 As a researcher working through the publishing process, you've reviewed your responsibilities to others, matched the presentation of your research to your target audience, and considered how widely you want to share it. Now it's time to decide where you will publish your work. When you think of scholarly publishing, you probably think of peer-reviewed publications, like books and journals. Peer-reviewed publications are the most selective and most competitive options, and they go through a long process of editing and review. There are less competitive venues that require a selection process, but do not offer peer-review and editing. Conferences accept presentations based on a proposal submission, while academic repositories accept submissions that meet certain institutional criteria. Thanks to the internet, it's easier than ever to share your research outside of the traditional venues of academic scholarship. You can upload media, like videos, images, or apps, to a content server like YouTube or Flickr. You can even blog about your research on social media or your own website. There is a wide range of more selective and less selective options for publishing your work. Let's take a look at some of the limits and opportunities at each end of the spectrum. When it comes to publishing in more selective venues, prestige or recognition of your work by other experts is one of the greatest opportunities. You'll probably also have the opportunity to receive better and more relevant feedback. However, when it comes to many selective venues, people will only be able to read your work if they have an individual membership or a subscription through their library. It is also likely that the publishing process will take a long time. If you want something to be available right away, you might choose a less selective venue. Options like repositories and publishing to the web often let you reach a wider audience. The disadvantage to reaching a wider audience, though, is that you have less control over who can access your work. It can also be hard to track how your work is being used and cited by others. Let's take a look at how different publication types might fit your target audience or author responsibilities. One of the more selective formats will typically be a journal article. Different journals have different criteria for submission, and there are some journals that specifically publish undergraduate research. Though it can take months or even years to write a journal article and get it published, journals are good for reaching a target audience of other experts in your field. A good mid-level opportunity for sharing your research is presenting a poster at a conference or symposium. Poster presentations let you control access to your research by limiting the audience to the experts in your field if you present at a disciplinary conference or to your university community if you present at your university's research symposium or your department's research day. Because of the limited audience, a poster may be one way to share work that you've done for a professor or research that is still in progress as long as you have permission from your project lead. Publishing your own content is one of the least selective ways of sharing your research, and you'll want to work closely with your professor to decide the best way to go about it. However, if you've created a media project like a video or app, sharing it online may be the best way to reach your target audience. Making your project findable through a general search engine like Google will make it more accessible to a non-academic community. It also means it will be available to anyone in the world. While sharing your research with the world might be a good thing, you may want a little more control over the process. No matter what type of final research project you've created, you may be able to deposit your work in an institutional repository. Repositories are supported by institutions like universities who gather the intellectual output of their campuses and make it visible by putting it online. Repositories often let you limit access to your full research output, making them good options for depositing research that might lead to a patent, might be published elsewhere, or contain sensitive information. If you have questions about selecting a publishing venue, talk to your professor or ask a librarian.