MyResearch (Physical Sciences & Engineering)

Finding relevant conferences

• Think. Check. Attend. - Follow this check list to help choose the right conference to attend and present your research.
• Calls for papers can be found in the Papers Invited section of Pivot.

Choosing a journal

Consider if this is the right journal for your work:

• Think. Check. Submit. -  Follow this check list to make sure you choose trusted journals for your research.
• How to Assess a Journal - From the Canadian Association of Research Libraries.
• Beall’s List (archived) - Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers.
• Learn more about predatory conferences and publishers, watch: Inside the Fake Science Factory documentary presented at Def Con 26.

Impact measurements:

• Visit the impact measurements guide for citation and alternative metrics at the author, article, and journal levels.
  • Journal Citation Reports (Journal Impact Factor, based on Web of Science data)
  • Compare Sources in Scopus
  • Google Scholar Metrics​

Open access considerations:

• Visit the McGill Library guide to open access and learn more about the McGill Library open access repository, eScholarship.
• Read the Open Access chapter in ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication.
• Funding agencies:
  • The Fonds de recherche du Québec support open science by joining cOAlition S
  • Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications
  • Search SHERPA/JULIET or ROARMAP for research funders' open access policies. 
  • Try the Journal Checker Tool to see which publishing options are supported by your funder's OA policy.
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• Watch Paywall: The Business of Scholarship.

Understanding your rights as an author

Copyright:

• Search SHERPA/RoMEO for the name of a journal to find out the publisher copyright policies.
• The Canadian Association of Research Libraries provides valuable information for authors, including the use of the Canadian author addendum to hold on to certain rights.
• Creative Commons can be used to assign rights to your works, such as presentation slides.

Open access repositories:

• eScholarship: McGill's institutional repository.
• ROAR: Registry of Open Access Repositories
• Disciplinary repositories:
  • arXiv (physics)
  • engrXiv (engineering)
  • chemRxiv (chemistry)
  • More disciplinary repositories

Profiles

• ORCID: Create a unique, persistent identifier and obtain a researcher profile that you can keep up to date.
• Google Scholar Citations: Create a profile that will be automatically populated (provides citation counts and h-index).
• Scopus Author ID: Claim your author profile (provides citation counts and h-index).
• Web of Science ResearcherID: Build your profile in Web of Science (provides citation counts and h-index).

Promoting your work

• Toolkit: Journal Author Promotion (Wiley)
• Promoting your published work (IOP)
• Sharing and promoting your article (Elsevier)