Writing and publishing

Write up your review

Your write-up must:

• report your findings
• answer your review question
• detail the decisions made and procedures followed that led to your findings.

To ensure your write-up is complete and transparent, use the PRISMA checklist.

Publish your review

Where you choose to publish has a huge effect on the visibility and impact of your systematic review.

Here are some tips for finding the right journals to publish your review:

• Look at your reference list. Which journals do you regularly and consistently cite? Your work will likely be of interest to both the journal and its readers.
• Check the aims and scope in the “information for authors” pages of each journal you’d like to publish in.
• Use the following tools to generate journal suggestions based on your abstract:
  • EndNote Manuscript Matcher
    Suggests journals based on title, abstract and citations.
  • JANE: Journal/Author Name Estimator
    Matches your title and/or abstract to journals indexed in PubMed.
  • JournalFinder
    Elsevier’s journal suggestion tool, which uses title, abstract, keywords, and field of research.
  • IEEE Publication Recommender
    Suggests IEEE periodicals and conferences based on title, keywords and phrases.

Use the following tools to find rankings of journals in your field:

• Scimago Journal and Country Ranks (SJR)
  Based on Scopus Elsevier data, this tool provides journal ranking information by subject or country. 
• Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
  Based on Clarivate data, this tool provides journal ranking information by title or subject.
• Evaluate journals using metrics to identify those most influential in your field.
  Check the Publishing pages for more information.

For more information about Open Access publishing, visit the Open Access page. 

Get help

• For help with writing, contact your supervisor.
• Enquiries about Open Access publishing can be directed to an Academic Liaison Librarian.
• For information about depositing a copy of your publication into the University repository, contact Repository Support.
• The Library runs workshops on strategic publishing. Check the What's on page to register.