Six venues, scored before you write the cover letter.

Journal selection matrix: fit, speed, audience and realistic acceptance in one sheet

Most submission decisions are made in an afternoon, from memory, under deadline. This sheet takes 90 minutes and replaces the memory with six numbers you can check.

No ghostwriting, ever · Human-led, PhD-signed

The page is the content. The download is the working copy — the sheet with the formulas live, the weights adjustable in row 1, and the six-venue example already filled in as a second tab. It comes as an .xlsx and as a Google Sheets copy (opens in a new tab), because most of you will use the second one. One email covers all six Vault resources.

The weights are yours. The defaults below are 40 / 20 / 20 / 20, and they sit in row 1 of the sheet so you can change them. A researcher with a contract ending in nine months moves weight onto speed; somebody building a tenure case moves it onto audience. Change them once, before you score, and write the reason in the notes cell.

1. Axis 1 · Fitdefault weight 40%

   Not “is this journal in my field”. The question is whether this journal has published a paper that does what yours does.

   Fit: the five anchors, and where you check each one

   Score	Anchor	Where you check it
   5	Three or more papers in the last 24 months share your method and your question type	Journal site, last 8 issues, read titles and abstracts
   4	Papers share your question type, method appears but is not common	Same, plus a site search on your method term
   3	The topic is in scope, no close methodological precedent	Aims and scope, plus the last 8 issues
   2	Adjacent field. You are arguing for scope rather than showing it	Aims and scope only
   1	You cannot name a published paper you would cite as precedent	The absence is the evidence

   The one-line test. Write the sentence: “This is the journal that published [AUTHOR, YEAR], which did [THING] for [OTHER LITERATURE].” If you cannot fill the brackets from memory or from ten minutes of looking, the score is 2 or below.

2. Axis 2 · Speeddefault weight 20%

   Score against your real deadline, not against impatience. A contract ending in nine months and a probation review in four years are different problems.

   Speed: the five anchors, and where you check each one

   Score	Anchor	Where you check it
   5	Median time to first decision published by the journal, and under 6 weeks	Journal’s own metrics page or annual editorial
   4	Published, and 6 to 12 weeks	Same
   3	Not published, but three recent papers show received-to-accepted under 6 months	Received and accepted dates printed on recent articles
   2	Received-to-accepted runs 6 to 12 months on recent papers	Same
   1	Over 12 months, or no dates printed anywhere	The absence is the evidence

   Three is the honest score for most journals. Because most journals publish no decision times. Read the dates off five recent articles and take the middle one.

3. Axis 3 · Audiencedefault weight 20%

   Who has to read this for the paper to do its job. Answer that before you score, in one sentence, and write it in the sheet.

   Audience: the five anchors, and where you check each one

   Score	Anchor	Where you check it
   5	The people who must cite this are on the editorial board or in the last 8 issues	Editorial board list, reference lists of recent issues
   4	Read by that group, not the venue they publish in first	Your own reading of who cites what
   3	Reaches the field broadly, not the specific group	General reputation, indexing
   2	Reaches a related field. Your group would find it by search, not by habit	Indexing coverage
   1	Outside the reading path of anyone who has to act on this	Say so plainly and score it

   Indexing is part of this axis, not a separate one. If your assessment panel counts only indexed venues, an unindexed journal scores 1 on audience regardless of who reads it. Check the index your institution actually uses, then record the coverage.

4. Axis 4 · Realistic acceptancedefault weight 20%

   This is an estimate, and the sheet labels it as one. Nobody can compute your probability of acceptance, and any tool that offers to is selling something.

   Realistic acceptance: the five anchors, and where you check each one

   Score	Anchor	What it rests on
   5	Published acceptance rate above 40%, or your last two submissions there were reviewed	Journal’s published rate, your own record
   4	Published rate 25 to 40%, and your fit score is 4 or 5	Published rate
   3	Rate not published; the journal publishes work at your career stage and scale	Author affiliations and data scale in recent issues
   2	Rate under 15%, or the journal publishes mostly large-team or large-sample work	Published rate, recent issues
   1	Rate under 10% and no precedent for your design	Both

   The correction that makes this axis honest. If fit scores 2, cap realistic acceptance at 2. Fit is the binding constraint on acceptance, and a matrix that lets a poor-fit venue score well on acceptance is telling you what you want to hear.

Row 1 holds the weights. C1 fit, D1 speed, E1 audience, F1 acceptance. The defaults are 0.4, 0.2, 0.2 and 0.2.

The four formulas that do the work

Written for row 3, so you can rebuild the sheet anywhere. This is the whole instrument, published: a formula you cannot see is a black box, and the point of this resource is that the scoring is inspectable.

• The fit cap, in column G:

  =MIN(F3,IF(C3<=2,2,5))

• The weighted score, in column H:

  =C3*$C$1+D3*$D$1+E3*$E$1+G3*$F$1

• Ranking, among survivors only, in column I onward:

  =IF(I3<>"PASS","EXCLUDED",SUMPRODUCT(($I$3:$I$8="PASS")*($H$3:$H$8>H3))+1)

• The weights guard, in anywhere in row 1:

  =IF(SUM($C$1:$F$1)<>1,"WEIGHTS DO NOT SUM TO 1","")

• Why the ranking does not use RANK. RANK scores an excluded venue against the survivors, so a killed candidate with the highest weighted score pushes everything below it down a place. Counting how many passing venues beat you, and adding one, ranks the venues you can actually submit to.
• Why the cap needs its own column. Capping a score inside the cell that holds it makes the formula refer to itself, and the sheet either errors or silently stops capping. Column F holds what you scored, column G holds what the ranking uses, and the difference between the two is visible, which is the point.
• Why column O is not optional. A score with no link beside it is a memory, and the entire point of the sheet is to stop you submitting on a memory.

• Read column B before column H. An empty precedent cell beside a high weighted score means the score came from reputation rather than from evidence.
• Read F against G. Where the capped acceptance is well below the raw one, you scored acceptance on hope and fit on evidence. The gap is the most useful number on the sheet.
• Look at the spread, not the winner. Six venues within 0.4 of each other means the axes are not discriminating and your anchors were scored generously. Rescore fit against the last eight issues, strictly.
• Recheck column K on the day you submit. Index status changes during the weeks a paper sits in review, and the check costs two minutes.
• Check what your top two share. If your first and second choices differ on every axis, you have two different papers in mind, and the cover letter will show it.
• Keep the sheet after you submit. When the rejection arrives, the second choice is already scored, sourced and ranked, and the resubmission takes an afternoon rather than a fortnight.

And self-scored fit is generous roughly as often as authors are hopeful.

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Or start with the free route. A written strategy brief: tell us where you are stuck, and within 3 working days we send a three-step plan, including which service fits, or that none of ours does. No follow-up sequence.

We have no relationships with editors, journals or panels, and we would not tell you that a submission was safe. What we do is read the work against the criteria that will decide it, and rank what we find.

No ghostwriting, ever · Human-led, PhD-signed