Spring 2025 Publishing Academy : Finding A Journal

Peer review is used in research and academic conferences. It is the evaluation of an abstract or paper by qualified individuals (peers) to assess if a paper is worthy of publication in a journal or to be presented at a conference. Essentially, a selection process (Oxford Abstracts). Most journals will describe their peer review process on their homepage.

This chart is from the Peer Review guide at California State University, Dominguez Hills which was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Looking at the peer review process of the journals you are thinking of publishing in can indicate whether the journal(s) are quality, or not. The peer review process does this in a few ways:

1. Quality Control: The purpose of peer review is to work to ensure that high-quality research is published in a journal. Reviewers evaluate the rigor, validity, and significance of submitted manuscripts.

2. Expert Evaluation: Peer reviewers are typically experts in their respective fields.

3. Identifying Errors and Improvements: Peer reviewers often identify errors, inconsistencies, or areas for improvement in submitted manuscripts.

4. Maintaining Standards: Peer review helps journals uphold academic and ethical standards in research publication. Reviewers assess adherence to ethical guidelines, proper citation practices, and adherence to journal formatting requirements.

Overall, the peer review process serves as a benchmark for assessing journal reputation by ensuring the quality and integrity of the research published within those journals.

Scholar's Mine is Missouri S&T's institutional repository, hosted and created by the Missouri S&T Library. An institutional repository is "an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution" (Crow, The Case for Institutional Repositories). Essentially, Scholar's Mine holds the work of researchers (staff, faculty, students) at S&T, serving as an open-source publishing mechanism and working to increase visibility of these works. Scholar's Mine not only holds articles and conference proceedings, but also will archive other kinds of creative material. One way to ensure your work is being published in an authoritative home, is being seen by a wide audience, and preserved long-term, is to publish your research works in Scholar's Mine.

Please read the library's guide on Scholar's Mine in order to learn more about how Scholar's Mine can publish your work.