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Graduate Student Resources

Basics of Publishing

The world of academic publishing can be very confusing and tricky to navigate. Here you will find resources that cover the steps to the process and timeline, as well as how to think about where to submit your work. 

Where to publish

Impact factor

One way to measure the influence of a piece of scholarship is to identify the impact it is having in their respective discipline. Calculated as the average number of cited articles divided by the number of citable items in a journal in the past two years, the impact factor illuminates which journals are most influential in a scholar’s given field. In other words, it is a measure of how often a journal is cited by other journals in a field.

There are several academic journal databases that make it easy to track the impact of your publication: 

  • Web of Science
  • Altmetrics
  • Google Scholar Metrics

Citation Resources

This page includes general information about citations, as well as resources on citation management tools. Citation management is the act of organizing and managing your references, often with the use of a citation management software tool, such as Zotero or EndNote. See below for workshop recordings and information about using these tools.

Zotero Workshop, presented by UMBC Library Spring 2023 

EndNote Online workshop, presented by the UMBC Library Spring 2023

What is scholarly communication?

"Scholarly communication is the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic mailing lists."  

-Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication, Association of College and Research Libraries 2003

Scholarly communication resources: 

For many student-authors, intellectual property is not something often considered. When you have an article published or submit writing for publication, your rights as the author change and you become limited in what you can do with your writing. This page explains intellectual property and related topics, as well as steps you can take to protect your hard work and writing.

Author Rights

Copyright

Copyright is a United States Law (Title 17, U.S. Code), that protects the rights of the creator of a work. The copyright owner has exclusive rights to:

  • Make copies (ex. a download, PDF email attachment, photocopy or scan, etc.)
  • Distribute copies (ex. sharing on the internet, sending in an email) 
  • Prepare derivatives based on the original work (ex. a translation, a sequel, a spin-off) 
  • Perform the work publicly (ex. act out, read aloud, play for an audience) 
  • Display the work publicly (ex. posting on a web site)

Open Access

Open access (OA) refers to freely available, digital, online information. Open access scholarly literature is free of charge and often carries less restrictive copyright and licensing barriers than traditionally published works for both the users and the authors. 

There are many resources from UMBC about your theses and dissertations. Here are just a few from across the university. For more detail, you should contact your department or the graduate school.

How to publish

How to Find Thesis and Dissertations

Presenting can be an important step of the academic research process. It allows you to share your work with other researchers, gives you opportunities to network and make professional connections, and is an important part of every graduate student's resume. 

Finding opportunities for presenting

On Campus Presentation Opportunities

Research Posters

"A poster presentation is a formal, research-based presentation of your work. A poster presentation provides a visual representation of your research through text, charts, graphs, and other visual aids. A poster presentation allows viewers to read your research material at their own leisure and to interact with you—perhaps asking questions about your methods or your findings." 

-From Michigan State University, "Undergraduate Research"