Specialty Guides: PAH Library and Knowledge Centre: Publishing & Copyright

Select a Journal to publish in, and check the publishing fees.
Check the publishing guidelines
Register a unique Researcher Identifier (ORCID/Researcher)
Your legal obligations when publishing (Legal Deposit)
Measure your publishing with Bibliometrics
Understand copyright & intellectual property

Contact the Library for further support and assistance.

Select a Journal to publish in, and check the publishing fees

Look at the 'bibliometrics box' below on this page for ideas on finding high-impact journals.
Choose a journal with an appropriate access type and 'Article Processing Fees' APC:
- Diamond/platinum OA - Journals which publish open access without charging authors article processing charges
- Gold OA - Usually author pays an APCs. All articles and related content available for free immediately on the journal's website and are licensed for sharing and reuse via creative commons licenses or similar.
- Green OA - Usually no APC charged. Author is usually allowed to make a pre-print accessible to the public on their website, or institutional repository.
- Hybrid OA - Usually author pays an APCs if they want their article to be offered to readers as OA.
- Bronze OA - Bronze open access articles are free to read only on the publisher page, but lack a clearly identifiable license.
- (Usually illegal) Black OA - Unauthorized digital copying by large-scale copyright infringement has enabled free access to paywalled literature. This has been done via existing social media sites (e.g. the #ICanHazPDF hashtag) as well as dedicated sites (e.g. Sci-Hub).
Consider how you will pay for any 'Article Processing Fees' APC
- Your university affiliation may offer free or discounted APCs when you publish in some journals i.e. Read and Publish Agreements 2022 - Library - University of Queensland (uq.edu.au)
- You may like to apply to the hospital for grant funding to cover APCs. i.e. SERTA. Following links are only accessible when you are a staff member using an QH networked PC.

Check the publishing guidelines

If you are considering where to publish look at the impact factor or bibliometrics of the journals to compare popularity.
Ensure the title of your article is meaningful and specific. e.g. Example of a poor article title 'Nursing Without Walls', because it doesn't contain any key topics or words relevant to the content of the article.
Predatory Journals - Be vigilant to avoid publishing in Predatory Journals, identify predatory journals using Beall's List, Cabell's, thinkchecksubmit, COPE and Compass to publish . Consider this evaluating results from Google Scholar. "Australian dog serves on the editorial boards of seven medical journals."
Before you start writing, check the "publishing guidelines" of any journals or publishers you plan on submitting your work to. It is best to check this even before you start researching, because certain journals can be very prescriptive about the kind of information that must be included and the way articles must be formatted.
Full list of all types of publications in the field of Health Science e.g. review, case study, letter to editor, Festschrift etc.
For corporate publications:
- The Queensland Health Editorial Style Guide provides advice on laying out QH documents such as Ministerial Briefs, Letters etc. You can find a variety of acceptable QLD Health templates (scroll down on page)
- The Metro South Health Visual Identity Guide provides advice about laying out PA documents such as reports. PA Templates or Metro South Templates.
More links to publishing guidelines for journals:
- Journals related to perinatal and infant mental health

Register a unique Researcher Identifier (ORCID/Researcher)

Many people may share the same name, Research/Author Identifiers are unique identifying numbers assigned to you by publishers to help identify your publications.
Research/Author Identifiers are also used used to help individuals and organizations generate statistics (bibliometrics) about the number, type and quality of publications being published.
The following subject guide (maintained by UQ) has current information about the kinds of Researcher Identifiers you should consider registering.
- Research Identifiers

Your legal obligations when publishing (Legal Deposit)

Under the Libraries Act 1988 ( Qld) Section 8, 68 - If you publish a work (book, pamphlet, video etc.) you are legally obligated to supply a copy at your own expense within 1 month of publication to the State Library Queensland, the Parliamentary Library and the National Library of Australia.
Internal business documents are not considered to be published materials, and are not covered by this Act. However, under the Public Records Act 2002 they may need to be kept via other means to meet organizational record keeping obligations.
Material is considered to have been published if reproductions of the material or edition have been supplied (whether by sale or otherwise) to the general public.
Am I responsible for supplying a copy of this publication to meet legal obligations?
- If you have arranged publication during the course of your work, as the corporate owner you are required to ensure obligations are met on behalf of QLD Health.
- If you have contracted a publisher, liaise with them to find out if you will need to send copies of the items, or if they will do this on your behalf.
- If you have collaborated to produce the publication (e.g. QLD Health,TRI & QBMI) liaise with collaborators to find out if you will need to send copies of the items, or if they will do this on your behalf.
- If this is an item you have not published on behalf of any organization (e.g. your personal academic dissertation, a memoir about your life as a nudist etc.) you are required to ensure obligations are met.
- If your work has been included as part of a publication (e.g. An article in a journal, book chapter in a book etc.) It is the responsibility of the publisher to ensure obligations are met.

Measure your publishing with Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics are different ways to statistically measure your publishing. Never measure the worth of an author only by their Bibliometrics, because there are biases in the system that can give a false impression. Someone who may look impressive to an algorithm, might not be that impressive in a broader context. (Using metrics-only can contribute to lack-of research diversity).
These cards give a quick infographic summary about bibliometrics.
Some examples of Bibliometrics include:
- h-index = the number of publications with a citation number greater than or equal to h. For example, if you have 15 publications cited 15 times of more, you will have a h-index of 15.
- m-Quotient = Accounts for career length, the h-index divided by the number of years since an author's first publication
- g-index - modification of the h-index to give more weight to highly cited papers
- i10-index - number of publications with at least 10 citations
Some metrics providers include:
- SciVal (by Elsevier) - Using data from Scopus uses ORCID to uniquely identify researchers and institutions. Here is info regarding ORCID and Research Organizations
- PubMed (by NCIB) - Using data mostly from Medline, your SciENcv profile may include your ORCID . MEDLINE records are indexed with NLM Medical Subject Headings – MeSH
- Google Scholar – Limited metrics coverage, good for finding papers but not necessarily good for ranking them (Also remember Google is a corporation). “Overall, Scholar Metrics cover a substantial fraction of scholarly articles published in the last five years. However, they don't currently cover a large number of articles from smaller publications."
- There are plenty of other providers of research impact and metrics, it’s good to check the coverage, how researchers affiliations are identified and the corporate interests of the producer to be aware of biases in the systems.
UQ maintains a comprehensive guide to
- research impact and metrics.
To find out the Impact Factor of a specific Journal:
- The Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database tracks all impact factors for 12,061 journals, but is not free to access. You will need to access JCR via your University library.
- Google Scholar publishes a h5-index for some journals, which is also another way to measure their impact.
- Sometimes journals will include details of their Impact Factor in their background information and sometimes sites will publish Impact Factor tables for a set of journals.

Understand copyright & intellectual property

Intellectual property is a valuable asset that covers a wide range of intangible material including: inventions, literary and artistic works, computer programs, databases, broadcasts, films, sound recordings, trade marks and designs.
In Queensland Health, the potential to create intellectual property should be considered as an integral part of project planning and contract negotiation with third parties to ensure that we meet our objectives of providing quality health care for all Queenslanders.
As government employees, Queensland Health staff have special protection when it comes to using intellectual property of other organisations, however there are certain limitations that one should be aware of so that use is compliant with the law.
Comprehensive information about IP and Copyright is available from the Health Innovation, Investment and Research Office. Visit the following site for current standards and facts-sheets. https://www.health.qld.gov.au/hiiro/html/rcpu/intel_prop