Authors’ perspectives on academic publishing: initial observations from a large-scale global survey

Abstract

Authors are at the heart of academic publishing, but their voices are underrepresented in discussions about improving the academic publishing system. To understand the viewpoints of authors on various aspects of academic publishing and the challenges they face, we developed a large-scale survey entitled "Author perspectives on the academic publishing process" and made it available in December 2016. The survey has received 8,795 responses; this paper is based on the interim results drawn from 5,293 survey responses, and presents some interesting and thought-provoking trends that were observed in the authors' responses, such as their interpretation of plagiarism and decisive factors in journal selection, as well as their thoughts on what needs to change in the publishing system for it to be more author-friendly. Some of the most important findings of the survey were: (1) the majority of the authors found manuscript preparation to be the most challenging task in the publication process, (2) the impact factor of a journal was reported to be the most important consideration for journal selection, (3) most authors found journal guidelines to be incomplete, (4) major gaps existed in author-journal communication, and (5) although awareness of ethics was high, awareness of good publication practice standards was low. Moreover, more than half of the participants indicated that among areas for improvement in the publishing system, they would like to see changes in the time it takes to publish a paper, the peer review process, and the fairness and objectivity of the publication process. These findings indicate the necessity of making the journal publication process more author-centered and smoothing the way for authors to get published.

Impact of a new institutional medical journal on professional identity development and academic cultural change: A qualitative study

“…Participants reported the greater likelihood of being published and support of smaller, singleinstitution studies as factors as well. This differs from a broad survey conducted by Souza (Editage Insights, 2018;Souza et al, 2018) that reported the impact factor of a journal to be the most prominent consideration for journal selection.…”

“…guidelines and standards (Solomon, 2014;Souza et al, 2018). Additional publication-related surveys have addressed attitudes toward open access, difficulty with manuscript preparation, and a more global assessment of the peer review and publication process itself (Editage Insights, 2018).…”

“…Several extensive author satisfaction surveys have been published. In addition to ease of the overall manuscript process, these surveys have focused on authors' considerations for journal selection, understanding of publication ethics, and awareness of guidelines and standards (Solomon, 2014; Souza et al, 2018). Additional publication‐related surveys have addressed attitudes toward open access, difficulty with manuscript preparation, and a more global assessment of the peer review and publication process itself (Editage Insights, 2018).…”

Evaluación de resultados de una encuesta de satisfacción del proceso editorial, Revista Médica Hondureña, 2016-2020

“…Por el contrario, en el estudio de D´ Souza y colaboradores indicaron que existe una necesidad de hacer el proceso de publicación más amigable, para evitar la brecha entre la comunicación entre el autor y la revista. 19 En este sentido es fundamental que la RMH mantenga y fortalezca la asesoría personalizada con los autores. La necesidad de asesoría personalizada se hizo evidente en un alto porcentaje del grupo, tanto de autores como revisores y como refiere la investigación realizada por la revista "Investigación en Educación Médica" PROCESO EDITORIAL REVISTA MÉDICA HONDUREÑA DOI: https://doi.org/10.5377/rmh.v89i2.13020 editada por la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México en un grupo de revisores para conocer sus percepciones y experiencias en torno al proceso de revisión por pares, todos los participantes refirieron no haber recibido entrenamiento o capacitación específica para revisar artículos y, si bien la experiencia profesional es lo que expresaron como principal estrategia para la evaluación.…”

Forty-four years of ScienceAsia: from a domestic journal to an international journal

“…The other consideration is how fast the manuscript can be published. A survey was carried out in India to determine what authors thought about the academic publishing system and what would be the decisive factors in selecting a journal 6 . The survey results revealed that both impact factor and timeliness of the publication are among the first two aspects which influence the decision of selecting a journal.…”