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Where should I publish articles so they count?

Key answer

The authorship criterion needs a journal with scholarly or professional standing: an editorial board, peer review, an ISSN, indexing. Blogs and social profiles do not qualify. Community experience says you do not need a degree to publish in trade journals - what matters is describing the journal and its metrics in the case.
Check a journal or outlet for the petition

Community answers

The answers below are translated from the original Russian - the language of the community chats.

  • The first requirement is the presence of an editorial board and the journal's status as scientific or professional. Simply posting text on the Internet will not work.

  • It is very rare for journals to reject authors without a degree or a connection to a university - the vast majority of people who have published here do not have degrees. The main thing is that the journal has key metrics, and the editorial board is one of them.

  • The criteria include: ISSN (there have been RFEs where an article was not accepted due to its absence), the editorial board that reviews articles, and the indexing of the journal in scientific libraries.

The answers are anonymized community experience from the public chats, not legal advice. Officers may decide similar cases differently.

Why "Scholarly authorship" gets refused

Accepted in 44% of challenged petitions (86 of 196); not an approval rate.

The articles are not shown to be scholarly in nature. Columns, blog posts and round-ups do not satisfy this criterion.

All refusal grounds and the sample

Sources

All questions on: Articles and citations

Related on this site

Similar questions

A reference page built from community experience, not legal advice. Requirements and practice change - verify on uscis.gov.

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