Increasing the recognition and awareness of your journal on an international scale can be achieved by boosting its number of high quality submissions. There are various ways of encouraging authors to submit their articles to one journal over another but, in general, the more targeted, and individual, an approach is, the more likely it is to succeed.
Advocating for your journal
There are some significant advantages to publishing with BMC journals and these can be found listed on our website.
When advocating for your journal with colleagues, you may wish to highlight a variety of these and/or highlight the specific ethos and scope of the journal itself (which can be found on the 'About' page of your journal website). If the journal has recently published important work in a particular field, it may be worth mentioning this also.
Active 'solicitation' of manuscripts
Direct approaches to encourage submissions provide an opportunity for one-on-one presentation of the advantages of publishing in your journal and addressing any questions the author may have.
There are several ways you can proactively attract submissions to your journal, such as:
- Utilise your academic networks to solicit manuscripts in topical areas
- Approach the presenters of relevant work at conferences and meetings
- Send targeted, personalised emails to colleagues in the field with manuscripts under preparation
Passive 'solicitation' of manuscripts
'Passive' work can help raise the profile of the journal, encouraging prospective authors to discuss the journal with you and consider it when deciding where next to submit.
Examples include:
- Incorporating a link to the journal homepage within your email signature
- If your lab/department has a website, including a link to the journal website where possible
- Making sure your library's website includes open access journals
- Adding a link to your journal within presentation slides when presenting to colleagues or at a conference
- Highlighting the journal on social media
- Encouraging your colleagues to register online to receive article alerts
Promotional materials
We encourage you to market the journal at conferences you and/or your colleagues attend. To find out how the BMC Marketing team can support you, see our page here or get in touch with your journal contact.
Pre-prints
Preprints are becoming increasingly popular as they allow authors to share their research before it is peer reviewed. Some popular sources of preprint articles include BioRxiv, arXiv and PeerJ Preprints or similar platforms (both commercial and non-commercial).
With our partners at Research Square, we’ve developed a new option for you when you submit to our participating journals. This new option, called In Review, gives you insight over your manuscript’s editorial progress; even while it’s out for review. You can read more about In Review here.
As stated in the BMC Editorial Policies, we do not regard the posting of articles to preprint platforms as duplicate publication.
As an Editor, you can actively solicit articles from preprint servers for your journal, encouraging authors to submit to your journal for further consideration. In cases where authors have already submitted to another journal, they may be encouraged to submit upcoming work to your journal and will still appreciate your acknowledgement of the work.