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Medical and Scientific Writing

Provides resources for writing journal articles, posters, presentations and other forums.

Choosing the right journal

The following resources will support you in making an informed decision on where to send your scholarly work.

Journal/Author Name Estimator (JANE)
Jane will then compare your document to millions of documents in Medline to find the best matching journals, authors or articles.

Journals indexed in MEDLINE® or other in NCBI databases

Journals indexed in MEDLINE® have been evaluated by the National Library of Medicine. Limit your NLM Catalog search to the subset of journals that are referenced in NCBI database records.

NYU HSL Citation Metrics Libguide
More information on journal impact factor, h-index for authors, citation tracking, and faculty bibliography.

​PubsHub

Biomedical journal information includes: Impact Factors, Eigenfactors, time to acceptance, rejection rate, submission criteria, editorial and submission information including phone numbers and email address, publication turnaround times, etc.

EndNote Manuscript Matcher

A new feature in EndNote Version 9 that uses “Smart Search” technology to match publications to your title/abstract in the Web of Science database. It also analyzes your citations against the tens of millions of citation connections in Web of Science to identify meaningful relationships. The resulting report links to the Journal Impact factor and other data from Journal Citation Reports. 

Information on downloading or updating EndNote.

Primer on Open Access Publishing

The open access (OA) movement is a recent transformation of traditional scholarly publishing seeking to eliminate or reduce the price and copyright barriers that deny access to information. There are two main models of OA publishing

  • GOLD - Akin to traditional publishing whereby authors submit a work to be peer reviewed and is published at no cost for others to read.  Costs to fund the publication process may be assessed to the author through article processing charges (APCs), although many publishers charge no fee.
  • GREEN - Applies to PubMed Central (PMC) and institutional repositories, like the NYU Faculty Digital Archive whereby authors may elect to have their published work deposited to be later accessed by the public at no cost.

...however, many traditional subscription-based journals have taken a "hybrid" approach - giving authors the option to make their article Open Access (terms & conditions may apply - see the journal's author or submission guidelines for details). 

Learn more:

Beware of Predatory Publishers

Publishers and journals categorized as "predatory" employ questionable practices with the goal of profiting from scientific research while ignoring academic and ethical standards for the publication of scholarly work.

Some common practices of these "predatory" journals include:

  • Emailed invitations to submit an article
    • Look out for typos, misspellings, and awkward language
  • Unprofessional website appearance
    • Does the site include a detailed "About Us" section?
    • Are policies for author submissions and peer review well-explained?
  • Lack of Editors or dubious information on its Editorial Board
    • Do you recognize the names on the editorial board, are their affiliations accurate?

Learn more: