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1. About

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NicolasClairis edited this page May 11, 2026 · 20 revisions
Wiki page Description
About the Project Goals, motivations and journal inclusion criteria
Using the Website Column definitions and how to filter journals
The Data Data sources and processing pipeline
Contributing How to add journals, edit data, report issues, or contribute code

I. Project goals and motivations

There is a growing consensus in academia that the current scientific publishing system is unsustainable. The academic publishing market generates approximately €7.6 billion annually, with a handful of publishers capturing the majority of this revenue while maintaining profit margins of 30–40% — higher than many technology companies.

Several factors have contributed to this crisis:

Where to Publish? was created to highlight three factors that, combined, represent a sustainable alternative: non-profit publishers, open access, and society-based journals. Our goal is to generate awareness of these alternatives and help researchers make informed decisions about where to submit their work and for whom they are willing to review or edit.

II. Why and How to use Where To Publish?

There are multiple reasons why and how you can use the Where To Publish database:

  1. To identify a journal in your field of expertise where you would like to send your next manuscript by filtering the database based on your field and subfield of expertise (or using the "Generalist" option for journals that span across all fields of Biology);

  2. To identify a journal whose article processing charges (APC) match your budget by using the APC filtering;

  3. To filter journals based on their business model (Open-Access (OA)/OA diamond/Hybrid or Subscription based);

  4. To filter journals based on their publication type (Non-profit/University Press which revenues directly serve Academia; For-profit associated with a Society which are partly associated with academic societies; For-profit which revenues only serve to run the journal and to increase the revenues of private companies).

You can use this information to both prioritize journals whose revenues serve Academia when publishing, but also as a reviewer or as an editor, you can also consider this information to make a more informed decision when deciding if accepting or rejecting that offer.

  1. To download the database as a .csv file if you want to explore it on your own and add your own filters.

III. Why Biology?

Where to Publish? focuses exclusively on life sciences for several reasons:

1. We are biologists

This project was initiated by researchers in the life sciences who experienced firsthand the challenges of navigating the publishing landscape in biology. Our expertise lies in this domain, allowing us to curate and evaluate journals with appropriate disciplinary knowledge.

2. The "high impact" culture

Biology has a particularly pronounced obsession with high-impact journals. Nature, Science, and Cell, along with their family of subsidiary journals, dominate the prestige hierarchy in ways that differ from fields like mathematics or computer science.

3. Late adoption of preprints

While physics established arXiv in 1991, biology only embraced preprints with the founding of bioRxiv in November 2013, a 22-year gap. This delayed adoption reflects the stronger grip of traditional publishing gatekeepers in biology compared to other disciplines.

4. Strong society journal tradition

Despite these challenges, biology has a rich ecosystem of society-run journals that offer viable alternatives: PLOS, eLife, the Company of Biologists, EMBO, and many national and international scientific societies publish high-quality journals with more sustainable business models.

IV. Which journals are included?

1. Scope

The database includes journals publishing research in the life sciences, organized into ten fields:

  • Generalist
  • Anatomy & Physiology
  • Cancer
  • Development
  • Ecology & Evolution
  • Genetics & Genomics
  • Immunology
  • Molecular & Cellular Biology
  • Neurosciences
  • Plants

2. Inclusion criteria

  1. Life sciences focus: Journals must publish research relevant to biology or biomedicine.
  2. Non-predatory: We cross-reference journals based on the Sorbonne University list of presumed non-predatory journals, which is curated by consulting 58 medical specialty experts, is updated quarterly, and excludes predatory journals.
  3. Verifiable information: Journals must have publicly available information about their publisher, business model, and editorial policies.

3. What we do NOT include

  • Predatory journals: Journals exhibiting characteristics of predatory publishing — false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial practices, prioritizing profit over scholarship — are tentatively excluded, but we do not pretend to be exhaustive on the matter (either in inclusion or exclusion).
  • Journals outside biology: While some generalist journals (e.g., PNAS, Science) publish biology alongside other disciplines, we do not include journals focused entirely on other fields.

V. Team

Where to Publish? is based on the original idea of Nicolas Clairis & Thibault Latrille, two postdocs in Life Sciences, who wanted, at their own scale, to contribute to improve our tools to improve the publishing system. Nicolas Clairis & Thibault Latrille are still responsible for the website updates.

Where to Publish? is maintained by:

  • Thibault Latrille — Postdoc - GitHub · Website · Email
  • Nicolas Clairis — Postdoc— GitHub · Website
  • Diego A Hartasánchez — Postdoc — GitHub
  • Lucas Baudouin - Postdoc
  • Marion Walter - PhD

And you?

VI. Contributing

If you want to contribute to improve the database or the website, please refer to the Contributing page of the wiki and you can also write us directly via wheretopublish-contact [at] protonmail.com.

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