Understand your rights and responsibilities
As an ACU author, you must comply with the following policies when publishing your research:
- The Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research
- ACU Research Authorship Policy
- ACU Research Publication Policy
Find out more about your rights and responsibilities as an author.
Where should I publish?
When deciding where to publish your work consider:
- your discipline and any recommended faculty lists
- your intended audience
- your open access options and/or obligations
- where potential journals are indexed (, for example, Scopus database)
- how to identify and avoid predatory publishers.
Help with selecting a journal or publisher
Ensuring your work is published in the most suitable and reputable place can be an overwhelming task.
Here are a few tips:
- Speak to your colleagues and other top people in your field.
- Search databases to find out where work similar to yours is being published.
- Scan your cited articles for potential journal options.
- Try a journal finder tool such as Elsevier Journal Finder or JANE (Journal/Author Name Estimator).
- Explore the ACU read and publish agreements.
- Talk to your librarian team.
Now you have a list of potential journals, view our website information about assessing and evaluating where to publish.
Availability of your research
Traditionally, research published in subscription journals is expensive, and sometimes difficult, to access and use. Publishing open access is a better option.
What is open access?
Open access (OA) is a set of principles, and a range of practices, through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers. Watch what is open access? (YouTube, 5:01m) for more information.
Pathways to OA publishing for ACU researchers
Publish in a fully open access journal
Your work is immediately available and free for anyone to read. You select a creative commons license to retain copyright. There are usually article processing charges.
Publish in a journal of your choice and self-archive in a repository
Publish in a traditional, subscription journal, but make a version of your work (usually the accepted manuscript) open access by depositing it in ACU Research Bank – our institutional repository that is managed by the library. Once publisher embargoes are lifted, your research becomes openly available.
Publish in a hybrid journal
The majority of traditional subscription journals have an option to publish open access. This model usually incurs an article processing charge. However, the library has read and publish agreements with a number of publishers for selected journals that enable our authors to publish open access without incurring a fee.
To learn more about open access and open data and how they can work for you, see our website information about open access publishing.
Tips to help you get published
The publishing process
Choose a journal → Write your paper → Submit your work for peer review → Make revisions → Re-submit → Acceptance → Copy editing → Publication
The peer review process is a form of quality assurance. During this process, experts in your field consider the merits of your work. They provide journal editors with an impartial decision about whether or not to publish, as well as how to improve an article already accepted for publication.
Increase your chance for success
- Investigate the journal aims and scope and submit to a journal that is a best fit for your reseach.
- Become familiar with other articles published in your chosen journal. What content is included? What is the style?
- Talk to colleagues who have published with the journal.
- Follow the journal instructions for authors, including using the stated referencing style.
- Ask a colleague to peer review your manuscript prior to submission.
- Carefully check your grammar and spelling.
- Cite articles from your chosen journal.
- Submit to one journal at a time.
Revisions and re-submissions
- Adhere to any timelines for revisions or re-submissions.
- Highlight what you have changed when resubmitting.
- Make sure to address each referee point, potentially in a separate document.
- Remain positive and be aware that the review process often takes 2 or 3 cycles.
What to do if your work is not accepted
- Check your topic has a clear focus and that your research was sound.
- Rework the paper, following any suggestions given.
- Consider submitting to an alternative journal.