 The next important part is to select the appropriate journal. It's very important that you select a journal that matches your topic and your intended audience. And this is a common mistake that authors make, is they pick the wrong journal for their paper. Or that journal is targeted for an audience that doesn't match what your intended audience may be. For example, I'm the editor of an educationally focused journal. It's intended to be read by faculty and the topics are all about education, curriculum, faculty issues. When I receive a paper that's clinically focused, that paper is immediately rejected even though it could be the best paper on that topic. For example, I've received papers on care of the patient with gangrene. I receive the summary of a basic science research paper about ischemia in rats. So these papers will be rejected before they're ever even sent for review because they don't match the purpose of the journal. They don't match the intended audience for the journal. So that step is absolutely critical, is finding the right journal for your topic and for your intended audience. Next, you want to know if your journal is peer reviewed. We often use the term juried or we use the term refereed. All three terms mean the same thing. Juried, peer reviewed and refereed all mean that your paper is sent out to your peers for a critique. And then you will receive those critiques back to help you revise and help guide and making a better paper. In academic settings, faculty are expected to publish in journals that are peer reviewed. So I would encourage you for your paper to determine is your target journal one that is going to be peer reviewed. You might also want to use directories and websites to help you learn about your targeted journal. And if you go on the website of Nurse Author and Editor or go on to the website of it's called INAIN, the International Academy of Nurse Editors. On both of those websites they link you to the same directory of all nursing journals in the world. And there's a link to each journal to the journal's editor and to the journal's author guidelines. So I would encourage you if you're searching, trying to find the right match for your paper, use that website, use that link to help guide you. Another consideration you may want to make in picking your journal is what's called the impact factor. And that is a formula that's calculated based on how often the targeted journal is referenced in other journals. And so some are very critical of this measure and say it really isn't that meaningful. Others follow impact factors very closely. So it's something you might want to consider and your journal website should be able to tell you the impact factor for your targeted journal. Another factor you might want to consider in selecting your journal is the time that it takes for the peer review process. As we mentioned earlier in our module about the process of publishing a journal, the papers go out to peer reviewers. We ask peer reviewers to return the paper in about three weeks. And people have great intention and mean to do that, but they often get busy and they can't do it. So although we like to get our papers back quickly and return the paper to the author quickly to give you feedback in a decision, it will take time, probably more time than you'd like to wait as an author. But that is the reality because all our peer reviewers are busy people who have full-time jobs. They do peer reviewing. For no honorarium, they just do it as a professional service. So be patient, but you might want to inquire with the editor, what's the typical time for the peer review process to occur? What about how long should you expect to wait? And if you wait beyond that time, is it appropriate to contact the editor and ask about the status of your paper? You might also want to inquire about acceptance rates of papers, but be careful of how you interpret that fact. For example, as I mentioned, the journal I edit is educationally focused. So all the papers that are clinical papers are rejected. So if I gave you my percentage of rejection, it might be falsely interpreted. What you would really want to know of how many papers that were appropriate for the journal were rejected. So be careful when you look at rejection rates because many rejections may simply mean it was the best paper ever on that topic. It was simply sent to the wrong journal. I would encourage you also then to pick up your targeted journal and sit down and examine it more closely. Look at the style of writing in a way that maybe you've never looked at when you were simply a reader of that journal. Look at the type of formats that are in that journal. How do they package their articles? Are there a lot of tables and figures and headings? What's the typical length of the article? Does that journal break itself into varying departments? Does your paper fit in a certain department? And sometimes instead of the word department, they'll use the term columns. But maybe your paper fits into one of those. And when you submit it, you can indicate to the editor that you're writing for that department or column. Next, you want to search the index of your journal, your targeted journal, to see how your topic has been covered in the past. It doesn't mean you can't write on the same topic if it's been addressed recently, but you just may need to take a different slant on that topic. So journals often will put a topic index in their last issue of the year or their first issue of the following year, or you might be able to find topics online, or you might be able to find a list of desired topics on the journal's website. So I would encourage you to check that as well. It will really help you know how to shape your topic. You want to decide is your targeted journal one that is a thematic journal. In other words, each issue is devoted to only one topic. If that's the case, I'll warn you that those topics are selected a year or two in advance, and those papers must be in almost a year before they'll be in print in order for the whole review process, the revision process, the editing and printing process to occur. So if you want to write for a journal that is topical, you really need to contact the editor and be sure you submit in a timely way. At one point in my career, I was the editor of a topical journal and we published in the front of the journal the upcoming topics for a minimum of a year, sometimes for two years. And it was hard if our very next month's topic was published and an author contacted us and said, can I write a paper for that topic? It's really too late if you wait to a month before it's to be released. All those papers at that point are really at the printing press, so it wouldn't work if you waited to the last minute. So decide is your paper best for a topical journal or a journal that is mixed. It doesn't use a thematic. In those journals, it doesn't matter exactly when you submit your paper, but if your paper has a seasonal aspect to it, for instance, if you're going to write on care of the patient with hypothermia, it probably isn't going to get published in July, just as if you want to care for the patient with sunburn or heat stroke. That's probably not going to get published in January. So there are some nuances to topics and when and how the journal wants to publish those.