Academic Publishing – An Annotated Inventory of Challenges and chosen Pathways

Adriana Zait

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Context and Purpose: The increased focus of higher education institutions on research and – lately – on societal challenges and real-world problems, the importance of academic rankings for financing and international competitions and the research and publication oriented professional advancement criteria transformed academics into publishing hunters. The world of academic publishing is wild and dangerous, due to the massification of research. Aims and objectives are often confounded with means, quantity and quality (already difficult to assess) don’t always walk together, stakeholders have conflicting interests, the old linear models of publishing are replaced with intricate looped and interconnected ones, leading to academics publishing more and achieving less – especially from a societal perspective. The aim of the present study is to summarize the main challenges of the publishing process, together with the pathways chosen by academics to overcome these difficulties. Design/methodology: A meta-analysis of recent studies on academic publishing was performed, together with a nethnographic exploratory approach on publishing patterns in economics and business; informal talks with academics from business and economics fields from several Eastern EU higher education institutions were used, as well. Findings: The inventory of challenges includes individual factors (personality and individual morale, goals, knowledge and status, preferences and habits), institutional factors (university and strategy level), social structures and infrastructural level factors (open access, technological disruptive innovations, new social contract for research, preprints), as well as professional culture type of factors (peer-review issues and various biases, alternative research assessment methods, predatory journals, predatory informal rules). Several pathways chosen by academics were observed, leading to hypotheses formulation for future research. Limitations: The study is exploratory, based on a conventional sample of academics for the empirical part and has an emic, potentially subjective approach. Originality/value: The study touches a delicate and controversial subject – academic publishing – and brings together both positive and negative aspects for existent pathways, offering a ground for future research.

Keywords: higher education research; publishing models; publishing culture; publishing influence factors; academic publishing pathways. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 M12 M14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10-22, Revised 2020-10-25
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