I can tell you from experience that academia is as cliquey as it gets. Depending on the field even having a good university affiliation may not see you getting through the submission and review process if you don't have one of the clique-members as a co-author. Reviewers will often find a reason to reject your submission (it's all too easy citing 'insufficient validation' or characterising the topic as 'outlandish').
I feel dirty for even saying this but the best way to get your work published in a good journal is to let a member of said clique, typically a professor with a good amount of publications on the topic, piggy-back on your article. Their presence on the author-list will lend credence to your work.
If you choose not to go the above route, and power to you for not playing their game, things get tricky. You can try applying to some well-known conferences and best-case you can get your work presented and published as proceedings (very common in the IEEE world). Depending on the topic you can try and submit to a decent journal with a strong impact-factor but depending on the editor you may not even get to the review process.
Lastly, it's mentioned elsewhere here, do not publish to rando journals that expect a fee. Even if your work is fantastic publishing in one of those will cast doubt on every single one of your words cause they're seen as completely predatory and lacking in credibility.
I feel dirty for even saying this but the best way to get your work published in a good journal is to let a member of said clique, typically a professor with a good amount of publications on the topic, piggy-back on your article. Their presence on the author-list will lend credence to your work.
If you choose not to go the above route, and power to you for not playing their game, things get tricky. You can try applying to some well-known conferences and best-case you can get your work presented and published as proceedings (very common in the IEEE world). Depending on the topic you can try and submit to a decent journal with a strong impact-factor but depending on the editor you may not even get to the review process.
Lastly, it's mentioned elsewhere here, do not publish to rando journals that expect a fee. Even if your work is fantastic publishing in one of those will cast doubt on every single one of your words cause they're seen as completely predatory and lacking in credibility.