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Publishing Plan Toolkit

Step 2. Submit

Submit your work

Consider the following factors when submitting your work to the journal/publisher.

J1. Have you followed the journal/publisher’s author instructions to the letter? Check that your article matches the publishing source's specified style guide.
J2. Are you using keywords that will make your research more discoverable? e.g., Scopus criteria (see SciVal Trends Research Area > SDGs (latest year)), SciVal Top 50 Keyphrases for Research Area (or by Topics/Clusters)

To improve discoverability of your work, check that you have:

  • followed the 'information for authors' when selecting keywords.
  • Add a few suitable SDG keyphrases to the title (within the first 60 characters of the title to enhance database searching), as keywords and in the abstract.
  • highlighted in your paper any key terms or phrases most relevant to the focus of your research. Have you included the terminology used by your audience, e.g., techniques, or specific methodology?
  • added Scopus criteria (SDG keywords) to your manuscript to improve the chances of your work being picked up in Scopus SDG search results. Review the SDG Scopus publishing criteria in the Research Portal and SciVal SDG portal for examples of Top 50 keyphrases.
  • avoided overlapping keywords in the title and keyword list
  • searched Google Scholar using your selected keywords. Are the topics in your search result similar to your own article? This will determine how useful the keywords will be to others. 
J3. Will you share the research data associated with your article? If yes, submit the dataset DOI to your publisher.
J4. Do you have written permission for any third party materials you have included? Ensure that you have written permission to use third party copyright content as the journal/publisher may request evidence of this.
J5. Have you drafted an effective cover letter to submit with your paper? Take a look at the publishing process guide to learn about submitting your manuscript and this information about the publication process from Elsevier.
J6. Do you have the correct files ready to upload? Check the 'information for authors' for the accepted file types and how to upload the files.
J7. Are you responding promptly and effectively to requests to ‘review and resubmit’? This will impact the successful and timely submission of your work.
J8. Have you supplied all author ORCIDs and affiliations? See: Researcher Identity and Affiliation for more information.

 

Other considerations

Authorship best practice:

Many authors submit their manuscript only to have it quickly rejected in what is known as "On-the-desk-rejection". To maximise the chance of acceptance, you should keep in mind the following authorship guidelines:

  • ALWAYS submit a cover letter with your paper
  • Follow the publisher’s author instructions to the letter
  • Respond promptly and effectively to requests to “review and resubmit".

See the Publishing process page for more advice on authorship considerations.

Researcher identity:

It is essential to differentiate yourself from other researchers with similar names or fields of study. Researcher identifiers, such as an ORCID iD, allow you to reliably and unambiguously connect your names(s) with your professional activities throughout your career.

Creating an online scholarly identity can be helpful in many ways, as it:

  • provides a means to distinguish between you and other authors with identical or similar names
  • links together all of your works, even if you have had several affiliations or used different names over the course of your career
  • makes it easy for others (grant funders, other researchers etc.) to find your research output. For example, you can use your ORCID iD to populate Australian Research Council grant applications
  • ensures that your work is clearly attributed to you
  • ensures more accurate citation and impact metrics
  • reduces duplication of administrative work in research workflows.

Publishers are increasingly requesting ORCID iD from authors at article submission. This helps the publisher streamline the submission process via Single-Sign-On and/or auto-populating the submission form with data from the author’s ORCID record - such as preferred publication name or affiliation - reducing the occurrence of frustrating errors. This also ensures that your paper is correctly attributed to you across all stages of the publishing process - including being embedded into article metadata for online indexing systems together with the DOI of the article and linking the two even further.

Some funding bodies are now also mandating that ALL authors on any paper which has arisen from research undertaken as part of the grant allocation must submit their ORCID iD to the journal, along with the Funding agency and grant ID. See the ORCID iD and research identifiers page for more information.

Affiliation:

Listing your affiliation details correctly guarantees that your research is linked to the University. The University has developed a clear policy to determine how authors should attribute their affiliation. Review the Research Code of Practice and Procedures for Attribution of Publication Affiliation. You should also follow the same affiliation pattern on social media platforms.

IMPORTANT: Ensure you also update your affiliations in your ORCID record and in your other researcher profiles, such as Scopus and Web of Science.

The following examples apply to the affiliation field and are included to provide guidance on applying this policy.

Example 1 – Institute

Researcher Name, Western Sydney University, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Australia

Example 2 – School

Researcher Name, Western Sydney University, School of Sciences and Health, Australia

Example 3 – Centre

Researcher Name, Western Sydney University, Centre for Complementary Medicine, Australia

Example 4 – Division

Researcher Name, Western Sydney University, Division of Academic and Research, Australia

Example 5 – CRC or ARC Centre of Excellence

Researcher Name, Western Sydney University, CRC for Young People, Technology and Wellbeing, Australia

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