This common mistake merits its own section: believing that 'interesting' is automatically 'relevant.' Even senior scholars could be caught on this tricky one. To be clear: there's no relevant paper per se. Relevance has to do with the audience you intend to reach, the authors you are debating with, and the specific bibliography that serves as a common ground for the discussion between you and your readers.
First of all, an author is someone who constructs relevance. Relevance doesn't 'come' with the issue analyzed, that is, the specific, exotic, or widespread case discussed in the article. The fact that nothing on the topic has been published does not make it automatically publishable: this gap in the literature may instead indicate that the topic is not particularly relevant. The fact that your work refers to a country that is insufficiently addressed in the literature due to a geopolitical reason does not make the article instantly relevant, either. Similarly, international research with hundreds of cases is not automatically relevant.
In contrast, an article about a life story or a case study could be quite relevant, if the author does his or her homework.
Relevance basically rests on three pillars: A common ground or an encompassing debate that serves as a common language and enables a dialogue between authors and readers.
Referees are your peers: they research the same subject as you and they are reading the same authors you do. Thus, you should use a literature review as your starting point. If you would like to include an unfamiliar reference or an author who has not been translated into English, you need to build a bridge: introducing this author to the audience and relating his or her oeuvre to well-known authors and sociological problems will help you build relevance, and will probably spark an interesting debate within your specific field of research.
The journal's remit.
As discussed above, take into account the geographical and idiomatic scope, but also consider whether the chosen journal is a generalist or specialized, if it has a specific theoretical or methodological bias, whether its editors prefer shorter and descriptive IMRaD papers or if they publish longer, narrative pieces focused on theoretical discussion.
The journal's audience. It is possible to break down audiences into three groups: national, regional, and international audiences. At each level, readers expect a specific discussion and a different contextualization. You will probably need more space to explain and contextualize your data for an international journal than you will for a local one. In contrast, international journals open the possibility of including specific studies into a more encompassing debate.
