If you are an author with experience of publishing articles or are fairly new, you have to decide and determine whether or not your article has the top-notch quality or not. In the theoretical framework of your thesis, you support your research work with something called a literature review. In this case, you look at the research that is done on a similar subject as yours, before you have published.
Why is the quality of an article so important?
As you may know, there are hundreds of articles published by journals, the editors at the journal are extremely busy people and they might just spot one little mistake and discard your hard work or ask you to redo some parts of it. Pre determining the quality of work is crucial if you want to save time, money and resources.
Following are some points that will help you get a hold of this:
- Where are the articles being published?
It is important to know in which journal the article has been published. There are many journals out there that will promise you exposure to the community and what not but only a few of them have the reputation that you really want. It might be difficult for you get through some of the big names in the publishing business but doing your bid of research can help you identify the next best journal suited to your needs. Also always look out of indexed journals.
- What is the date of the article that is published?
As you may already know that more importance is given to the recent and more updated pieces of research papers or articles. This is not to discourage that your work is any less than other or the fact that a new work is superior but that is a common overview of the industry.
- Have you come across other opinions on the article?
What are other researchers saying about the particular paper? People who are writing them are they credible? These are some of the important questions you need to ask while you choose an article to do your work on. Opinions or reviews of the article will also save you a lot of time that you could utilize on your own article.
- Dig a little deeper
A paper that is published in a reputed journal will definitely have relevant citations to substantiate their study. If the article you followed does not help you the way you wanted it to, you may find your calling with the papers and articles that are cited in the first work you followed.
- Let’s score it
Using the above-mentioned parameters, you may now score the paper. You may do it on a piece of paper, use a white board or just remember it—whatever floats your boat. You should always spend more time on understanding the quality of the journal before you apply it to your work. How does this help? Scoring is just a way to understand the paper you are interested in. the only thing that matters with doing this exercise is to understand if an article is worth your time and energy.