Forum: How to Publish in Indexed Journal

The Advanced Materials Research Cluster together with Advanced Industrial Research Cluster under Faculty of Bioengineering and Technology (FBKT) have been conducting a Forum on 21st of December 2020 with the title on “ How to Publish in Indexed Journal”. The panels are from the FBKT members and UMK researchers with in the top list in scientific writing and publication for 2020. With the wide area of research, the moderator, Ts. Dr. Sarizam Mamat is a metal and welding expertise, meanwhile Panel 1, Associate Professor Dr. Mohd Hazim Mohamad Amini is excellent in woods composite, wood science and wood technology and Panel 2, Ts. Dr. Mazlan Mohamed are expert in nanotechnology, materials composite and advance materials. Both of the panels are already been with UMK family for 7 years. Due to the pandemic Covid-19, the forum were life streaming with the help from UMK corporate technical team and the streaming was online at UMK Official Facebook: (https://www.facebook.com/OfficialUMK/videos/4850169935056874).

The sharing were include the classified of indexed journal that need to be concern when submitting the articles, with the journals actually classified into 3 categories of indexed journals which is journals indexed by; Google scholar, Scopus and Web of Science (WOS). WOS by then have two more classified which is with impact factor that have Journal Scientific Report (JCR) and non-impact journal. Panels also shares on how to get researchers Scopus ID and how to merge the publication under one Scopus ID. This is because, unmerge data will impact to the citation and also H index of the researchers.  Other tips that been shared with viewers were the tips on how to publish in indexed journals which include language and formatting. For the language, to reach up to the high level of scientific language, proofread of the articles are needed.  Meanwhile for formatting, every researchers should follow the journal formatting due to each journals have different styles of formatting that can be referred in author guidelines in every journal web.

In addition, a great sharing on how to know the ranking of the journal were also mentioned. JCR will guide and informed the authors, the specific fact of the journals such as their impact factor and ranked of quartile score (Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4) based on the research area. The quartile will help the visibility of the research paper and that will impact on the citation then H-index. H-Index actually represent the visibility based on the citation of the published journals. If the articles is published in high quality journal, it’s easier to have more citation then the journal that’s not in the ranked of quartile score. Citations are from the worldwide and if the journals were published in Q1 journals, there going to be more researchers will cite the articles. H-index are measured from the amount of citation and also papers published.

In a great way, panels also sharing on how to increase H-index. In early stage, it’s easy to have H index for example in the range of 1 to 3. However the difficulties start to present when to increase the H-Index at higher number for an example, above 10 because of the high citation are needed. Regarding to this matter, the tips given are by submitting the article to high impact journal that in Q1 and Q2 because both quartile journals can be find in main journal search engine, Science Direct. The second tips is by proceed for review article because this review article are much wider in research scope and not in specific research.

Moreover, to publish an articles, there’s a moment when the articles are rejected. Sometimes it will be more than 3-4 rejections with full of comments from the reviewers. For this, there’s some interesting advice that might help the researchers. First, copy, list and answer all the comments, then highlight the change in the articles to make sure that the reviewer notes the correction that have been made.

The question also been up by the viewer by asking on how to choose the right journal to submit the article. The simple ways to do is by submit the articles to the journal article that has been referred and in another way is by using the keywords that been placed in the article. Second question that been raised is on how to extract the PhD thesis to the article. From here, the researchers might can split into few part which is for an example, can split the part from the objective of the study or by writing the articles based on the results.

Last but not least, the best quotes from the panels is, to publish in high impact journal, be patient in all the stages of writing and submission of article, always upgrade skills in scientific writing and never give up.

DR. NORFADHILAH BINTI IBRAHIM