Creating a journal

Ross Woods, 2023

Here's a brief description of the process of creating and publishing a new academic journal.

  1. Form a team of people.
  2. Decide on a specific purpose. Why do you need to do this?
  3. Will you incorporate a new organization or will it be part of an existing organization?
    1. Being part of an existing organization, such as a university, will normally reduce some kinds of risks, generally simplify the process of launching a new journal, and perhaps give you a head-start with public credibility and networking.
    2. Creation of a new organization gives you more freedom but creates other kinds of work in meeting government requirements. If you need to incorporate, consider being a non-profit to simplify your tax.
    3. Check the requirements for listing with an agglomeration service. (See below.)
    4. Will it be a profit or a non-profit?
      1. When a journal is a commercial enterprise with paid staff, it needs to pay its people, pay for office space, and make a profit. In other words, it might require substantial start-up capital and incur financial risk. However, if the journal is eventually becomes highly reputable, it can charge whatever the market will bear.
      2. When it is not a commercial enterprise (i.e. it is a non-profit or part of a non-profit institution) and staffed mainly by volunteers, the pressure to generate income is much lower. However, it will still have some costs and the journal needs to be sure that it can cover them.
  4. Decide on a business model. How will it get money and pay all its bills? You have several choices:
    1. Open source. Writers pay and the articles are free to readers.
    2. Subscribers pay.You might also have different payment arrangements for libraries, if different from individuals.
    3. Hybrid. The publisher sells copies until they are one year old and then makes them free to download.
    4. There are others. For example:
    5. Evaluate your risks as a business.
  5. Plan how will your attract readers or subscribers.
    1. This is a marketing plan and you will need good reasons to believe that it will be successful.
      1. Who would want to read it? (I.e. What is your target audience?) They will presumably be other researchers and graduate students preparing literature reviews. Attracting these readers is probably not too difficult if the topic of the journal is mainstream.
      2. How will they access articles? Access is easy if the journal participates in the major agglomeration services, which enable researchers to locate articles very easily.
      3. Why would they want to read it? They will presumably be interested because the choice of topics is relevant to their own research, articles are well edited and well presented, the research is well done, and the findings are significant.
    2. If the journal will be open source, it might be sufficient to get listed on one or more agglomeration services.
    3. Whatever else you do, you will need to put together an excellent first issue.
  6. Do you have suitably qualified people?
    1. You will need a chief editor and (probably) members of your editorial committee. If you don't already have them in your team, plan how will you attract them.
    2. Plan how will you attract suitably qualified reviewers.
  7. Plan the publication.
    1. Choose a unique name for it. (Journal titles must be unique so that they can be referenced without some details that are needed for books.)
    2. What will it look like and how many times each year? How many articles in each issue, and what kinds of articles?
    3. Choose or write a style guide.
    4. Produce a word processor template and check that it is consistent with your publication policies.
    5. Write your publication policies. These define what you accept and what you don't, and how articles will be reviewed. Authors will have to agree to particluar policies as a condition of acceptance for publication.
  8. Plan your website.
    1. Get a url and a website host.
    2. Choose your software. Open source software is free.
    3. Design and launch your website.
  9. Registrations
    1. Get an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) number. These are often free.
    2. Apply to at least one of the major agglomeration services for a listing, e.g., Google Scholar, Core, ERIC. If you meet their requirements as a refereed scholarly journal, researchers will be able to find your articles just as easily as well-known, high-prestige journals.
    3. If it is Open Source, you might like to register with the Directory of Open Access Journals (See doaj.org) and JSTOR
    4. You might like to register to be able to issue Digital Object Identifiers (DOI), but there are fees. (See https://www.doi.org/)
    5. In some countries, you might need to register with your national library as a periodical. Sometimes it's required, sometimes it's preferable, and sometimes it's part of getting an ISSN.
    6. In some countries, you need to get accreditation so that academics can get credit for their publications.