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Advanced Psychology Research Guide

Advanced Research Processes and Sources in Psychology

American Psychological Association Advice

Publish Your Thesishow to edit and prepare your thesis for publication

The Art of Acceptance: Insights on the publication process

Scaling Mount PublicationIt can take years to get your study finished and accepted by a peer-reviewed journal. Here's advice on how to persevere from some of psychology's most productive researchers. 

Get PublishedAttaining that first manuscript acceptance takes patience and a thick skin.

Identifying Journals in your Research Area

Some databases used in Psychology identify journals in their list of search hits that publish in your research areas (as indicated by your search words):

  • PsycINFOPsycARTICLES: Click on Publication under the Refine Results sidebar to the right of your list of search hits
  • ScienceDirect: Click on Publication title under the Refine filters sidebar to the right of your list of search hits 
  • SpringerLink: Click on Published In under the  Refine Your Search sidebar to the right of your list of search hits

Some journals and conferences are open to including undergraduate work:

Finding Journal Impact Factors

The Journal Citation Reports database provides information about Psychology journals, including their impact factors. From the Journal Citation Reports homepage:

  • Enter the name of the journal or the specific subject category for which you want to find impact factors
  • Click on Browse categories in the top bar
    • Scroll through the list of categories to Psychiatry/Psychology, then click on the arrow to the right to open all of its subcategories
    • Click on the category to open the list of journals published in that category and their impact factors

The impact factor of a journal is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. It is used to measure the importance or rank of a journal by calculating the times it's articles are cited. Impact factor is calculated based on a two-year period and involves dividing the number of times articles were cited by the number of articles that are citable.

Identifying Predatory Publishers and Journals

See the library's Avoiding Predatory Journal Publications guide for information about what predatory journals are and how to avoid them.

Determine How Many Times your Article, Book, or Book Chapter has been cited

Web of Science calculates how many times your articles or book chapters (published 2005 and later) have been cited:

  • Enter the name of the author in the top search box (e.g. Smith JT)
  • Select Author from the drop-down menu to the right of the search box
  • Click on Search
  • Times Cited, to the right of each article or book chapter, shows how many times each has been cited
    • Click on the linked number for a list of works that have cited your article or book chapter
Google Scholar calculates how many times your articles or books (but not book chapters) have been cited:
  • Open Advanced Search options by clicking on the arrow at the right of the search box
  • Enter the name of the author in the Return articles authored by search box (e.g. JT Smith)
  • Cited by, under each article or book chapter, shows how many times each has been cited
  • Warning: Google Scholar includes duplicates in its Cited by number

Find Your Article DOIs

Use this Free DOI Lookup tool to look up the DOIs of your published articles:

  • First Author search only retrieves DOIs for articles for which you were first author
  • Use an Article Title search for articles for which you were not the first author
  • Not all of your articles will have DOIs, especially any that are more than about 15 years old

Calculate Your H-Index (your research output and impact)

The h-index quanitifies an individual’s research output and measures both their productivity and impact. The index is based on a list of publications ranked in descending order by the number of citations these publications received. The value of h is equal to the number of papers (N) in the list that have N or more citations. (J.E. Hirsch, 2005). 

Web of Science calculates your h-index:

  • Enter the name of the author in the top search box (e.g. Smith JT)
  • Select Author from the drop-down menu to the right of the search box
  • Click on Search
  • Click on Citation Report on the right hand corner of the results page
    • The H-index is on the right of the screen
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