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Tutorial 17
Eventually, we should aim to share our findings with the research community and world at large. The primary vehicle for achieving this communication to the community is by publishing papers.
The formats of research articles vary depending on the journal to which we submit. It can be frustrating because if the paper is rejected it might need entirely reformatting before submitting to the next journal. However, regardless to which journal we submit, you should have a master-draft article containing the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion.
Each article is written and submitted with a cover letter explaining why the study deserves to be published and why it was submitted to that journal in particular. The paper will then either be rejected based on the editors opinion or sent for peer-review.
Peer-review is the process by which other scientists judge your work anonymously. If they consider your work is scientifically sound and of interest to the community, they will recommend it be published. The paper is usually sent to 2 or 3 scientists and then the editor will make a decision based on the reviews. This can be quite a difficult process because most of the reviews will come back with criticisms of the work. While it can be a little demoralising to receive such kind of feedback, take heart that incorporating such constructive criticism from outside the group into the body of the work invariable makes for a stronger study overall.
Usually a paper is submitted to the highest impact factor journal that seems plausible at first, and will be rejected with criticisms. These criticisms improve the paper, which will be submitted again, but this time to a lower impact journal and so on and so on. Overall these effects combat each other to create a natural balance where the work gets better even as it moves down the list of "best" journals.
No matter what, do not give up on a project. As long as your results are scientifically valid (which they will be for us to get to the stage of submitting for publication) then they will be accepted somewhere.
The places we will typically look to publish are as follows:
| Journal Title | Impact Factor |
|---|---|
| Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics | 2.9 |
| RSC Advances | 3.9 |
| Sustainable Energy & Fuels | 5.0 |
| Materials Advances | 5.2 |
| Journal of Materials Chemistry C | 5.7 |
| Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers | 6.1 |
| Digital Discovery | 6.2 |
| Materials Horizons | 12.2 |
| Energy & Environmental Science | 32.4 |
| Journal Title | Impact Factor |
|---|---|
| Semiconductor Science and Technology | 1.9 |
| Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter | 2.3 |
| 2D Materials | 4.5 |
| Journal of Physics: Materials | 4.9 |
| Materials Futures | 12.0 |
| Journal Title | Impact Factor |
|---|---|
| The Journal of Physical Chemistry C | 3.3 |
| Inorganic Chemistry | 4.3 |
| ACS Applied Electronic Materials | 4.4 |
| The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters | 4.9 |
| ACS Applied Energy Materials | 5.5 |
| Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation | 5.7 |
| Chemistry of Materials | 7.2 |
| ACS Materials Letters | 9.9 |
| Journal of the American Chemical Society | 14.5 |
| ACS Energy Letters | 19.5 |
| Journal Title | Impact Factor |
|---|---|
| Physical Review Materials | 3.1 |
| Physical Review B | 3.2 |
| Physical Review Letters | 8.1 |
| Physical Review X | 11.6 |
| Journal Title | Impact Factor |
|---|---|
| Science Advances | 13.7 |
| Science | 50.3 |
Where possible we should submit with non-profit publishers. These organisations feed their profits back into the community, via bursaries, scholarships, conferences etc. However there are for-profit publishers that we can aim to submit to in the case of exceptional circumstances:
| Journal Title | Impact Factor |
|---|---|
| Journal of Materials Science | 3.5 |
| NPJ Computational Materials | 9.4 |
| Nature Communications | 14.7 |
| Nature Materials | 37.2 |
| Nature | 50.5 |
| Nature Reviews Materials | 79.8 |
| Journal Title | Impact Factor |
|---|---|
| Advanced Materials | 27.4 |
| Advanced Functional Materials | 19 |
As you can see there are many, many options for getting work published so you don't have to worry about not getting published or about getting one or two rejections.