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Publishing Plan Toolkit

Developing Your Publishing Plan

The Library is developing strategies to help WSU authors locate and assess relevant and impactful quality publishing sources, which can:

  • contribute towards successful submissions and count towards research outputs,
  • lift the impact and engagement at Western, and
  • provide further transparency of our support for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

If you are studying for a research degree and intend to submit a research proposal, consider developing a publishing plan using the Publishing Plan template.

The '4-Step' model

The four steps of the strategic scholarly publishing model are:

  1. Find a suitable quality publishing outlet
  2. Submit your research for publishing
  3. Promote your research
  4. Track your research.

Each step includes assessment criteria to guide you in selecting a suitable, high-quality publishing source where you can submit your research.

Adapted from Think. Check. Submit.

About strategic scholarly publishing

Choosing where to publish and how to promote your research is critical as a researcher. Strategic scholarly publishing involves following a systematic approach to ensure you publish in the most effective outlet and maximise success in publishing. This will help raise your academic profile, increase your work's visibility and impact, add to the reputation of WSU as a world-class institution, and contribute to scholarly discussions in your field.

This Toolkit provides a systematic, strategic approach for high-impact publishing. It includes a range of resources that can best help you accomplish your objectives, for example:

  • How to build your scholarly profile
  • How to communicate the impact of your research in ways that will resonate with a broader audience
  • How to find the most suitable publications and conference venues in your discipline
  • What you can you do to assess and quantify the impact of your research

A strategic publishing approach is supported by informed decisions about possible outlets for your work before publication, so you should also consider the outcome you're looking for. This outcome will vary from researcher to researcher and also depend on the stage of your academic career, e.g.,

  • to showcase your work and that of the institution
  • reflect well on your scholarly publication record
  • wider dissemination of your research
  • increased funding and collaborative opportunities, and
  • create a deeper engagement with the broader community.

Regardless of your aim, aligning your choice of a publishing outlet to a wider strategy can help build a solid reputation for yourself and your institution and help you accelerate your academic career path.

Additional resources

'Strategic Scholarly Publishing' is a Western Sydney University Library adaptation of Strategic scholarly publishing, created by the University of Queensland, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. [This CC Licence attribution takes precedence over the CC Licence attribution in the footer]

© Western Sydney University, unless otherwise attributed.
Library guide created by Western Sydney University Library staff is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY)