10 Interesting Questions and Answers from Researchgate

ResearchGate is a social networking website for scientists, researchers, and academicians. It helps millions of researchers to share their research work with each other, ask their doubts directly to domain experts and find their research collaborators. In this article, we are going to find out the 10 interesting Researchgate questions about journal publication with best answers.

Researchgate Questions About Journal Publication

Question 1: How to find a suitable journal to publish your work? (76k Reads)

Best Answer: Important tips before choosing a journal (From Elsevier):

• Read the aims and scope of the journal
• Read or download Guide for Authors
• Check if the journal is invitation-only as some journals will only accept articles after inviting the author
• If you need to publish open access know that most Elsevier journals have open access options explained on the journal homepage
• Submit your paper to only one journal at the time
• Check the journal performance for the review and publication timelines

Question 2:How many publications should a PhD Student have by the time they graduate? (21k Reads)

Best Answer from Hassan Alrehamy

This question is as relative as Time. you may publish 10 journal papers, 8 pages each, and get null citations. you might publish only one 50 pages paper and get +25 citations during PhD. You should focus on Quality, not Quantity, and the metric to measure a PhD candidate’s performance should be citations, not a number of publications. To this end, your goal is to graduate, so you should focus on publishing papers that can directly fit as thesis chapters.

Question 3: Does a single author paper good for the field and the researcher? (33k Reads)

Best Answer from Parisa Ziarati

Maybe it seems weird in some countries, but sometimes one can accomplish all steps and I have some experiences in this way working. No sponsor, No partner, No collaborator, all I should do by my own pocket money, therefore it is rational to put only one name in this case!

Question 4: What is the benefit of being a peer-reviewer?(5k Reads)

Best Answer from Michael W. Marek

I think there are two advantages:

1.  Reviewing other papers in your field is a critical thinking process that may provide new insights about your own work.

2.  In the United States, at least, performing peer review is considered to be “service to the profession” and therefore can be part of a promotion portfolio. When you complete and submit your review, the journal should send you an email acknowledging your work, which serves as your documentation.

I would also say that I have been successful with several journal publications of my own, so when I perform peer review, I think of myself in a mentoring role.  This may not be a direct benefit, but I see peer review as helping other scholars to succeed, so it does make me feel good.

Question 5: How long do you wait to hear from a journal after you have submitted your manuscript? (62k Reads)

Jagdish Khubchandani: I have run across some extreme situations in the scientific publishing arena. For example, I had a rejection in 8 hours, an acceptance in 2 days, a rejection in 9 months, and an acceptance in 18 months. These were experiences without resubmit and revise (i.e. first-time submission experiences). Would you like to share your ideas?

Best Answer from Shweta Yadav

I am not very old in research (3 years) yet I’ve had no such experience personally. I’ve submitted 6 papers so far and the journals acknowledged the receipt of the paper within 3 working days. Also, the decisions were given within 2 months of the submission of the manuscript. It was a few years back when I used to hear my senior say that a particular journal didn’t respond for 9 months.

Even in this age when the internet has made the process of submission, scrutiny and sending the manuscripts to the reviewers so quick and the bank of reviewers has also increased manifolds, if a journal fails to give its decision within 2-3 months then its working must be very primitive. I too think that if you do not get any response even after 3 months you should give them a call.

Question 6: Is there any free journals available to publish the review article within 2 months? (78k Reads )

Best Answer from Mohamad Ivan Fanany

In the case of Hindawi, most of Hindawi’s Journal does not have impact factors. For such Journals, the open access publication fee might cost USD 600 – 800 and some even free. When they do have an impact factor, however, they cost USD 2000.

I wonder why they charge us (as authors) more, where in fact the authors are the ones that have helped them to get their paper got the impact factors (smile)? I think it would be better to provide a discount for authors that already publish they work in the Journals (just my two cents).

Question 7: How can we avoid the risk of publishing in a fake journal and how can we evaluate a journal’s quality? (17k Reads)

Best Answer from Hany Kasban

It is extremely difficult to judge the quality of a journal. However, here are two more lists (the so-called Beall’s lists) of presumably problematic journals and publishers that should better be avoided:

beallslist.weebly.com

Also, Check This

How To Identify Fake Journals?

Question 8: Slow Review process? (19k Reads)

Zeiri Asma: Unfortunately, I had a really bad experience with my last submission. I have submitted a paper in a journal 7 months ago and the manuscript is still under review. Every time I contact the editorial manager they reply “your manuscript is still under review”. What I am supposed to do in this case? Any suggestion?

Best Answer from Andrew E. Whittington

This is not necessarily unusually long for the review process – depending on the journal, especially if the paper is long, detailed or has an unusual content. Check the journal details, they sometimes explain how long to expect the review to take and if your manuscript has now exceeded that, then press the editorial team for a reason. Most often it is because the review is a voluntary activity conducted by scientists who are themselves already busy and have to make time for activity. If these same scientists also teach, then the time allocation will depend on teaching activities too. It can be a real juggle to fit all these things in. Also, some of the better journals become overburdened with manuscripts, leading to delays.

Question 9: How do I submit my dissertation as a Peer-Reviewed publication?

Best Answer from Dean Whitehead

You can enter your dissertation manually into Researchgate if you have a digital copy – but dissertations are not automatically recognised or registered by RG. RG mainly finds and recognises ‘articles’ through conventional databases – such as recognised publishing houses – using systems such as digital object identifiers.

It doesn’t even recognise International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) for books or book chapters. Again – one has to manually import those. Your school (University) stores your dissertation in either a local or national repository upon completion – but this does not transfer over to other systems – such as RG etc.

Question 10: What is the ideal number of co-authors in a research publication? (4k Reads)

Best Answer from Charles R Robertson

In reality, this question cannot be answered with an easy metric. A paper with many authors may be

(i) A collaboration between many labs.

(ii) A paper with many techniques that requires expertise in many fields.

(iii) A paper that lists everyone in the lab to equalize credit.

(iv) Ghosting authors to increase visibility.

In reality, I tend to read the paper first and judge the quality before I look at authors and institutions involved. I judge papers on content, not authorship.

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