Why we publish where we do: Faculty publishing values and their relationship to review, promotion and tenure expectations.

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.

1. Introduction

The concept of “publish or perish” has been a dominant credo in academia, especially in high-income Western contexts, for decades, but its effects may be particularly evident as the rate of academic publishing continues to grow rapidly. Between 2006 and 2016, the number of academic publications increased 56% [1]. In 2018, there were more than 33,000 academic peer-reviewed 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 also 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. Namely, the increased volume of academic publishing may influence how academics perceive academic publishing expectations. Faculty at academic institutions assume that strong research and publication records are necessary in their review, promotion, and tenure (RPT) process [4, 5, 6]. Furthermore, faculty express concerns about the amount and type of publishing expected of them (i.e., that it should be in prestigious journals with high journal impact factors (JIF)) and their capacity to achieve the amount of publications expected by their universities [7]. Indeed, some universities undertake interventions to increase faculty publishing efforts, in part because of the potential financial gains associated with this increased volume [8]. Prioritization of quantity and journal metrics have also 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, particularly as they relate to the RPT process. Using a dataset gathered from faculty of 55 institutions across the US and Canada, we asked:

Do faculty perceive measures of impact, prestige, and volume to influence their decisions on where to publish their academic work?

In what ways do faculty perceive their own publishing decision-making as different from that of their peers?

How do faculty perceive the valuation of their publication outputs and metrics in the RPT process?

What is the relationship between faculty publishing decisions and their perceptions of the RPT process?

2. Methods

2.1 Survey and data collection

To answer these questions, we surveyed faculty from a broad set of universities in the United States and Canada, as part of a larger project on current RPT practices [12, 13]. For this project, we collected RPT documents (e.g., policies, guidelines, presentations) from a representative sample of universities in the United States and Canada, and many of their academic units (e.g., faculty, department, school). The sample of institutions was stratified based on institution type using the 2015 edition of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education [14] and the 2016 edition of the Maclean’s University Rankings [15], which classify institutions into those focused on doctoral (i.e., research-intensive) programs (R-Type), those that predominantly focus on master’s degrees (M-Type), and those focused on undergraduate (i.e., baccalaureate) programs (B-Type). Full details of the sample selection and document collection strategy are available in Alperin et al. [12].

Following this strategy, we were able to obtain documents from 381 academic units of 60 universities (out of a set of 129 universities for which we obtained university-level documents). Using this list of academic units, we searched for a page listing the faculty members of each unit, and selected up to five faculty members from without paying attention to their characteristics. In the end, we were able to identify 1,644 faculty from 334 of the 381 units spanning all 60 institutions (with some units not listing email addresses publicly, and some units not having 5 faculty members listed). We chose to limit the collection of names from the units for which we had guidelines so that, in a forthcoming study, we could study the relationship between the two.

The selected participants were invited to participate in an online survey on September 17th, 2018, with reminders sent on a weekly basis until October 29th, 2018 to any who had not yet responded. A total of 338 people (22%) from 55 different institutions responded to the survey. Of these, 84 (25%) were faculty at Canadian institutions and the remaining 254 (75%) were from the United States; 223 (66%) were from R-Type institutions, 111 (32%) from M-Type institutions, and 4 (1%) from B-Type institutions. Responses were then anonymized, leaving only the institution type and discipline along with the survey responses for analysis, as per the research protocol filed with the Office of Research Ethics at Simon Fraser University (file number: 2018s0264).

2.2 Data analysis and model development

Data were aggregated into Stata 15.0 [16] for analysis. To analyze statistically significant differences between variables, we selected appropriate statistical tests based on the distribution of data including the Kruskal Wallis test, chi square tests, Wilcoxon Rank sum test, and Spearman’s correlations for non-parametric data and one-way analysis of variance and Pearson’s correlations for continuous data.

To understand how multiple factors relate to publication decisions, we constructed ordered logistic regression models across the ten publication factors with multiple key independent variables including demographic factors (age, gender, institution type, tenure status), total number of publications the respondent typically published annually (pubs published), and a sub-set of components perceived to be valued by the respondent in the RPT process that were related to publishing (e.g., rptpubnumbers, rptpre-print, rptopenaccess, rptsociety, rptjournalIF, rptjournalname, rptpubtotal) (Table 1). Models are reported in log-odds statistics, which can be interpreted as coefficients greater than 1 indicating a greater odds of occurrence and coefficients less than 1 indicating a reduced odds of occurrence.

Table 1

Variable questions and scales used in analysis.

Variable Type	Variable	Question	Scale
Demographic	age	How old are you?	1 = Under 18, 2 = 18–24, 3 = 25–34, 4 = 35–44, 5 = 45–54, 6 = 55–64, 7 = 65+
	gender	Which best describes your gender identity?	1 = male, 0 = female
	r-type	Categorized by institution type (not asked of respondents)	1 = R-type, 0 = M-type
	tenure status	Which of the following best describes you?	1 = Tenure-track faculty (tenured), Department Chair, Dean; 0 = Tenure-track faculty (pre-tenure), Research faculty (non-tenure track), Lecturer or primarily teaching position
Publication Rate	pubs published	Which of the following best describes your academic peer-reviewed publication history (e.g., journal articles, monographs, book chapters, conference proceedings?)	1 = No peer-reviewed publications per year; 2 = Less than 1 peer-reviewed publication per year; 3 = 1–2 peer-reviewed publications per years; 4 = 3–5 peer-reviewed publications per years; 5 = More than 6 peer-reviewed publications per year
Publication Importance Factors	How important are the following factors to you/to your colleagues for deciding where you/your colleagues submit your academic work for publication?		1 = Not important, 6 = Very important
	merit pay	Receive direct support (e.g., merit pay or additional funding) for publications in specific journals
	readership	Has a readership that I want to reach
	journal IF	Impact factor of the journal
	society journal	Journal of a society to which I belong
	journal read	Journal/publisher/venue that I regularly read
	journal peers	Journal/publisher/venue that my peers regularly read
	journal cited	How often the journal appears to be cited
	journal prestige	Overall prestige of the journal/publisher/venue
	open access	That the publication makes (or allows me to make) my article freely available to the public
	journal cost	The cost (or lack of cost) to publish
RPT perceptions	To what extent do you believe the following are valued for your performance reviews?		1 = Not valued, 6 = Very valued
	rpt blog	Blog posts or other publication communication outputs
	rpt book chapter	Book chapters
	rpt book	Book publications or monographs
	rpt pub numbers	Number of publications per year
	rpt performance	Performances or artistic outputs
	rpt media	Popular media coverage of my work
	rpt preprint	Pre-prints
	rpt open access	Public availability of the journals (i.e., open access)
	rpt society	Society journal publications
	rpt journal IF	The impact factor of the journals
	rpt journal name	The name recognition of the journals
	rpt pub total	Total number of publications

3. Results

3.1 Survey respondents overview

The largest portion of survey respondents were tenured faculty (63.5%), followed by tenure-track who were not yet tenured, (20.3%), Department chairs (8.8%), Deans (3.8%), research faculty (1.9%), and Lecturers (1.6%). Given that Department chairs and Deans are typically positions held by individuals later in their careers, these two responses were added to the tenured faculty category for further analyses (bringing the total to 76.1%). Similarly, research faculty and lecturers were grouped with not-yet-tenured faculty. The overwhelming majority of respondents reported a PhD as their highest degree (92.9%), while 5.1% reported a professional degree and 2.1% reported a master’s degree. Our sample was nearly perfectly split between men (49.9%) and women (49.3%) with a small portion of respondents (less than 1%) indicating non-binary identity. Due to the very small number of those reporting non-binary gender identity, the data from these participants were necessarily excluded from those statistical analyses/models that differentiated between gender categories.

Just over two thirds of respondents (67.6%) came from R-type institutions, while the remaining 32.4% came from M-type institutions. Four responses were received from B-type institutions, and given this small sample size, they are not considered in our statistical analysis. We classified the respondents’ academic units by discipline using the National Academies Taxonomy [17] and found that 53% came from Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), 21% from Life Sciences (LS), 17% from Physical Sciences and Mathematics (PSM); and the remaining 9% from units that could not be classified into a single area.

The majority of respondents (65.3%) had served on a RPT committee previously, with tenured faculty much more likely to have served on RPT committees (84% compared to 13% non-tenured, p < 0.001). Older faculty were also more likely to have served on RPT committees (p < 0.001).

3.2 Factors affecting publication decisions

Respondents predominantly averaged 1–2 peer-reviewed publications per year (47.4%), followed by 3–5 publications (23.2%), less than one-peer-reviewed publication per year (18.0%), more than six peer-reviewed publications per year (8.7%), and 2.8% of respondents not publishing peer-reviewed publications. Women reported publishing fewer articles than men (p = 0.084) (S2 Table). Respondents at R-type institutions were also more likely to publish than those at M-type institutions (p < 0.001) (S2 Table).

There were clear factors considered important by respondents when evaluating where to publish their academic work (Fig 1). Overall, respondents’ top three most valued factors were: (1) whether the journal had a readership they wanted to reach, (2) the overall prestige of the journal/publisher/venue, and (3) whether it was a journal/publisher/venue that their peers regularly read. Some demographics correlated with variability on these values (S1 and S2 Tables). Non-tenured respondents placed higher importance on the JIF compared to tenured faculty (mean 4.61 compared to 4.18, p = 0.029). The rated importance of the JIF (r = -0.156, p = 0.009), journal citation frequency (r = -0.182, p = 0.002), and journal prestige (r = -0.165, p = 0.005) were negatively correlated with age (i.e., were less important to older respondents) while that of society journals was positively correlated with age (r = 0.124, p = 0.039). Finally, journal cost was a more important factor for women than for men (mean 4.14 compared to 3.16, p = 0.001).

Fig 1

Importance of various factors when respondents consider where to submit their academic work for publication.

Scale ranges from 1 (not important) to 6 (very important). Factors are ordered in their overall rate of importance (percent indicating a 4, 5 or 6).

Compared to their own perceptions of important priorities when publishing, respondents perceived differences in how their peers rate important factors for publishing (Fig 2, Table 2). Considering the mean responses, the top factors respondents thought their peers felt were important included: (1) the overall prestige of the journal/publisher/venue, (2) the JIF, and (3) both the readership they want to reach and the journal/publisher/venue being regularly read by their peers. Overall, we find that there are many statistically significant differences between how people perceive their own publishing priorities versus those of their peers. For example, respondents were more likely to think their peers valued the prestige of the journal/publisher/venue compared to themselves (mean 5.02 others compared to 4.76 self, p = 0.013), as well as to value the JIF compared to themselves (mean 4.77 others compared to 4.29 self, p < 0.001), and how often the journal is cited (mean 4.57 others, 3.87 self, p < 0.001). Conversely, respondents were more likely to perceive they valued the readership compared to their peers (mean 5.02 self compared to 4.60 others, p < 0.001), and that the publication was open access (mean 3.29 self compared to 2.73 others, p< 0.001).

Fig 2

Importance of various factors respondents think their peers consider when submitting their academic work for publication.

Scale ranges from 1 (not important) to 6 (very important). Factors are ordered in their overall rate of importance (percent indicating a 4, 5 or 6).

Table 2

Respondents’ mean ratings of factors affecting publication decisions compared to the mean rating of their perceptions of how their peers would rate the same factors.

Factors are ordered from greatest to least difference between self and peer perceptions. Higher means for a given variable are highlighted for emphasis.

Variable	Self Mean	Peer’s Mean	p value
Receive direct support (e.g., money) for pubs in specific journals	1.94	2.79	<0.001
How often the journal appears to be cited	3.87	4.57	<0.001
That the publication makes my article freely available to the public	3.29	2.73	<0.001
Impact factor of the journal (JIF)	4.29	4.77	<0.001
Has a readership that I/they want to reach	5.02	4.60	<0.001
Journal of a society to which I belong	3.45	3.77	0.023
Overall prestige of the journal/publisher/venue	4.76	5.02	0.013
The cost (or lack of cost) to publish	3.70	3.51	0.241
Journal/publisher/venue that my peers regularly read	4.68	4.60	0.488
Journal/publisher/venue that I regularly read	4.48	4.45	0.790

3.3 Perceptions of performance, review, and tenure

Respondents perceived certain factors were valued in the RPT process more than others. Overall, regardless of demographics, respondents perceived that the total number of publications (mean 5.40), the number of publications per year (mean 5.29), and the name recognition of the journals (mean 4.83) were the most valued factors in their RPT processes (Fig 3).

Fig 3

Perceived value of factors in the RPT process.

Bars show percentage of respondents. Scale ranged from 1 (not valued) to 6 (very valued). Factors are ordered in their overall rate of importance (e.g., percent of respondents indicating a 4, 5 or 6).

Perceived values of particular factors in the RPT process varied according to a number of demographics (S4, S5 and S6 Tables). Correlations between age and such factors suggest that older faculty value blogs (r = 0.160, p = 0.010), book chapters (r = 0.122, p = 0.045), performances (r = 0.317, p < 0.001), and open access journals (r = 0.250, p < 0.001) in the RPT process more than younger faculty. Comparing tenured and non-tenured respondents, books (mean 4.34 compared to 3.74 non-tenured, p = 0.025) and book chapters (mean 3.61 tenured compared to 3.14 non-tenured, p = 0.009) were more valued by those who were tenured. Finally, women valued publications per year more than did men (mean 5.51 for women compared to 5.11 for men, p = 0.001), and also total number of publications (mean 5.60 for women compared to 5.20 for men, p = 0.001). We also found that respondents at R-type institutions, when compared with those at M-type institutions, were more likely to place higher importance on journal name recognition (mean = 4.97 compared to 4.58, p = 0.013) and JIF (mean = 4.81 compared to 4.37, p = 0.014) and less likely to place importance on book chapters (mean = 3.29 compared to 3.86, p = 0.001).

3.4 Publication decision models

To examine the factors related to publication decisions, we ran a series of ordered logit models with the ten publication priorities (as listed in Fig 1) as dependent variables (outcomes) and demographics, publication history, and perceptions of factors that matter in the RPT process as independent variables. The question here was, for each factor that influences publication decisions, what was the relative importance of demographics, publication history, and perception of the RPT process in determining the importance placed on that factor? For instance, if respondents value the JIF when selecting where to disseminate their work, is this best explained by, for example, their age, their gender, their number of prior publications, or their perceived value of the JIF within the context of RPT evaluations? Such models allow us to consider all of these factors simultaneously in seeking to understand the values guiding faculty publishing decisions. All model results are reported in the supplementary materials (S5–S14 Tables), and here we explore the general trends found across the models through a summary table (Fig 4).

Fig 4

Publication decision model outputs.

Dependent variables are in the first column, with independent variables across the top row. Positive symbols indicate a significant greater odds relationship. For example, in model 7 (Journal Citations) below, there is a greater odds relationship with the JIF and pre-prints, which means that respondents who felt JIF and pre-prints are important in the RPT process had greater odds of valuing journal citations in publication decisions. Conversely, negative symbols indicate a reduced odds relationship with the dependent variable. Full model results can be found in S7–S16 Tables.

Across the ten models we find that the factors affecting publication decisions are more likely to correlate with the perception of what is valued in the RPT process than with demographic factors including age, gender, institution type, and tenure status. In fact, demographic factors only have a statistically significant relationship in two of the 10 models. In one of these (model 4), older people have increased odds (b = 1.37, p = 0.019) of valuing society journals in publication decisions and in another (model 10) men have reduced odds (b = 0.40, p = 0.001) of finding cost important for publication decisions (i.e., women are more likely to find cost important in publication decisions). In another model (model 2), it is not demographic characteristics, but faculty behavior (the number of peer-reviewed publications per year) that results in increased odds of faculty valuing journal readership (b = 1.68, p = 0.003).

Conversely, we find that in 9 of the 10 models (all but model 10) at least one aspect of faculty’s perception of the RPT process is correlated with a factor affecting publication decisions. Perceptions of the importance of journal name (i.e., name recognition of the journals) and open access value (e.g., public availability of the journals) in the RPT process are the factors most frequently associated with a publication decision model (3 of the 10 models), followed by perceived importance of pre-prints and JIF in RPT (2 of the 10 models). Overall, these results suggest that faculty perceptions of the RPT process are a greater influence on publication decisions than are university type or other respondent demographics.

4. Discussion

Through our survey of faculty at more than 50 institutions across the US and Canada, we explored factors related to publishing decisions and their relationship to the RPT process. We found that overall, respondents value journal readership, journal/publisher prestige and whether the journal will be read by their peers. At the same time, respondents felt that their peers prioritized factors differently when considering where to publish, namely that their peers put greater emphasis on the journal’s prestige, JIF and journal citations. We found that tenure status and age are important distinguishers in these perspectives, as older and tenured faculty place less emphasis on the JIF, how often the journal appears to be cited, and the overall prestige of the journal/publisher/venue than do their younger and non-tenured colleagues.

When it comes to faculty perceptions of the RPT process, respondents overwhelmingly expressed that they thought publication quantity and prestige were the most important, with total number of publications, number of publications per year, and the name recognition of the journal perceived as most valuable. However, this perception was not held equally between respondents of all ages and career stages, nor by respondents at different institution types. Older and tenured faculty were less likely to place emphasis on these factors than younger and non-tenured faculty, and respondents from M-type institutions were less likely to place importance on the journal’s name recognition or its JIF. When looking at how these perceptions, demographics, and the institutional characteristics affect publication decisions through a series of ordered logit models, we find that it is the RPT perceptions that are more frequently linked to publication decisions versus any institutional or demographic factors.

These results confirm that the RPT process, and faculty’s perceptions of it, have an important role in shaping where faculty publish. These perceptions may in part be driven by the RPT documents themselves; in a recent study, we found that 40% of R-type institutions mentioned the JIF in their RPT documents, and 87% of the institutions mentioning it did so in a way that encouraged JIF consideration in the RPT decision [13]. Similarly, we found journal name recognition and the JIF to be among the most important factors shaping publication decisions, especially by respondents at R-type institutions. Whether RPT documents play a role in shaping these perceptions or not, our findings show that how the RPT process is perceived matters in shaping faculty decisions about where to publish. That being said, understanding the values that drive publication decisions is complicated by the mismatch between faculty’s own values and how they perceive those of their peers, whom they see as valuing prestige and the JIF more than they do.

Our results confirm previous findings that faculty seem to be often driven by readership and peer exposure to their work when deciding where to publish [18], but simultaneously add depth to discussions about the role that prestigious journal names and citation measures like the JIF have in shaping publication decisions. Most importantly, our work suggests that any shift away from JIF, journal names or citation measures may be challenged not by faculty’s own values, but by the perception they have of their peer’s publication decisions, which we find to be markedly different than their own. Put plainly, our work suggests that faculty are guided by a perception that their peers are more driven by journal prestige, journal metrics (i.e., JIF and journal citations), and money (i.e., merit pay) than they are, while they themselves value readership and open access of a journal more.

The idea that respondents generally perceive themselves in a more favorable light than their peers (e.g., less driven by prestige or money), elicits multiple self-bias concepts prevalent in social psychology, including illusory superiority [19]. That people generally perceive themselves to be “better” is not unique to this particular topic [20, 21]. However, our results do suggest that the guise of fame and prestige in academic publishing may not matter as much as previously thought. As such, subjective norms—how we perceive what others value or think, and the perceived social pressure to act in a certain way [22]—could be critical to enabling understanding of people’s individual preferences compared to their peers. If faculty truly value journal metrics and prestige outcomes less than readership and peers reading their work, but perceive “others” to be the promoters of these concepts, fostering conversations and other activities that allow faculty to make their values known may be critical to addressing the disconnect. Doing so may enable faculty to make publication decisions that are consistent with their own values.

The perception of others’ values is especially important when we consider that the disconnect is also apparent in what faculty perceive is valued in the RPT process. We find that faculty, especially non-tenured faculty, perceive that quantity and prestige are major drivers of the RPT process. Others have found similar outcomes with faculty reporting that publication in high ranking journals [23, 24], or quantity of publications [23] rather than quality of publications [25] are among the most important factors for determining academic career progression. However, our results suggest that these perceptions may be counter to reality, since we also find that older and tenured faculty—those most likely to serve on RPT committees—value these factors less and are significantly more likely to value outputs such as blogs and open access journals, results that are consistent with other findings [18]. Thus, non-tenured faculty may be driven by traditional scholarly incentives, which they believe to be valued in the RPT process, leading to behavioral patterns that are inconsistent with their expressed drivers of publication decisions. More than 60% of early career faculty strongly agreed that they shape their publication decisions to match those perceived as important for RPT [18], a finding consistent with our multiple models that showed RPT perceptions are a significant factor in various publishing decisions (Fig 4). For example, while we find that faculty generally perceive themselves to value open access publications more than their peers, they also perceive this is not highly valued in the RPT process. This potential mismatch between an individual’s values and the perceptions of others’ values, including those doing evaluations in RPT committees, may explain the incongruence between the enthusiasm for open access publishing and faculty’s actual behaviors [18].

Furthermore, respondents ranked components of publishing that have to do with publicly available outputs (e.g., pre-prints, open access, and blogs) as the least important in the RPT process. These perceptions may be in part due to the lack of attention that such public facing documents receive and the extent to which they are promoted (or not) in RPT documents. Alperin et al. [12] found that RPT documents generally lacked focus on public facing outputs such as these. For example, mentions of open access only appeared in the RPT documents of five percent of the 129 institutions they sampled, and the majority of those were cautious or neutral, and not supportive of open access publishing venues. In this context, our results indicate that the lack of emphasis on such outputs may be related to perceptions that they are of less importance in the RPT process.

Lastly, we would be remiss not to highlight that these mismatches in perception have a potentially outsized impact on women in academia. We found that women were significantly more likely than men to publish fewer articles and consider the cost of a journal in their publication decisions, and more likely than men to value the number of publications per year and total number of publications with regard to the RPT process. There are multiple potential factors at play with these results. First, others have also found that women publish less than their male counterparts (e.g. [26, 27]), which have been correlated with research resources that have been historically lower for women in institutions [26]. In science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, men are also invited to submit publications twice as frequently as women [28]. Second, these perceptions may be driven in part by how men and women spend their time in academia, as previous research has found that women are more likely to work additional hours devoted to teaching and may produce fewer research papers [29, 30]. Relatedly, men are more likely to rate research as important to their career advancement than are women, suggesting that women may be turning away from research in their careers [31] even though they perceive that research is valued in the RPT process. However, it is also possible that women are more cost sensitive and value the number of publications because in some cases, women submit fewer grants [32, 33] and also receive fewer grants [34]. Since grants provide funding for publications, and often include number of publications as a criteria of evaluation, this may explain some of our findings.

We also want to highlight that there are several limitations to the scope and interpretation of this work. First, we acknowledge that the geographic focus area in North America, and especially Canada and the U.S. means that this work may not be representative of other regions, especially non-English speaking or Western regions. As well, given that the survey utilizes self-reported information, we acknowledge that these are perceptions, which may not reflect actual behaviors. Future research could better connect individual responses to such questions with actual publication records to better verify the links between self-reported behaviors and actual publication decisions.

5. Conclusion

As the pace of academic publishing continues to grow, so do the concerns about a focus on quantity over quality by individual faculty and by universities as a whole, through 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. 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.

Our earlier analysis similarly found that values related to various concepts of ‘publicness’ were significantly present in RPT documents, signaling an institutionalized valuation of publicly oriented activities beyond academic publishing, but that faculty may not feel they will be rewarded if they pursue them, as the documents simultaneously presented clear guidelines to publish traditional research outputs and to use citation metrics to assess them [12, 13]. The results presented here confirm that faculty perceive these publicly oriented outputs (e.g., blogs, pre-prints, and open access) as being far less important in the RPT process than other traditional research metrics and outputs. All this to say, it appears there is a continued need to hold conversations in academia about the nature of academic publishing and how publishing decisions are perceived in the RPT process.

These conversations should consider that, in an environment in which there is a growing number of ways in which faculty can share their work, and in which there is an ever increasing number of works available, many faculty are most interested in choosing academic publishing venues that have a readership of interest and find journal metrics or other factors related to prestige and monetary incentives less important. Importantly, they should also consider that faculty perceive their peers to place more value on journal metrics, prestige, and monetary incentives than themselves, but that, despite these personal motivations, the majority of them believe it is publication quantity and journal prestige and metrics that are the most heavily weighted factors in the RPT process.

These findings can also be brought to bear on the conversations that are already taking place regarding the need for alternative models for research evaluation. Efforts such as HuMetricsHSS (Humane Metrics in the Humanities and Social Sciences) and DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment) have recognized a need to change the values underlying the evaluation of academic outputs. Our results indicate that the value of such visible efforts and public discussions about how to evaluate research may be in helping faculty realize that their peers share their values, rather than in changing the values themselves. We suggest that future research could explicitly evaluate how such alternative approaches are utilized by faculty, and whether they are serving to change what faculty perceive will be valued in the RPT process.

Mean responses, standard error (SE) and p values for publishing decisions and productivity by tenure status.

ANOVA were used for statistical significance tests.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Mean responses, standard error (SE) and p values for publishing decisions and productivity by gender and institution type.

ANOVA were used for statistical significance tests for all variables except for “pubs published”, which is a categorical variable where chi2 tests were used.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Spearman’s correlations and p values for publishing decisions and productivity by age.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Spearman’s correlations and p values for perception of the RPT process by age.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Mean responses and p values for perception of the RPT process by tenure status.

ANOVA were used for statistical significance tests.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Mean responses and p values for perception of the RPT process by gender and institution type.

ANOVA were used for statistical significance tests.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Ordered logistic model predicting merit pay as a factor in publishing decisions (Model 1).

Total n = 154.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Ordered logistic model predicting readership respondents want to reach as a factor in publishing decisions (Model 2).

Total n = 203.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Ordered logistic model predicting journal impact factor as a factor in publishing decisions (Model 3).

Total n = 203.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Ordered logistic model predicting society journals as a factor in publishing decisions (Model 4).

Total n = 204.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Ordered logistic model predicting journal/venue/publisher they regularly read as a factor in publishing decisions (Model 5).

Total n = 205.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Ordered logistic model predicting journal/venue/publisher their peers regularly read as a factor in publishing decisions (Model 6).

Total n = 203.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Ordered logistic model predicting how often a journal is cited as a factor in publishing decisions (Model 7).

Total n = 203.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Ordered logistic model predicting overall prestige of the journal/venue/publisher as a factor in publishing decisions (Model 8).

Total n = 205.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Ordered logistic model predicting public availability of the publication (i.e. open access) as a factor in publishing decisions (Model 9).

Total n = 202.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

Ordered logistic model predicting journal cost to publish as a factor in publishing decisions (Model 10).

Total n = 192.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.

7 Oct 2019

PONE-D-19-21675

Why we publish where we do: Faculty publishing values and their relationship to review, promotion and tenure expectations

PLOS ONE

Dear Alperin,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

One expert in the field has commented on your paper and, although their valuation of the paper is positive, it is true that several issues contained in the current version of the paper (and queriers raised from its review) need revision and response from you. You will find many comments -all of them should be responded in detail- that are appended below.

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Nov 15 2019 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter.

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). This letter should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.

A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.

An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Manuscript'.

Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Sergio A. Useche, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

1. Please do not include funding sources in the Acknowledgments or anywhere else in the manuscript file. Funding information should only be entered in the financial disclosure section of the submission system. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-acknowledgments

2. If materials, methods, and protocols are well established, authors may cite articles where those protocols are described in detail, but the submission should include sufficient information to be understood independent of these references (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-materials-and-methods). In this case, please provide additional information about your sampling method (from https://elifesciences.org/articles/42254) in this submission's methods section in order to enable reproducibility and replicability.

3. Thank you for including your competing interests statement; "MTN is a member of the board

of directors of The Public Library of Science (PLOS). This role has in no way influenced the outcome or development of this work or the peer-review process."

Please confirm that this does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to  PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests).  If there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared.

Please include your updated Competing Interests statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

Please know it is PLOS ONE policy for corresponding authors to declare, on behalf of all authors, all potential competing interests for the purposes of transparency. PLOS defines a competing interest as anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to one of the journals. Competing interests can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests

4. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: No

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: No

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This article provides interesting data on faculty perceptions of publishing. This is a valuable and timely area of study. However, the paper would need to undergo significant revisions in order to meet the PLOS ONE publishing criteria (namely: (3) Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail; and (4) Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data.) I describe these concerns as well as other comments on improving the manuscript below.

The introduction assumes a North American context for academe, without explicitly framing it as such. It specifically references the growth of English-language journals and describes scenarios that apply predominately to North American universities. By taking for granted this context, it frames North American as the normative context for academic structure. I would strongly encourage the authors to reframe the introduction to acknowledge this context explicitly, rather than implicitly.

The last three research questions acknowledge that this is perception-based. The first question should also acknowledge that these are self-reported factors; the actual influence of these issues is difficult to measure post-hoc and via self-report. The authors should include a limitation section that acknowledges that what authors report as their rationale for choosing a publication may be an idealized version of reality. This may be another explanation for the “mismatch” observed.

What exactly is meant by “pseudo-randomly”? Why manual selection rather than the assignment of a number to each faculty member and the use of a random number generator? This description of the sampling procedure reduces confidence.

Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, it is unclear why the sampling used the sample frame of institutions derived from the previous study (Alperin et al., 2019). Given that no analysis was done linking responses with policies, there is no justification for this sample, which may not have been the most appropriate frame for the research questions posed. More justification for this choice is necessary.

The authors need to use caution in the interpretation and reporting of Likert-type questions. Means should not be used for not ratio data. For example, the authors examine the number of publications per year, in binned categories. They then conclude that women publish fewer articles than men—citing that their mean is 3.05 compared to 3.28, where a score of 3 indicates 1-2 publications and 4 indicates 3-5 publications. The authors should only use modal amounts and categorical analyses such as Chi-squared for these data.

In Table 2, it is essential to note that two things are skewing this: the first is that one-third of the respondents are not from research-intensive universities, yet they may consider peers to be at all universities. Therefore, it may not be necessarily incorrect that things like funding and JIF have higher importance to their peers. (As a small note of concern, the authors round 32.4% up to 33% in the description of the respondents; this is non-standard and should be fixed.) Furthermore, the majority of respondents are past-tenure; therefore, it again might be true that these things matter less. This may be less of a gap between perceptions of self and perceptions of others, but rather the fact that the selves and the peers are not equally represented in these data. I do not find convincing the statement that there is a “mismatch between faculty’s own values and how they perceive those of their peers”. The second paragraph of the discussion seems rather to support the interpretation that this is a mismatch of institutional culture and academic status. The entire discussion, however, seems to focus on this disconnect, which does not appear to be substantiated. The logic of the discussion seems highly problematic in that it at once acknowledges a difference in expectations by career stage (which is well-documented) and then suggests that junior faculty are somehow living under a false reality because they have different expectations and values than their tenured peers.

The authors fail to cite the most relevant and contemporary research in the introduction and discussion discussion. For example, in the discussion of gendered differences in the responses, they fail to note the considerable research on funding/resources (e.g., Ginther, Duch), attrition, or the productivity puzzle. The majority of their references are more than a decade old. In fact, they only cite four journal articles other than their own published in the last decade. For another topic, this would be irrelevant; however, given that they are making claims about the state of contemporary research and that more recent articles are available, I would encourage them to conduct an appropriate review of the literature. This will allow them to better motivate the article, to contextualize it in previous knowledge, and to demonstrate the contribution of this work.

Related to this, the authors state that the work builds upon Alperin (2019), but this is not listed in the references. Given that the reader is referred to this for an explanation of the methods, this is a major concern. (The work cannot be evaluated without the information in this reference and it is not available in the manuscript.)

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

25 Nov 2019

Dear Editor and Reviewers,

Thank you and the three reviewers for the helpful feedback on our manuscript “Why we publish where we do: Faculty publishing values and their relationship to review, promotion and tenure expectations”. We are pleased to resubmit our manuscript with the requested revisions. Below you will find the reviewers’ feedback (in gray) interspersed with a description of how we addressed each of the points raised (in black).

As requested over email, please update the competing interests to read as follows: "MTN is a member of the board of directors of The Public Library of Science (PLOS). This role has in no way influenced the outcome or development of this work or the peer-review process, nor does it alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials."

We would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to the reviewers for you’re their thoughtful feedback. We are convinced that we have adequately addressed all of the expressed concerns and that the manuscript has been improved as a result of this process.

Sincerely,

Juan Pablo Alperin

Assistant Professor, Publishing

Associate Director, Public Knowledge Project

Director, Scholarly Communications Lab

Simon Fraser University

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewer.docx

Click here for additional data file.

28 Jan 2020

Why we publish where we do: Faculty publishing values and their relationship to review, promotion and tenure expectations

PONE-D-19-21675R1

Dear Dr. Alperin,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

With kind regards,

Sergio A. Useche, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: Good concept; fairly well designed study; well written and presented...

I do not agree to the statement that females submit less publications because they are more into teaching....It is said that ' One who does no research has nothing to teach '. Also, in most academic institutions, it is now mandatory that teachers should have to have a number of publications to their credit to make themselves eligible for promotion to higher posts.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

10 Feb 2020

PONE-D-19-21675R1

Why we publish where we do: Faculty publishing values and their relationship to review, promotion and tenure expectations

Dear Dr. Alperin:

I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE.

With kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Sergio A. Useche

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE