If you write a paper that you believe makes a substantial contribution to psychological knowledge, you may want to consider submitting the paper for publication. This chapter will give you some information to help you decide on a journal. It also contains a list of the most important journals sorted according to subjects. We will give you an overview of what you need to do to submit your paper and what goes on behind the scenes in an editor's office.

DECIDING ON A JOURNAL

If you decide to submit a paper for publication, the first step you must take is to decide on a journal to which you want to submit the paper. Eight considerations should enter into your decision:

Quality

Journals vary widely in quality. Some journals publish papers that do little more than fill up journal space; other journals publish only outstanding contributions to the literature. Better journals generally have higher rejection rates for submitted papers, so the probability of a paper's being accepted in such journals is lower.

One way to evaluate quality is to look at the impact factor of the journal. In Point 8, we describe how you can determine the journal's impact factor, or the extent to which papers in the journal are cited by authors in the field.