Qualitative social research in addictions publishing: Creating an enabling journal environment

Abstract

In 2005, the journal Addiction, one of the highest-ranking addiction journals, published a review of qualitative methods in addictions research (Neale, Allen, & Coombes, 2005). This review noted that Addiction had published only three qualitative research papers in the previous year; around 2% of the research papers it had published in 2004. Accepting that “such marginality prompts uncomfortable questions”, the authors posed the possibility that some addiction journals might “directly or indirectly militate against the publication of qualitative research” (p. 1584). To begin to remedy this situation, the authors emphasised two challenges. First, they argued that qualitative researchers “should have confidence in the scientific rigor and value of their methods” and thus, should “not hesitate in writing up their data for any journal that will reach their target audience”. And second, they called upon addiction journals to “adopt policies and practices that will potentially encourage more qualitative submissions” (p. 1591). Of course, the extent to which qualitative research is published in any particular journal is shaped by a variety of factors, including: the rate at which such papers are submitted; the scientific quality of submissions; the amount of research funding available to qualitative researchers; the scientific capital and impact accorded such work in any given addiction research culture; as well as how journal policy and disciplinary leanings shape reviewing and editorial decisions. Interested to see how a selection of addiction journals compared, and taking a single year (2009), we estimated the proportion of published original research papers that employed qualitative methods (Table 1). We selected the top eight ranked journals in the ‘social science’ category of the Thomson ISI impact factor (IF) ratings, supplemented by journals of relative high impact in the field of drug use or known to attract social research submissions. Accepting the limits of such a snapshot exercise, what we found overall is probably of little surprise: Qualitative research – at 7% (100/1338) of papers published – is a minority output of addiction journal publication. The proportion would have been even lower if we had sampled addiction journals outside the ‘social science’ category. Table 1 Qualitative research in addiction journals, 2009. We also found that some journals publish more qualitative work than others. The addiction journal publishing the highest proportion of qualitative research papers – at 57% in 2009 – is the International Journal of Drug Policy (Table 1), followed by Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy (36%) and the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs (34%). The addiction journals contributing least – at 1% or less – to qualitative research are Psychology of Addictive Behaviours, Addictive Behaviors, Addiction, and Drug and Alcohol Dependence. With the exception of the International Journal of Drug Policy, which has an IF of 2.5, the proportion of qualitative research published in any given journal is roughly inversely proportional to that journal’s IF. With the exception of one, all journals with an IF of over 2 published 3% or less research articles reporting qualitative data.