Your advisor is certainly the most appropriate specialist to advise you in this respect. She/he knows the important conferences and journals in your special subject field. Some indication of the quality of a journal is the impact factor. An impact factor is a measure of the importance of scientific journals. It is calculated each year by the Global Institute for Scientific Information (GISI) for those journals which it tracks. Impact factors have a huge, but controversial, influence on the way published scientific research is perceived and evaluated (Wikipedia)
The factors are published annually in the Journal Citation Reports based on the analysis of the Web of Science data. However, the impact factor should not be considered as the most important reason for your choice.
Authorship
In the course of your scientific career you will publish a number of articles, in journals and conference proceedings. Many bibliographical databases and research tools keep track of your research output and your scholarly collaboration network. The number of citations to your publications will probably be considered as one of the indications of the quality of your work. Therefore, it is important that all your publications can be attributed correctly to you.
Avoid confusion by always using the same first name(s) and/or initial(s).
For example: if your name is J(ohannes) S. Jansen, using Hans Jansen in some of your articles will cause confusion. Please note that universities usually insist that all your official first names must be listed on your thesis.
You can find out whether such a confusion has already occurred. Databases usually assign a unique ID number to each author. You can check to see if different IDs have been assigned to you and if necessary you may contact the database to correct it.
Serials Crisis
In the past decades libraries have been confronted with a price explosion which forced them to cancel subscriptions. Several investigations and computations have established that journals published by many commercial publishers are relatively high priced compared to those published by non-commercial publishers. There is a lot of information on the subject, more commonly known as the 'serials crisis'. To give you an idea of the prices of some of the expensive journals we compiled a list [temporary unavailable]. This list is not accessible if you are reading from outside the CWI domain.
In response to this development it is strongly advised that you try to submit your papers to the moderately priced or non-commercial journals which can also be of excellent quality. Non-commercial journals are usually published by (learned) societies as well as other non-commercial institutions. On the homepage of Ulf Rehmann (University of Bielefeld) more information is available.
It is also important that you should try to keep the copyright of the papers or at least adjust the conditions as to allow self archiving. Self archiving is to deposit a digital document in a publicly accessible website. It can also be your personal homepage.
There is more information on the subject on SparcOpen.org, including a template for an Author's addendum, which can be attached to the publisher's copyright form. Please read a useful article on the subject: Do mathematicians get the author rights they want? door Kristine Fowler.
Open Access
Open Access aims to promote publishing models that ensure free and unrestricted access to scholarly and research journals. In the past years quite a number of open access journals have been launched which are listed in a directory; computer science journals are listed in the Technology and Engineering group. One of the implementations of the open access principle is the concept of institutional repositories.
Some open access journals are completely free in every respect. There is no publication fee and access is free as well. Other open access journals require a fee to be paid by authors or funding bodies. Access to the articles are free. Examples are: PLOS journals.
Currently most publishers offer the open access option if authors are prepared to pay a fee. They are known under different names, e.g. Cambridge Open Option, Oxford Open, Springer Open Choice or Taylor & Francis iOpenAccess.
In August 2008 the European Commission launched an open access pilot in FP7. As of February 2010 NWO has established an Open Access fund. Articles published Open Access as part of current and recently completed NWO funded projects can request reimbursement of the author fees or publication charges. Dutch universities and NWO have signed an open access agreement for a trial with Springer S+BM. Its aim is to see how it works and to let authors experience the open access publication principle. If you or one of your co-authors have an appointment at one of the Dutch universities you may publish your article in one of the regular Springer owned journals under the 'open choice' program free of charge. Further information is available on the library's website.
Especially when you have become a well-known scientist, you can afford to be critical and selective in deciding to which journals you will submit your articles or where to serve on the editorial board.
