Submitting an Article to a Journal

[Eleatic Guest]

I'd like to make this a place of discussion and advice for those who would like to submit an article to a scholarly journal, but lack experience in doing so.

I'll start with a few questions of my own:
1. When 'submitting down' papers, how long do you wait for a response from the editors until you try your luck with your next fav journal? Can I expect an answer at all or only in the affirmative case?
2. Do you change your paper with every submission to the format and style guide of that journal?
3. Is there some ranking system, objective or pseudo-objective, for journals on the history of navigation and nautical archaeology? I am reading at Itinerario something about being ranked by a Journal Citation Reports.

[Ildar]

3. Is there some ranking system, objective or pseudo-objective, for journals on the history of navigation and nautical archaeology?

You will hardly find such ranking system for any separate area of science. However, I believe, the most authoritative peer-reviewed journals in English are The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and The Mariner's Mirror.

You could try and participate in some nautical conference. Although it may take a couple of years for a proceedings article to get published.

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Also, (as far as I know - I could be wrong) unless the Article is accepted you do not have to change it to their particular format. If it is accepted they'll give you a deadline to do it by and you can't make further changes to the article except to get the formatting to standards.