Authors

Part One - social media mentions deliver citations of research articles by Steve Dudley

When you publish your research you look for impact. Impact comes in different forms, but most publishing academics strive for their work to be cited providing them with some level of merit from their peers within their research community.

When following your manuscript through from submission to publication, there are many different people and several different teams with whom you will come into contact. So who on earth are you supposed to go to if you have a question?!

Absolutely everything is done online these days and peer review is no different. If you’ve ever written a journal article, or been asked to review one, then you will no doubt be familiar with online submission systems.

No, we’re not talking Shakespeare here (that’s another topic for another day – and, for that matter, another blog). We’re talking about the surprisingly contentious issue of who gets to be listed as an author on an academic paper.

There is something of an air of mystery as to what actually happens to your manuscript once you’ve pressed that “submit” button. It seemingly goes off into cyberspace and you are left playing the waiting game.

One question that us peer review administrators get asked more than any other is “how long will the peer review take?”. Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer to this – you might as well be asking us how long a piece of string is.

You’ve finished your project and written your paper. You’ve researched the best journals in the subject area and know exactly which one you want to publish in. You go through the submission process, take a deep breath, cross everything, and hit that “submit” button.