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Get Published

Publish your research. This guide is designed to assist emerging researchers and provide an update for experienced researchers.

Consider the following concepts when thinking about your publication strategy:

Type of publication

Highly ranked journal

 It is desirable to publish your article in a high ranking journal but be aware it may take longer to get published due to the full peer-review and editing process.

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 your research field by searching for journal information in databases such as SCImago.  Ask your colleagues or your Liaison Librarians or Research Services Librarians.

Local or international publication

 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 journal
  • 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 for fees covered by AUT

Conference paper 

 Presenting your paper at a conference may lead to it being published in the conference proceedings or a journal.

Promoting your research

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

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

Other things to consider

Performance reviews

Being hight cited is important for being recognised in your field and helpful in promotion rounds.

The Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) provides a Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) which assesses research performance of tertiary education organisations and funds them on the basis of performance. Evidence of output and citations are considered when allocating funds. 

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 in a rapidly developing field where it is desirable to reach an audience in a shorter timeframe? 

  • 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 may be a good option.

Avoiding predatory journals

 Predatory journals may charge publication fees 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. See the Avoiding predatory journals section in this guide.