Comfortably Numb? Work and Organizational Psychology Researchers’ Satisfaction with the Publication System and a Proposal for Radical Change

Abstract

<p>In this preregistered study we evaluate current attitudes towards and experiences with publishing research, and propose an alternative system of publishing. Our main hypothesis is that researchers tend to become institutionalized, such that they are generally discontent with the current publication system, but that this dissatisfaction fades over time as they become tenured. A survey was distributed to the first authors of papers published in four recent issues of top-15 Work and Organizational Psychology (WOP) journals. Even among this positively biased sample, we find that the time it takes to publish a manuscript is negatively associated with whether authors perceive this time to be justifiable and worthwhile relative to the amount their manuscript has changed. Review quality and tenure buffer the negative relationship with perceived justifiability, but not for perceived worth. The findings suggest that (WOP) researchers are dissatisfied with the publishing times of academic journals, which adds to the pile of criticisms of the journal-based publication system. Because publishing times are inherent to the journal-based publication system, we suggest that incremental improvements may not sufficiently address the problems associated with publishing times. We therefore recommend the adoption of a recently proposed modular publication system (Hartgerink &amp;amp; van Zelst, 2018) to improve (WOP) publishing experiences.</p>

Enhancing scientific credibility: An open science strategy for the South African Journal of Industrial Psychology

“…Finally, like other high-impact IOP journals, SAJIP should consider experimenting with a modular-based publication system (Hartgerink, 2019;Hartgerink & Van Zelst, 2018;Van Dijk & Van Zelst, 2019). This system advocates the publication of a series of sequential pieces of research outputs (or 'modules') that systematically advances the current knowledge base (Van Dijk & Van Zelst, 2019). These modules could represent the cyclical components of the traditional research cycle (e.g.…”

“…These modules could represent the cyclical components of the traditional research cycle (e.g. the literature review and hypotheses or the methods and results section), or take the form of the publication of a research protocol, followed by draft reports and then the final manuscript (Van Dijk & Van Zelst, 2019).…”