Publish your research
This page provides general advice for postgraduate research students and early career researchers on factors to consider when deciding where to publish.
Remember that publishing is only part of your wider communications strategy and the development of your research profile.
The Building Research and Innovation Capacity (BRIC) Team offers a number of workshops for staff and for postgraduate research students on public engagement and communication.
If you are a PGR student, your supervisor should be able to provide advice on which journals/publishers to submit your work. You can also draw on your own experience of reading. Which journals are important to you? Who publishes the books and journals that you find most interesting? What is the reputation of those publishers in your field?
It is important to think carefully about your potential readership and where you want to target your research. Does the publisher you are considering offer the appropriate reach and can it connect with your intended audience? Does the publisher demonstrate sufficient rigour, for example, editorial standards and a robust and transparent review processes? What open access options does the publisher support?
Your colleagues, supervisor and/or Principal Investigator will be able to help you by drawing on their experience of publication. The BRIC (Building Research and Innovation Capacity) Team offer the following workshop for PGR students:
In addition, scholarly societies and commercial publishers usually provide advice and guidance on their websites about getting published. Examples include the IEEE Author Centre, Sage How to get published, Wiley author resources, and the Nature Portfolio for Authors.
These websites provide advice on a range of topics from guidance from choosing a journal, writing your paper or book, to search engine optimisation.
Think. Check. Submit. provides some useful checklists to help researchers choose the right journal for their research.
Additional tips:
- Visit the journal’s web page to find out about their editorial team and stance
- Make sure the journal is a good match for your research topic and methodologies
- Check the open access options provided; you can also check if the journals is covered by any of the University’s agreements with publishers.
- Make sure you understand any costs associated with publishing in that journal
- Check the journal’s acceptance rates if possible
- Always read the Instructions to authors to find out the detail of what is required and the submission process.
The Open Access web pages provide information on the opportunities and requirements relating to open access publication. Remember to check what conditions your funder applies well ahead of you choosing your publication venue. Contact the Open Research team if you need further advice.
Jointly run by the Universities of York, Leeds and Sheffield, White Rose University Press (WRUP) is the University of York's in-house university press. WRUP is a not-for-profit, open access press, publishing books and journals across all disciplines.
WRUP welcomes proposals from across the entire academic community, as well as from colleagues in York, Sheffield and Leeds. York-affiliated authors without other funding can apply to the WRUP waiver fund to cover some or all of their publication costs.
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique. Your book will normally be assigned an ISBN by your publisher.
The University Library can also provide an ISBN number to publish under the University's publishing company name. Contact the Open Research team for further advice on this service.
A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a unique alphanumeric label, created to identify a piece of intellectual property; mostly used for articles in electronic journals, but also for electronic books and chapters within them. Publishers assign and register DOIs so in most cases your work will get one automatically. CrossRef is the official DOI registration site used by publishers.
If you are not using a mainstream publisher, it is possible to obtain a DOI by other routes. Repositories such as Zenodo register DOIs for all deposits, and the Library provide a DOI creation service.
Research data management: a practical guide provides guidance on archiving and sharing research data.
Most publishers do not object to the prior availability of theses in open access repositories and this should not affect your chances of being accepted for publication. However we advise that you check publisher guidelines for aspiring authors before you submit your manuscript.
Publishers may ask you to transfer your copyright or agree to an exclusive licence to distribute the work. You should always check the terms of your publishing agreement so that you understand what rights you retain as the author of the work. Further support on this is available on our Copyright Practical Guide.
Funders such as Wellcome whose policies align with Plan S, the Europe-wide initiative for full and immediate open access to research outputs, ask authors to assert their right to retain copyright and make their accepted manuscripts open access under a Creative Commons licence. For more information on this see Open Access Publishing: a Practical Guide.
Most publishers are reputable but there are a small number of unscrupulous publishers that target less experienced researchers. Think. Check. Submit provides some guidance and things to watch out for when trying to determine if a journal or publisher is trustworthy.
You can also check whether the journal is a member of an industry association that vets its members, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals or the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association.
As the number of multi-authored papers is on the increase, professional bodies are developing guidelines on what constitutes authorship of a scholarly paper. It is important to give credit to all the contributors to an output according to the conventions of your discipline. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provides some useful authorship and contribution resources.
You might also use the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to identify all those who were involved in the research underpinning the output, regardless of whether they constitute authors. Many journals now ask authors to clarify the roles of those involved in producing an article by means of the CRediT taxonomy.
The University of York provides guidance on authorship and other aspects of publication in Section 4 of the Code of Practice on Research Integrity.
It is good practice that the institutional affiliation(s) of authors or other contributors are included in all research publications, and journals and publishers will usually encourage authors to include an affiliation. However, which affiliation(s) to give is not always straight-forward, particularly if an author works for more than one institution, or if they move during the course of their research.
Your journal or publisher may provide their own guidance on affiliation - which should be followed - but a general principle is that an author’s affiliation should represent the institution, or institution, at which the research was conducted.
For publications in which a significant part of the research being presented was carried out at University of York, the University should always be acknowledged as an affiliation.
This should ideally be in the form “[Parent department or school], University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom”, but as a minimum include the phrase “University of York”.
Where a single author carried out the research being reported at more than one institution, it will often be possible to acknowledge multiple institutions.
If an author is connected to another institution, but that institution did not contribute to the research, then it should not be included as an author affiliation on the publication. Similarly, if an author has changed affiliation since completing the research, the new affiliation should not be included as an author affiliation on the publication. I both these cases, it is usually possible for author’s to acknowledge the ‘other’ affiliation(s) in the acknowledgements or notes section.
Some examples of publisher guidance on affiliations are:
“Any article affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved.”
Cambridge University Press, 'Author Affiliations FAQ' [accessed 4th October 2022].
“Your affiliation in the manuscript should be the institution where you conducted the research. You should also include details of any funding received from that institution. If you have changed affiliation since completing the research, your new affiliation can be acknowledged in a note.”
Taylor & Francis Author Services, ‘Defining authorship in your research paper: Co-authors, corresponding authors, and affiliations’ [accessed 4th October 2022].
“The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done.”
Nature Portfolio, ‘Authorship’ [accessed 4th October 2022].
An increasing number of publishers and platforms now support open peer review, where author and reviewer identities are made visible and participation is opened up to the wider academic community (not just invited experts). Prepublication histories and review reports are also sometimes displayed alongside papers in order to improve transparency and accountability. Further information on open peer review is provided in our Open Research Skills Framework (Open Research Lifecycle).