How to Publish in High Impact Journals

January 4, an online structured course entitled “How to Publish in High Impact Journal” was organized to share experiences and strategies to publish in the Q1 journal. This structured course started at 9.00 am and ended at 11.00 am using Cisco WebEx online conferencing platform. This course was organized by the Postgraduate Student Society School of Computing (PGSSSC) and Muhammad Zafran Muhammad Zaly Shah, the president of PGSSSC act as the moderator. This session successfully held with the help of  the PGSS-SC committee, Asraful Syifaa’ Ahmad, Muhammad Luqman MohdShafie, and Muhamad Farhin Harun. This course received 321 online registrations and 143 participants turn up for the event. However, out of 143 only 119 participants registered during the structured course. There are 60.33% Ph.D. students, 9.9% Master degree students, 3.3% Bachelor students and the rest are unidentified. We also received participation from UTM staff. Additionally, 86 % are from UTM and the remainder are non UTM.

The honorable speaker, Associate Professor Dr. Mohd Haizal Jamaluddin is a lecturer at Wireless Communication Centre, School of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. He also holds the portfolio as the principal of Kolej Rahman Putra, UTM. Associate Professor Dr. Haizal obtained both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), in 2003 and 2006 respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree from Université de Rennes 1, France in the field of signal processing and telecommunications in 2009. He has published more than 160 papers in reputed indexed journals and conference proceedings. This structured course starts by stating the reason to publish in IEEE Journals and followed by the strategies of publishing using the 4W+1H (What, When, Where, Why and How) method. The speaker also advises on how to handle the submission and review process and how to write cover letters for IEEE or IEEE Open Access Journal. Furthermore, the speaker also shared some tools and resources related to the title of the course. Associate Professor Dr. Haizal gave some tips on choosing the right journal by ranking the targeted journal. He motivates all students to go for the higher ranked journal first and to move down the rank if the paper is rejected. Apart from that, the speaker advises students to correctly choose to publish either in a journal or conference based on the research phase. For example, literature studies are suitable to be submitted in three reviewed journals while the methods themselves can be submitted to Q1 Journal. The speaker also emphasizes the strategies to write titles and abstract in order to gain the attention of the reviewers and readers.

Moreover, the speaker shares some tips on how to respond to the editor’s decision if being accepted or rejected and also how to respond to the reviewers’ comments. To conclude, in order to publish in high-impact journals, the students must aim high and work hard to achieve it. However, do not forget to enjoy the life given and appreciate others. Established along with the feedback survey, most of the participants concluded that this online structured course has met its aims and the speaker is an expert on this topic. Most of the participants were satisfied with the selection of the speaker and the topic gave a lot of insight to them. However, they also requested to have the same topic to cover social science students too. Nevertheless, the participants appreciate all the efforts by the SPS UTM and PGSS SC as the organizers. Additionally, 119 participants rate this structured course 4 and 5 stars in terms of overall rating. This is a kick start for PGSS SC to organize more structured course like this.