Practices of quality and trustworthiness in scholarly communication: A case from Pakistan

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the practices of Pakistani academic researchers with respect to using, citing, and publishing their scholarly work. The quantitative survey method adopted to collect data from local researchers was based on an instrument developed and used by CIBER. Their notions and practices involved in deciding trust and quality of scholarly journals were obtained. The findings revealed that national and institutional policies have significantly influenced their decisions regarding the publishing outlets. The credibility of indexing services was found to be an important factor in choosing the journal for publishing research. ISI Web of Science Impact Factor was not considered as the top source for determining quality and trustworthiness. This study is the first of its kind that targets the top two universities of the country. A comparison of the findings with another international study shows that some of the behavioural traits are compatible with scholars from less-developed countries like India and China, while others are more similar to the ones from highly developed countries like USA and UK.