As clinical faculty at NECO, your scholarship bridges the gap between theory, research, and patient care. Choosing the right venue for your work is crucial for building your academic profile, achieving promotion, and advancing the profession.
Fortunately, you have many high quality, peer-reviewed options!
Please note that the following journal suggestions are not meant to be comprehensive, but rather as a starting point. Reach out to us at [email protected] to talk about additional options, or discuss the best choices for your research with an experienced colleague in your subspecialty.
Publishing Case Reports
For newer and/or clinical faculty, writing case reports is a highly achievable way to start publishing. They highlight unique clinical presentations, novel diagnostic approaches, or unexpected treatment outcomes.
Here are some great options for publishing a case report:
- Optometric Education - If your case report includes a strong educational component or discusses clinical teaching methodologies, this is an ideal fit.
- Clinical Insights in Eyecare - The American Academy of Optometry’s journal for case reports.
- Journal of Optometry (Spain) - The official publication of the Spanish Council of Optometry (published in English). Very welcoming to clinical case reports and reviews.
- BMJ Case Reports - A massive, peer-reviewed database of medical cases. Excellent for interdisciplinary visibility.
Alternatively, you can choose to submit your case report to a subspecialty journal.
Publishing Literature Reviews or Clinical Studies
There are a few good options for clinicians who want to publish a literature review or clinical study in a general vision science journal:
- Clinical and Experimental Optometry - A solid choice for both clinical-focused reviews and clinical studies.
- Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics - Spans both basic and applied vision science research.
- Optometry and Vision Science - As the official journal of the American Academy of Optometry, this is a natural choice for publishing a lit review or study.
- Eye - A top-tier journal published by the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (UK).
Alternatively, you can choose to submit your literature review or study to a subspecialty journal.
Things to Keep in Mind
Red-Flag Practices
The number of scam “journals” continues to grow, so be sure to protect your reputation by only publishing in reputable, well-known journals. Learn more via our Avoid Predatory Publishing guide.
Open Access vs. Subscription: Does it Matter? And what’s an APC?
Generally speaking, there is nothing that makes a paywalled/subscription journal “better” than an open access (i.e. no subscription required) journal, but you need to do your homework if you decide to publish in an open access journal. These often have an article processing charge, or APC. Charging an APC is not a bad thing - it helps a journal remain open access and subscription free - but a high APC can be a sign that a journal is predatory.
This guide was prepared by NECO librarians with the assistance of Google Gemini 3, Anthropic Claude 4.5 Sonnet, OpenAI GPT 5 Mini, and Consensus.