In this study, Meredith T. Niles, Lesley A. Schimanski, Erin C. McKiernan, and Juan Pablo Alperin focus on the gap between what faculty express as their own publishing values and what they assume their colleagues values are. Niles et al. demonstrate that although faculty suggest their own publishing values are community-oriented (e.g. they are concerned with relevant journals, audience reach, and open access), faculty also believe their colleagues to value journal prestige and impact more. This is impactful research; as the authors suggest:

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. However, our work goes further by showing that these same faculty believe that quantity and prestige of publications still dominate RPT decisions and that faculty, especially those who are non-tenured and younger, believe these factors to be the most important, even though the very people serving on RPT committees value these outputs far less. The resulting mismatches are concerning, especially when coupled with the increased volume of research, as it suggests that the factors guiding publication decisions are inconsistent with faculty’s own values. (11)

Such an outcome pushes against the widely-held notion that tenure and promotion depends on “status” publishing. Niles et al. recommend that the disconnect between values and behaviour revealed by their study should be addressed through providing platforms and mechanisms for faculty to live their values, so to speak.

 

Work cited

Niles, Meredith T., Lesley A. Schimanski, Erin C. McKiernan, and Juan Pablo Alperin. 2020. “Why We Publish Where We Do: Faculty Publishing Values and Their Relationship to Review, Promotion and Tenure Expectations.” PLoS ONE 15(3): e0228914. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228914