Publishing

All University of Northampton staff are expected to ensure that their published outputs align with our Publications Policy.

A small fund is available for the payment of open access charges for publication in fully open access journals or for the payment of a chapter/monograph to be made openly available.

As soon as you start thinking about publishing from research, you should spend some time writing a publication strategy, your peers or research centre leads can assist you with this.

A publication strategy will help you to think about what you want to achieve by publishing your research and help to keep you on track when opportunities are presented to you, prioritising which ones to accept, who to collaborate with and what publications to focus on at this point of time in your career.

  • Goals

    • Impact of Policy
    • Impact on subject area
    • Impact on society
    • Valuable for industries
    • Influencing practices
    • Exploring new area

    Type of Publication

    • Subject specific journal
    • Monograph
    • Edited Collection
    • Meta Analysis
    • Literature Review
    • Chapter

    Subject

    • Should align to Publisher’s interests
    • Original/New Research
    • Review of existing Research
    • Adding to existing knowledge
    • Creating new knowledge
    • Rigour, Reach, Significance

    Audience

    • REF
    • Researchers
    • Government
    • National/International
    • Industry
    • Specific Organisations

    If publishing a research output for REF purposes, ensure you meet the criteria and work towards the appropriate star level for your output.

  • Your article will only get cited when it can be discovered by other researchers. There are many ways to promote your research, making it visible to research communities.

    • Always upload your research output to Pure including as much information as possible, e.g., keywords, abstract, link to publisher’s site. Consider adding an image that represents your research, especially if the output is a chapter, monograph or non-textual output.
    • Use online research profiling tools, e.g., a Google Scholar profile, ResearchGate, and ORCID.
    • Consider using platforms like Kudos to create summaries of your research that can reach a wider audience.
    • Contact our marketing department with news of any outputs that are about to be published or have recently been published to highlight these in Unify.
    • When publishing ask the publisher about the potential of doing a press release to create wider interest in your work.
    • Fill in the person expertise section of your profile in Pure, including indicating if you are willing to speak to media.
    • Use Pure to Highlight your most prominent publications to ensure these are the first publications people find when the access your profile.
    • Include a link to your Pure Profile in your email signature.
    • Promote your work through your academic networks and social media
  • There are several tools researchers can use to evaluate journals and publishers prior to submission.

    Scival can be used to check where other academics are publishing in a field or subject area, and which journals are in the top percentiles for citation and prominence.

    Think, Check, Submit is a toolkit for evaluating the suitability of journals and publishers. It provides a checklist of questions that can help authors avoid predatory or low-quality options, and has routes for books / book chapters and journal articles.

    For Open Access publication, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a curated index of publisher and journal policies and practices. Inclusion in DOAJ requires journals to meet specific criteria, and those demonstrating best practice are awarded the DOAJ seal. It’s a good idea to check DOAJ when considering open access publication.

    The Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) is a community of organisations committed to the development of open access publishing. Members must undergo a review process and meet the membership criteria, making OASPA a useful tool for evaluating open access publishers.