Q: How do I select an appropriate journal for social science?

Answer:

There are several factors involved in selecting a journal. We’ve presented some key ones below.

• While you have mentioned the broad area, it may also help to think of subject-specific journals. Additionally, you need to clearly know the scope of the journal. This is one of the first things journals look for in a submission – whether there’s a scope match. If not, it’s likely to be a desk rejection. On your target journal site, you may look up a page titled something like ‘Aims and Scope.’ Here, we’ve linked that for MDPI’s Social Sciences journal.
• You also need to keep your scholarly and publishing goals in mind. What is your research about? Who is it intended for? Is there an academic dependency (timeline) for publishing?
• You may also consider the journal metrics, which are meant to be indicative of the journal’s quality and reach. From Social Sciences again, here is their statistics page.
• Another factor to consider these days is whether you wish to publish in an open access (OA), paywalled, or hybrid (a combination of the previous two) journal.
• To decide, you may go through a few sample articles. This will help you gauge the journal’s style and the kind of articles they are likely to publish. Again, we’ve provided a link to such a page, this time from Taylor and Francis’ The Social Science Journal.

Hope that helps. [Please note that the examples provided above are only meant to be illustrative and not as endorsements.]

For more information on selecting a journal for your research, you may go through the following resources:

• How to choose journals for submitting your paper
• Identifying target journals for studies with overlapping subject areas [Case study]
• How to interpret journal acceptance rates

For help with the actual selection, you may utilize our Journal Selection service.

All the best for the selection and the submission!