Submitting a paper to an academic peer-reviewed journal, where to start?

Writing your first paper for a peer-reviewed journal can be scary. You are putting your research, its findings and interpretations out to a wider and knowledgeable audience who may criticise any aspect of it. However, once you have made the mental step that you really want your work to be out in the open, and you are about to draft your paper, then you need to decide to which journal you like to submit. This short paper raises some of the issues novice authors would need to consider. We also outline the process of submitting a paper to an academic journal based on the collective experiences of the three authors. All of us have all published widely, acted as reviewers or referees for many different academic journals and are members of editorial boards