13 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality cHAPteR 2 targeting an Academic or scientific Journal: the Right Paper in the Right Place With the basic design of your article in mind, your tables and figures planned (if not yet actually constructed) and perhaps your paper drafted as well, you will need to choose a journal that is appropriate for your work before making final decisions about structure and presentation. Each journal will provide different guidelines or instructions for authors to follow, some of them very detailed and specific, others much less so, allowing authors a great deal more flexibility in terms of how they prepare their writing. Occasionally, such guidelines will need to be considered when choosing a journal: if you simply cannot describe the nature of your study, report your results and construct your argument effectively in less than 8,000 words and seven tables, a journal that calls for papers no longer than 4,000 words with no more than two tables simply will not do for that paper. However, decisions about where to submit your work are generally determined not by such practical details, but by considering the overall nature of both your work and the journal in which you’d like to see that work published. 2.1 choosing the Journal that Fits and Benefits Your work 2.1.1 Range and Specialisation: Is It the Right Fit? It may seem painfully obvious to say that when you plan to submit an academic or scientific article for publication you need to select a journal with great care, but the fact is that the decision-making process is too often not given enough time and attention. Certainly most authors do try to submit medical papers to medical journals, PARt I: wHAt to PUBlIsH And wHeRe to PUBlIsH It