The University if California has open access policies that apply to all UC employees including faculty, lecturers, researchers, post-docs, staff, and graduate students. Authors are asked to make available an open access copy of their work. Providing an author manuscript to eScholarship, UC's open access repository, fulfills this obligation.
Through Scopus
Through Web of Science
The University of California has several transformative open access agreements with publishers. Here are a selection of these:
The journal impact factor is a calculation of how many citations the articles in a journal receive (over a 2-year average). It is used as a proxy measure of the quality of a journal. If the impact factor of a journal is 5, then on average, articles in this journal receive about five citations within the first two years after publication.
In any discussion of journal, article, or author metrics, it is imperative to remember Goodhart's law:
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
Journal Citation Reports: Find impact factors (Note: Journal websites generally will include the impact factor).
Scopus CiteScore metrics: Click “Sources" - An alternative to the JIF.
You may wish to read this brief article on the Journal Impact Factor:
Is the impact factor the only game in town?. P. Smart. Ann R Coll Surg Engl. 2015;97(6):405-8.
PLoS, a top-tier open access suite of journals, says this: "PLOS does not consider Impact Factor to be a reliable or useful metric to assess the performance of individual articles. PLOS supports DORA – the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment – and does not promote our journal Impact Factors."
In addition, citation counts themselves are not necessarily a good metric of importance; see How citation distortions create unfounded authority: analysis of a citation network. Greenberg SA. BMJ. 2009 Jul 20;339:b2680. doi: 10.1136/bmj.b2680.
Finally, one could argue that journal impact factor manipulation is itself a predatory journal trait.
Aim for multiple publications
Select the best publication type to reach your audience such as a conference presentation for professionals, journal articles for researchers, and news or blog pieces for the general public.
Consider writing multiple publications that will reach different audience groups. You'll be able to divide your findings across the different venues and discuss the conclusions deeply.
Select a journal to target your audience
Check the journal’s Instructions for Authors. Does its scope and criteria match your intended audience?
Check the journal's impact factor, which is frequently used as a proxy for the relative impact a journal has within its field. It measures the average number of citations to the recent articles published in a journal (more about impact factors).
Find journals ranked by impact factor in Journal Citation Reports.
Scopus is another ranking tool, and there are reports on a journal's changing impact factor over time. Visit Scopus and select the Compare journals link above the search box.
Here's a guide to learn more about research impact measurement.
Publish as open access
Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge to the reader, and it’s free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (Suber 2013). When your articles are free and online, your findings are more visible and accessible since readers only need an internet connection to find a copy.
Three main options are available:
Upon acceptance of article, select the open access publishing option
Publish in a full OA journal
Deposit the postprint into an open access repository. Check SHERPA/RoMEO whether the journal allows postprint deposit, and find an open repository through OpenDOAR.
In order to grant readers open access, authors typically pay a publishing fee for OA articles. The Library offers the BRII program to support Berkeley researchers with the fees for full OA journals.
Write for discoverability
Craft descriptive titles and informative abstracts so that readers can quickly preview your publication.
Help search engines and databaes index your publication by assigning descriptive keywords to the article.
Share as much as you can
Sharing research data and instruments may increase citation rates. Here are options for sharing:
Publish the data as the supplementary materials of an article.
Load data into an open repository. Search databib.org to find one suited to your discipline.
Publish the data online with the Library's Dash service.
Publicize your work
Discuss your article at conferences and meetings.
Publicize the piece in news and social media sources for the altmetrics impact.
Add the publication to your academic profile.
Create an ORCID id to manage your unique researcher identity and receive recognition.