Essay Sample on Importance of Scientific Journals

Introduction

The scientific journals are practically the main means of scientific communication. When both creators and consumers of knowledge, that is, researchers and professionals of any discipline want to make their findings known or be informed of discoveries, they exchange experiences or disseminate the most varied news about people, institutions, technical and commercial products. They, therefore, resort to scientific journals, to transmit or respond to their informative need, depending on the position they occupy at that time in the communicative cycle. These are, therefore, at the same time an essential channel of expression and reception of information. The authors resort to them intending to ensure ownership of their ideas (public record) and with the supposed certainty, quite questioned by multiple pieces of evidence, that the published knowledge is valid, scientifically proven and respects the academic norms of the scientific method. This is attained by fairly and impartially evaluating the members of the scientific community at different times of the scientific production process, making them an instrument of certification and validation of knowledge (Haug, 2015). This paper investigates three journals, describing the process and the criteria they apply in selecting the work to be published. The paper also describes how the researchers ensure their work meets the requirements, overcoming the challenges faced in the process of publishing.

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Impact of Journals for Both Researchers and Institutions

The process of provision of nursing care requires support and justification through scientific evidence, necessitating research among nurses. It is every doctor's ethical duty to publicize the results of an experiment or investigation done. This process is carried out through the dissemination of the results of his research, in congresses, symposia, courses or through their publication (Sternberg, 2018). The research and publication of the scientific article are two closely related activities. Some claim that the investigation ends when the results are obtained when they are analyzed, when the work report is delivered or when the research is presented at a professional meeting. However, scientific research ends with the publication of an article in a scientific journal, only then will its contribution become part of scientific knowledge.

Journals are not only official, valid and public record of science that constitutes the main tool for disseminating scientific information, but also have become a social institution that confers prestige and rewards all those who contribute to its existence. Currently, even admitting the oversized role that according to the cultivators of scientific skepticism is given in the science system to journals, and to indicators that, such as the impact factor or databases are associated with many of them, it is evident that journals have become a means of evaluation that determines the rise in the professional and social scale of scientists and decisively influences the allocation of economic resources for research (Haug, 2015). Definitively, creation and maintenance Scientific and professional journals act as a key instrument in the organization, structuring and social institutionalization of discipline or area of knowledge. Although there are other channels for communication and exchange, the publication is the main way of criticism and confirmation, within the scientific community, so that the results become new scientific knowledge. They are a constitutive element of the production and reproduction of knowledge. For all these reasons, the evaluation of scientific journals has now become a necessity demanded from different sectors and perspectives, not only scientific but also social, political or economic.

Evaluation

Evaluation is directed, in most fields of knowledge, to scientific publications and, especially, to articles published in journals. This is why the valuation of scientific journals has become a crucial aspect of the entire system of science evaluation in a country (Bornman & Williams, 2017). In this area, the actions of those responsible for public scientific policies are directed towards two fronts:

Establish policies that promote national and international dissemination of the country's science through explicit support for national scientific journals, which translates into the implementation of programs that allow the best national scientific journals to be identified to promote them. In these programs, a series of requirements to be met by those journals that choose to receive a subsidy have been set, which entails starting up an evaluation process.

Build and carry out political actions that lead to the evaluation of the performance of the Scientist researcher activity. In this line, managers and managers need to identify criteria that allow them to discriminate the value and quality of the publications, which implies the establishment of a series of quality requirements that scientific journals must meet to be approved and certified.

Choosing the right journal to publish is not an easy task and there are several criteria to be shuffle and evaluate (Sternberg, 2018). The first criterion to attend will be the scope and coverage of the journal, to verify if it agrees with the theme and typology of our contribution. All journals have a section where they delineate research interests detailing the topics on the ones he publishes. Also for the selection of the magazine, from a thematic point of view, it is relevant to observe the references cited. The magazines we cite the most are also those to which would be more pertinent to send (Sternberg, 2018). A second step would be to check on the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), the corpus of journals indexed in the thematic category in which we are specialized. In the case of Information Science & Library Science, there are 83 journals included in the year 2011. Finally, consultation with tutors and trusted colleagues can be useful, especially for scientific articles, since more experienced researchers usually have important knowledge of the scientific publication in his field (Sternberg, 2018).

Once the potential journals have been selected, it is advisable to give a detailed review of their latest numbers to verify if the topic, perspective, and level of contribution are at the level that is in demand. At this point, it is necessary to review the Impact Factor (McCann & Polacsek, 2018). Despite the criticism faced, this is one of the most used criteria at the time choose a journal for publication. The impact factor should not be taken in a closed manner and more than reviewing the exact data or position of the publication, it is necessary to do so in a broad sense, for example, dividing the categories by quartiles and giving priority to magazines located in the first quartile. You also have to be careful with the magazines that have experienced sudden changes in position (ups or downs) in short periods of time, since now they will be consistent magazines, and they can give us an unpleasant surprise if they change drastically from position when the work is published or if they are separated from JCR by unethical practices of editors

Other aspects can make one decide for one or another journal. Thus, the terms of publication are variable in publications. While in some the process of sending to refer to and of the answer is agile, in others it can be dilated in excess. It is necessary to check the average time of publication of the articles, for which we can take the last issue of the magazine and calculate it thanks to the publication history. Some magazines also have systems of electronic management which usually implies more agile editorial processes than in those to which send the works directly by email to the editor. Another point to observe is the periodicity and the number of articles by number. A magazine with an annual periodicity or Semi-annually, it will have higher publication deadlines than one monthly or bimonthly. Similarly, some journals publish very few articles a year, therefore access to them will be complicated, and the highest publication deadlines. It is interesting to verify if the magazine has the first online publication option since in that case the article will be published electronically in how much the revision and layout process has been carried out.

Similarly, another of the relevant aspects when sending an article is knowing the rate of rejection of the magazine. It should be noted that this data is not usually made public, although some magazines review it on their websites. Hyland (2016) offer the rejection rates of some Documentation magazines, based on a survey of its editors. In it, to name just a few examples, Journal of Information Science appears with a 30% rejection rate, Scientometrics with 40%, or International Journal of Information Management with 65%. Taking into account all the criteria indicated, we must always have present the choice of at least three magazines since the work may be rejected in the first instance, a situation that should not discourage the author. For example, a study published in Epidemiology found that 62% of the works published in that journal had been rejected previously for another (Hyland, 2016). In this way, if rejection occurs we will be ready to send the work without delay to the next magazine on our list, as it is about a usual circumstance. You should never leave a manuscript at the first rejection. Regarding the selection of magazines where publishing is relevant to mention the role of increasingly proactive university libraries. According to a recent study, up to 57% of Catalan public university libraries offered this type of advice to their researchers (Hyland, 2016). Once the magazine has been decided next to the manuscript, a cover letter must be attached to the work.

In the case of receiving the final acceptance of the manuscript, the last step before publication is review and, where appropriate, correct the printing tests. As careful as it may be in the process, it is probably some detail has escaped. Returned the proofs of printing the article will be ready for publication. Once published, it is advised to disseminate and distribute the article within the academic community, both sending the work to colleagues who investigate the same subject, as placing it in repositories or on the personal website or research group. Additionally, it is recommended to follow a dissemination strategy through tools that can increase the visibility of the article (Korstjens & Moser, 2018). After the great effort that involves getting acceptance of a paper in an impact scientific journal, this diffusion is the final push for our work to be known by the scientific community.

In the processes of evaluation of the scientific production to which the academic community is subject, this production is valued, mainly according to the academic journals in which it is published. The increasing number of the journal has made it necessary to evaluate scientific research to ensure the journals meet the qualities and offer suitable information to the audience. Peer review is one of the critical status considered when evaluating the quality of a journal. Publishers may contact published authors to express their experience on the issue expressed in the article in in the process of publication. Some metrics of quality incorporated in the process of publishing are significance as authors get to improve their content. the publication is not the end of that research, it may be only part of it since these results usually generate new hypotheses to verify the subject and become a line of research.

With a view to its dissemination, the manuscript resulting from an investigation must meet certain standards of quality and truthfulness. For verifica...