citation Reports ,
SCOPUS, ABDC, ERA, ABS, IDEAS/RePEc, etc.
• Download the list from searching google, university library
or directly from the website
• SCOPUS is focused due to linked with university Ranking &
Accreditation
• Download the updated SCOPUS list/delist:
– Open - https://www.scopus.com/home.uri
– Go - Scopus content
– Click – “Scopus source list”
Manuscript Development
• Nobody ever gets it right on the first try! So, write, rewrite,
and write again and again.
• Take a few days off after writing the first draft. Change things
up to keep your thinking fresh and return with a critical
mindset.
• Don’t write anything that you don’t understand or cannot
explain; if you cannot, your audience also cannot understand
• Request friends, colleagues, supervisor to read and give
critical comments and wholehearted suggestions
• Make every effort to improve the article, but setup a deadline
or don’t spend so long time to loss its priority
• Understand the key areas of the manuscript
Manuscript Revision before Submission
• When you submit a manuscript, it indicates you are selling or
marketing your ideas to your targeted audiences
• Check plagiarism and keep total similarity below 10% and not
more than 1% from any single source
• Check English by professional & again check after the
correction done by English editor
• Follow common journal formatting
• Follow unique referencing style
• Update reference list from top journal and latest year
• Prepare other documents – cover letter, Highlights, Short title,
easy/ short/ brief message, reviewers list, contribution
statement, finding statement, conflict statement, etc.
Review Journal Info before Submission
• Know the audience and the journal by reading the ‘Scope’ of
the journal
• Read carefully the “Instructions for authors”
• Pay attention to journal requirements (fees, number of author)
• Examine some recently published articles of the submitting
journal to determine the journal's focus and author’s level
• Check submission style of publisher, Editor(s) & Editorial
board members
• Tentative networking, collaboration, pre-submission consent
before submission !
• Make a list of choice for tentative journals
• Don’t submit one manuscript to different journal atatime.
• Remain honest with data, result, authorship, funding, & other
declarations !
Journal Submission Process
• Understand the differences (formatting, structure, word limit, figure &
table limit, etc) among journal articles (full length research, short
research article, review article, communication, opinion, letter, data/
method/ process article, etc), conference article, book or book chapter,
working paper, policy brief, newspaper article, thesis, project proposal,
blog, and tweet/ status !
• Read Tutorials from SCOPUS, ELSEVIER, SPRINGER, etc.
• Follow submission guidelines carefully - Authors name, affiliation,
email, Corresponding author, Key words, link authors’ profiles from
ORCID, Researcher ID, Kudos, etc.
• Letter to the editor (small/large, minimum confirmation)
• Suggest reviewers (official email, international diversity, inform)
• Journals have different format styles - citations & references
• Upload correct version of file, ALL author’s name and affiliations
• Know the reasons for returning the manuscript: link
Who Are Handling Manuscripts in Journal?
• Many journals use initial screening (e.g. format, style, English,
references, etc.) system checked by solarized staffs of journal/
publisher.
• The Editor and Reviewers are not the salaried staffs of the
journal/ publisher
• They work to serve the scientific community. Some cases
Editors get some honorarium but mostly the reviewers work as
volunteer.
• So, understanding their motives will help authors to approach
them properly.
• Editor and reviewers are same as like as other authors. They
have their own job, supervision, project, articles, KPI, family,
etc. This is their volunteer job. So, in every communication,
editor and reviewers deserve the full respect from authors.
Understand the Motivation of Editor
• Many journals use a system of initial screening (e.g. format,
style, English, references, etc.) by journal staffs.
• When manuscript goes to managing editors, she/he may reject
instantly (desk rejection) or send to reviewers
• Asking reviewers to devote time on manuscript with obvious
flaws is an injustice. So, editor send reviewers only those
papers with a good probability of acceptance
• Some Top journals also has publication capacity constraint.
Suppose they publish (10article x 4 issue) in a year. So, editor
may consider to send only double number in review.
• In Top journals, Editor looks the benefit of his journal. The big
motivation is the probability of citation of the article to
increase impact factors of journal
• Also cite some article of that journal & editor !
Journal Reviewing Process
• The majority of papers are examined by two to four external
reviewers, who are specialists (!) in your subject, who check
the full paper and provide feedback
• Experts offer feedback on your intellectual validity,
appropriateness for the publication to which you are
submitting, and flow of content
• Experts are unlikely to improve poor language or
organization, but failures in these aspects will result in an
unfavorable appraisal of the manuscript value
• You increase your chances of favorable evaluations by
producing the best literary work
• The majority of the judgment will be based on the scientific
merits or usefulness or urgency of your work
• Even the finest paper with inadequate value addition will
not be accepted.
Understand the Reading Style of Reviewer
• The reviewers are busy scholars and not in vacation
• In most cases they just try to get the main issue and skim
over the material
• Only few reviewers will read everything thoroughly and
objectively (except paid & top-class journals)
• Reviewer may read a short portion or two at a time with a
long breaks
• There are high chance that reviewer will be interrupted by
several issues when reading your article, such as reviewing
when travelling or receiving phone or in meeting, etc.
• Logically think how busy people read something
Understand the Reading Style of Reviewers Cont…
• Try to keep the interest of reader and make flow of content
easy to recall
• The reviewer must be capable of grasping the gist of your
work by :
– Understanding the abstract
– Skimming the introduction / objective/ motivation
– Understanding the data-methods-analysis transition
– Taking a look at the graphs and major output table
– Skimming the discussion
– Search the key words - theoretical & practical
contribution, implication, limitation, future scope
– Count the number of latest references & check the journal
name
– Some repetition is good (but do not overdo it)
Reviewers’ Comments Adjustment
• Consider reviewing is a technique in which your work is
discussed by a group of people. Take notes on what they have
said and engage in the conversation.
• Almost every article needs to be revised.
• The editor and reviewers are voluntarily attempting to assist
authors to improve the work. So, don't take their critics
personally
• It is almost certain that editor will send your adjustment and
response to the same reviewers. Write a proper response letter
with showing your full respect to their comments.
• Consider it as an opportunity to talk about your research with
scholar in same field.
• Copy and paste every comments and write your response
immediately and describe the revisions you've made to the
article in detail.
Reviewers’ Comments Adjustment Cont…
• Make sure you don't forget anything or hide or edit any
comment
• Small revisions or avoiding comment is very dangerous and
reduce the chance of acceptance
• If adjustment of any comment is beyond your capacity or not
possible, clearly say that in response letter and also include
that in the limitation or scope of future research section
• Keep the tracking update visible, provide the line and page
number, or highlight the material or keep track change open to
easily understand the changes.
• Revise the full paper, where needed, not just only the areas
where reviewers commented
• Careful about English and better to check again before
submission
Reviewers’ Comments Adjustment Cont…
• If you believe the examiner is wrong, include a scholarly reply
to the remark that to what extend you agree, or a compelling,
logical, and respectful refutation to the issue with reference/
citations. Write in the politest way possible.
• If reviewer give some unethical comments (such as, suggester to
add many articles of a single author or irrelevant article) or use
unprofessional language (such as, bullying) or completely
irrelevant comments (such as, unscholarly comments or
comments from other discipline or outside of the scope), write to
the editor in a separate note/ email/ letter, but not in the
reviewers’ comments response file
• Send a query email to editor if you need more time to submit
the revision or if you already missed the deadline of
submission. Find the editor’s personal email and give CC !
 Planning after Receiving a Rejection Letter
• Understand the reasons of rejection and revise/ improve that
• Don't ever approach publication as a lottery by resending a
rejected article to a different journal before making any
meaningful changes (especially when you get reviewers’ reports)
!!! It is not going to help you shorten any effort and time.
• It's possible that the initial editor and reviewers will get it again,
which will cause bad impression to the writer and the manuscript
• A recommended approach (if rejected from top journal)
▪ Announce the rejection of the manuscript with the journal name
(only for top journal) in your cover letter
▪ Attach the previous review report as well as a detailed reply letter
mentioning how you have adjusted each comment
▪ Explain why you are resubmitting the paper to this journal, e.g., this
journal is a more appropriate journal in terms of scope/ aim; the
manuscript has been improved, etc.
Issues after Acceptance of the Article
• Fund/ project acknowledgement
• Fees/ charge payment
• Copyright transfer
• Author Add/ Drop/ Repositioning & conflict of interest
• Gallery proof check
 Issues after Publication of the Article
• Focus on increasing citation
• Sharing with others & upload in Self-Repository websites
• Preparing short video or podcast or give in social media
• Monitoring the impacts of work
Read/ Public/ Media
Websites Citation H-index
View
Download Follower
Mention
Recognitions
Top 2% (Accounting &
Google Scholar 7,800+ 41 - - - -
Finance in Malaysia)
SCOPUS 2,800+ 24 - - -
Web of Science 2,100+ 17 - - - - -
Top 1% (Research
Research Gate 5,600+ 32 530,000+ - 1,200+ 1,000+
Interest Score)
Academia - - 190,000+ 15,000+ 3,400+ 1,000+ Top 1% (Views)
SSRN - - 130,000+ 32,000+ - - Top 1% (Download)
Socarxiv/ OSF - - - 300,000+ - - -
Figshare - - 27,000+ 15,000+ - - -
Top 1% (Publication &
RePEc 400+ 6 3,000+ 11,000+ - -
Download)
Kudos & Altmetric - - 1,000+ - - 5,000+ -
Publishers’ websites - - - 100,000+ - - -
BePress - - 12,000+ - - 2,500+ -
* Total readers (Read/View & Downloads) are recorded over 1.5 million as of 31 Jan, 2023
Define Your Target Success & Steadfast on it
▪ Define your own success - high grade, top degree, good job,
high salary, good boss, good reputation, better life, better
family, self actualization, God consciousness/ Taqwah,
paradise !
▪ Maintaining a balanced life to get holistic success rather than
achieving high success in any particular area (career) &
massacre others (health, family, society, religion, humanity)
▪ Success is a journey, not a destination
▪ Success will come when compare and improve own position
rather than comparing with others or blaming others
▪ Life is a war place, don’t think it is one battle or only for you
▪ So, understand the reasons of test, trail and tribulation
▪ Know about type & nature of test -- prepare for it --
accept the challenge positively -- try your best with
beautiful patience -- rely upon God
Extra Resources
▪ See relevant lectures from my YouTube videos :
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPiIwzVFNAg3RAPe_yTzD
9rNDzQJNla5w

• See relevant materials from my Researchgate links:

▪ Method Section- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Md-
Mahmudul-Alam-2/publications > click “method”
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.19333.88803
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.36111.10409
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.23947.62247
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.10709.35047
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.18075.59687
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.29819.64809
Thank You