Abstract
Using an online survey of academics at 55 randomly selected institutions across the US and Canada, we explore priorities for publishing decisions and their perceived importance within review, promotion, and tenure (RPT). We find that respondents most value journal readership, while they believe their peers most value prestige and related metrics such as impact factor when submitting their work for publication. Respondents indicated that total number of publications, number of publications per year, and journal name recognition were the most valued factors in RPT. Older and tenured respondents (most likely to serve on RPT committees) were less likely to value journal prestige and metrics for publishing, while untenured respondents were more likely to value these factors. These results suggest disconnects between what academics value versus what they think their peers value, and between the importance of journal prestige and metrics for tenured versus untenured faculty in publishing and RPT perceptions.
Highlights
The concept of “publish or perish” has been a dominant credo in academia, especially in highincome Western contexts, for decades, but its effects may be evident as the rate of academic publishing continues to grow rapidly
Prioritization of quantity and journal metrics have led many to question and study the quality of research outputs [9], as retractions of articles, especially in “high impact” or prestigious journals increases [10], and reproducibility of results are in question [11]. Amidst this increasing volume of literature and the potential consequences that come with it, this study aimed to explore the drivers of academic faculty publishing decisions, as they relate to the RPT process
Our results confirm that faculty value the readership of a journal over other citation metrics or perceived prestige, but that such values may be at odds with what they believe to be valuable in the RPT process
Summary
The concept of “publish or perish” has been a dominant credo in academia, especially in highincome Western contexts, for decades, but its effects may be evident as the rate of academic publishing continues to grow rapidly. In 2018, there were more than 33,000 academic peerreviewed English language journals publishing more than three million articles a year [2]. This ever increasing volume of research has led many academics to question how to keep up with this pace of knowledge communication [3]. While these trends pose obvious challenges to those trying to stay abreast of the latest developments in their field, they may be having more subtle consequences for academia writ large, as they touch not just on the practice of research, but on the very nature of academic careers. The increased volume of academic publishing may influence how academics
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