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Journals are the essential tools of researchers, especially academicians, to present their scientific findings. So, choosing the right journal helps not only science development but also their academic promotion. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that Iranian medical researchers consider when selecting scholarly journals in which to submit their work.

A self-administered online questionnaire was emailed in May 2021, with 101 responses received. The sample included all the faculty members with the role of “lecturer” in Iranian medical universities and who have 1–5 articles in the Scopus database as early-career Iranian medical researchers. The questionnaire consisted of 36 items, divided into five sections: basic information, attitudes and beliefs, ways to choose a journal, problems and familiarity with the components of scientometrics/validity metrics related to journals.

The findings indicate that these researchers value the expertise of experienced researchers and professionals, like librarians, when selecting publication venues. They often use journal indexes to guide journal selection. They also consider factors like the length of typical peer review and the complexity of submission guidelines when making decisions.

The study of one country, though detecting requirements of journal selection behavior, cannot be generalized to the entire region.

The current study has academic implications as far as decisions on journal selection are concerned. University policymakers in Iran may consider re-examining their emphasis on academicians’ promotion policies at Iranian universities of medical sciences.

These findings may support the work of early-career researchers and those individuals (e.g., librarians) that serve them, as well as publishers and editors of scholarly journals.

Over several decades many ranking techniques have been proposed as aids to journal selection by libraries. We review those closely related to physics and others with novel features. There are three main methods of ranking: citation analysis, use or user judgement, and size or ‘productivity’. Citations offer an ‘unobtrusive’ quantitative measure, but not only is the absolute value of a citation in question, but also there is no consensus on a ‘correct’ way to choose the citing journals, nor of the ranking parameter. Citations can, however, point out anomalies and show the changing status of journals over the years. Use and user judgement also employ several alternative methods. These are in the main of limited applicability outside the specific user group in question. There is greater ‘parochialism’ in ‘use’ ranking than in ‘judged value’ lists, with citation lists the most international. In some cases, the attempted ‘quantification’ of subjective judgement will be misleading. Size and productivity rankings are normally concerned with one or other formulation of the Bradford distribution. Since the distribution is not universally valid, for library use the librarian must satisfy him/herself that the collection conforms to the distribution, or that his users would be well served by one that did. This may require considerable effort, and statistics gained will then render the Bradford distribution redundant.

The nursing journals titles needed to support Project 2000 were considered. In order to reflect the structure of nursing literature as a whole, a citation count from the Citation index for 1990 was undertaken. In order to rank journals in each of the 4 branches of Project 2000, an analysis of the citations in a leading journal representing each branch was undertaken. To reflect student usage a survey of photocopier use and citation in student bibliographies was undertaken. In order to reflect what titles the library ought to have, a questionnaire survey of tutors was undertaken. The ranking of titles in the Citation index was tested for correlation with the ranks obtained from student use and tutor recommendation and the correlation between student use and tutor recommendation was drawn. Finally, a scheme for combining the rankings of journal titles obtained by the methods above was devised in order to produce an overall ranking of the principal titles.

This study aims to assess the scholarly communication competence of Zambian library and information science (LIS) professionals by evaluating their awareness, knowledge and practices regarding scholarly publication.

Applying a quantitative research approach, the study used a specially designed questionnaire. Responses from 57 professionals across universities and colleges in Zambia were gathered using convenience sampling. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics, mean and standard deviation calculations and t-values and p-values to understand respondents’ perceptions and knowledge of scholarly communication and publication.

The findings revealed significant gaps in respondents’ knowledge and awareness, particularly regarding predatory journals, journal selection factors, open-access models, publication challenges, reference management software (RMS) usage and research obstacles. The study underscored the necessity for increased training and capacity-building initiatives among Zambian LIS professionals to enhance their scholarly communication competence.

This research contributed to the field by highlighting deficiencies in scholarly communication awareness among Zambian LIS professionals. It emphasised the need for targeted interventions, awareness programs and educational support to improve academic literacy and scholarly publication practices. Additionally, the study suggested future research avenues, such as longitudinal studies and strategies for enhancing RMS adoption, to advance scholarly practices among Zambian professionals further.

Lists of journals ranked according to number of citations received are frequently used as indicators of usefulness, but little research has been carried out to test the validity of this hypothesis. On comparing lists of titles of journals ranked by citation counting with lists of the same journals, ranked according to frequency of use (using data from a survey at the National Lending Library), it was found that the rank order correlation between the two was low. This suggests that ranked lists produced by analyses of citations do not constitute valid guides for journal selection by libraries.

Bibliographic citation analysis of student research papers is one method of evaluating the use of a journal collection. Journal selection and cancellation may be done on the basis of use and cost‐effectiveness to maximize the usefulness of materials purchased with the library budget. An analysis of the bibliographic citations of research papers by undergraduate and graduate students in the psychology department of St Mary’s University was used as one basis for psychology journal selection and deselection in the academic library. Findings confirmed that the most cost‐effective and the most used materials were usually held by the library. Titles that met these criteria and were not held are good candidates for new subscriptions. Likewise, the least cost‐effective and least‐used titles are candidates for cancellation. Convergence of data from other sources should be used to confirm citation analysis findings due to the inherent limitations of the method.

The merits and demerits of existing techniques for the selection of journals are discussed. This discussion brings out the fact that the use of journals characterizes their importance. A model for the ideal selection of journals is presented. A canon of decreasing usefulness is invoked to determine journal priorities and to formulate guidelines for selection. The highest priority in the matter of journal selection should be given to those journals which are highly cited, abstracted, and used.

Describes how a representative sample of librarians was surveyed to carry out a comparative evaluation of selected journals in library and information science. Respondents were asked to rate each journal on a scale from poor to outstanding (0‐10), in terms of their visibility and the quality of articles they publish. Such evaluation should assist librarians in journal selection and in determining the quality of journals to which they send their research papers for publication. Reports the findings of the survey which discovered that some journals such as Library Waves, Assistant Librarian and Library Journal get low ratings because of low visibility and irregular publication. Others such as African Journal of Library Archives and Information Science and Journal of Information Science are rated highly because of familiarity and accessibility. Argues that the results of the study should help librarians determine the quality of journals and will subsequently enhance their utilization and subscription.

Two questionnaires were developed in order to gain some insight into medical librarians' attitude towards the various forms in which the Medline database is offered — printed version, online database and CD‐ROM. One was sent to about 200 medical libraries in The Netherlands and the other was distributed among the users of the Core Medline/Ebsco CD‐ROM disc in The Netherlands. Responses to the first questionnaire produced answers about the altitude among Dutch librarians towards this new technology and the current rate of acceptance. Responses to the second questionnaire produced insight on the user audience, as far as current use of printed bibliographies and online services is concerned as well as the users altitude towards Medline on CD‐ROM and the preferred time span and journal selection for the CD‐ROM version of Medline.

The purpose of the paper is to present a progress report on the building of a digital archive of electronic journals by the Korean Electronic Site License Initiative (KESLI) of the National Digital Science Library in Korea.

The research involves identifying a system architecture, testing its prototype, deciding journal selection criteria and priority publisher selection criteria, and defining metadata sets.

The paper finds that production system and archiving system models are being implemented and tested. Implementation of the delivery system module is in progress. Preservation strategies will be identified.

The KESLI electronic journal digital archive project is proceeding toward completion of its tasks by the end of 2007.

The observations and lessons in the paper provide insights into building a digital archive of electronic journals that can be used as a basis for building similar digital archives in other countries.