Skip to Main Content
It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

Get Published

A guide to publishing research. This guide is designed to assist emerging researchers and update experienced researchers.

Consider the following before and during your writing:

Your goals

  • To get cited
  • Be read by everyone
  • Have an impact on policies
  • Contribute to sustainability and the environment
  •  Provide useful professional or industrial information
  • Contribute to research communities
  • Use for research performance reviews
  • Have an impact on society and economic growth

Your audience

  • Other researchers
  • Industry
  • Local/international
  • The general public

Type of publication

Prestigious journal
 It is good to publish your article in a prestigious journal, keeping in mind that top journals usually take longer to be peer-reviewed and edited.
Professional or general magazine
 Consider professional/general magazines and other online publishing spaces. This will allow wider communities to view your article. It will be less formal and quicker to get published.
Journal in a specialised research field
 Identify journals that specialise in a particular research field by searching journal information in the database SCImago.  Ask your colleagues or your Liaison Librarians.
Local or international 
 Does your article focus on issues that are unique to New Zealand?  A New Zealand or an Australasian publication maybe be more suitable.
Open access publishing
  • reaches a wider audience
  • could increase citations
  • could have a bigger impact on the research community and society
  • the time to get published may be shorter
  • include the article processing charge (APC) in your budget or check the Read and Publish page
Conference paper 
 Presenting your paper in a conference may lead to it being published in the conference proceedings or a journal.

Other things to consider

 
Performance reviews

Publishing in quality journals and getting cited (an impact factor) is important for an academic career.

Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) assesses academics' work and awards funding to ensure excellent research in the tertiary education sector in New Zealand. Use library databases and other online tools to identify and choose higher impact journals in your field to raise the level of your research impact.
Institutional repository

Under the AUT Open Scholarship Policy 2020, AUT staff are required to deposit the accepted manuscripts of their published articles into the Tuwhera Institutional Repository. Self-archiving in an institutional research repository ("Green OA") has been shown to increase citations.

When selecting a journal for publishing, it is important to check whether the journal allows you to deposit your article in an open access institutional repository. 

Search the journal on the SHERPA RoMEO website to find publisher copyright policies and self-archiving information.
Publishing time

Is your research a fast growing topic and is it expected to reach an audience in a short time? 

  • Subscription-based journals usually take between 4 and 20 months to publish submitted articles. The websites of academic journals should provide information about how submissions are processed.
  • Open Access publishing is a good option to consider.
Avoiding predatory journals
 Predatory open-access publishing involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals.  These are not usually indexed in academic databases (even when they say they are) and therefore will not achieve a high level of citations.

 

Promoting your research

How to promote your publications and get cited?

Your article will only get cited when it can be discovered by other researchers. There are many ways to promote your research and make your research visible to research communities.

  • Archive your articles in Tuwhera (AUT's open research repository)
  • Use online research profiling tools, e.g. Google Scholar Citations, ResearchGate, and ORCID -- Find more options
  • Publish in Open Access journals
  • Rewriting your research articles/findings for non-academic audiences