Does the early career ‘publish or perish’ myth represent an opportunity for the publishing industry?

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-94
Author(s):  
Gareth Dyke
2019 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark H.R. Bussin

Problemification: Some academics joined the profession from private sector late in their career. They are sometimes referred to fondly as practical academics or ‘pracademics’ because they still work in private sector and also act as a visiting professor in academia. I sit on eight boards and chair nearly half of them, and serve on audit committees and HR Remuneration committees. I am an example of a ‘pracademic’, and my induction into academia was one sentence – publish or perish. In the private sector, induction can take up to a week. I had one minute.Implications: The implication is that I had to find out what a peer-reviewed journal was and trip into the fact that some peer-reviewed journals are scams and others A rated. Telling the difference in my initial years took its toll. I continually had to ask colleagues – is this journal real? Eventually I realised the DHET list was a good starting point and I started submitting articles. I got more rejections than acceptances at first, with very little explanation. So I learnt nothing and did not know what to do to improve. I had to waste another thousand reviewer hours of time to learn what the requirement was.Research writing is guided by a personal philosophy, and it is about what types of research issues one is inclined towards. For instance, some people are naturally inclined towards basic research and others towards applied research. Others are more oriented towards theory building and testing types for the purpose of creating knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Some others are pragmatic types or realist types and believe real-world problems do not come neatly packaged and are somewhat untidily in presentation calling for discretion or judgement on what to prioritise for research and how to carry out the research. Some are scientist practitioners (evidence informed researchers) and others are practitioner-scientist (practice-led science).Perhaps this kind of orientation to research is what early career researchers need initially; then, they can worry about reproducibility of research findings down the line after grounding themselves into the research space they perceive to belong to and where they feel invested.Purpose: The purpose of this opinion article is to share my journey and sow some doubt in reply to the opinion piece circulated by Efendic and Van Zyl. Whilst I do agree with everything that is said in their article, I believe that there is additional information that needs to be considered. Context is important. Not all academics that submit articles have been in academia for many years. We need to do more to support budding authors.Recommendations: We need to be much more helpful to budding authors than just publishing a page or two called author submission guidelines. These are mostly cosmetic style guides. If we want a higher quality submission and plenty of them – then I believe we need to educate our budding authors of the requirements. Perhaps we need a detailed guide, similar in content and depth as the article of Efendic and Van Zyl (2019). We could consider a podcast setting out the technical guidelines and statistical requirements. Running courses on article publishing by the reviewers is important because that is from the horse’s mouth. Trust me; it is not just a case of sticking to the style guide. You need to really understand some of the under currents of article publishing, for example, quoting as many authors from that particular journal’s list of articles as possible.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Newell ◽  
Muhammad Jufri Marzuki ◽  
Elaine Worzala ◽  
Alastair Adair ◽  
Martin Hoesli ◽  
...  

PurposeResearch impact has taken on increased importance at both a micro- and macro-level and is a key factor today in shaping the careers of real estate researchers. This has seen a range of research impact metrics become global benchmarks when assessing research impact at the individual academic level and journal level. Whilst recognising the limitations of research impact metrics, this paper uses these research impact metrics to identify the leading research impact researchers in real estate, as well as the leading real estate journals in the real estate impact space. The nexus between research quality and research impact is also articulated. As well as focusing on research quality, strategies are identified for the effective incorporation of research impact into a real estate researcher's agenda to assist their research careers; particularly for Early Career Researchers in real estate.Design/methodology/approachThe research impact profile of over 150 real estate researchers and 22 real estate journals was assessed using Google Scholar and Publish or Perish. Using the research impact metrics of the h-index, total citations and i10, the leading high impact real estate researchers as well as the high impact real estate journals are identified.FindingsBased in these research impact metrics, the leading real estate researchers in impactful real estate research are identified. Whilst being US focused, there is clear evidence of increasing roles by ERES, AsRES and PRRES players. The leading real estate journals in the impact space are identified, including both real estate-specific journals and the broader planning/urban policy journals, as well as being beyond just the standard US real estate journals. Researcher career strategies are also identified to see both research quality and research impact included as balanced elements in a real estate researcher's career strategy.Practical implicationsWith research impact playing an increased role in all real estate researchers' careers, the insights from this paper provide strong empirical evidence for effective strategies to expand the focus on the impact of their real estate research agendas. This sees a balanced strategy around both research quality and research impact as the most effective strategy for real estate researchers to achieve their research career goals.Originality/valueResearch impact has taken on increased importance globally and is an important factor in shaping real estate researchers' careers. Using research impact metrics, this is the first paper to rigorously and empirically identify the leading research impact players and journals in real estate, as well as identifying strategies for the more effective inclusion of impact in real estate researchers' agendas.


2021 ◽  
pp. 000312242110562
Author(s):  
Raphael H. Heiberger ◽  
Sebastian Munoz-Najar Galvez ◽  
Daniel A. McFarland

We investigate how sociology students garner recognition from niche field audiences through specialization. Our dataset comprises over 80,000 sociology-related dissertations completed at U.S. universities, as well as data on graduates’ pursuant publications. We analyze different facets of how students specialize—topic choice, focus, novelty, and consistency. To measure specialization types within a consistent methodological frame, we utilize structural topic modeling. These measures capture specialization strategies used at an early career stage. We connect them to a crucial long-term outcome in academia: becoming an advisor. Event-history models reveal that specific topic choices and novel combinations exhibit a positive influence, whereas focused theses make no substantial difference. In particular, theses related to the cultural turn, methods, or race are tied to academic careers that lead to mentorship. Thematic consistency of students’ publication track also has a strong positive effect on the chances of becoming an advisor. Yet, there are diminishing returns to consistency for highly productive scholars, adding important nuance to the well-known imperative of publish or perish in academic careers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-115
Author(s):  
Amelia C. Arsenault ◽  
Andrew Heffernan ◽  
Michael P. A. Murphy

To be prepared to face the “publish-or-perish” reality of contemporary academia, early career scholars must develop capacity and confidence. While the publication practices of International Relations have received increasing attention in the last 20 years, concern remains around the preparedness of graduate students to participate confidently and competently in the publication process. As three former Editors-in-Chief of a graduate student journal, we suggest that student-run journals can play an important role in professionalization during graduate school. We then reflect on our journal’s context as well as on reforms initiated to improve the policies and practices during our editorial tenure. Bringing our experiences to bear on previous findings in the literature, we outline three key lessons that can help support successful journals at other institutions. First, given the high turnover rate, starting early is key to maintain early enthusiasm and flatten intensity spikes. Second, editors must remain mindful of what we call the ‘workload paradox’—or how the comparatively low workload of some graduate journals can make it harder to manage an editorial team. Finally, we argue that graduate student journals should be understood as places of learning and primarily valued as professionalization and pedagogical spaces.


RELC Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003368822097909
Author(s):  
Marie Alina Yeo ◽  
Willy Ardian Renandya ◽  
Supong Tangkiengsirisin

Employing a conversational form, this article presents the views of three editors from established mainstream journals. They first discuss the rise of predatory publishing, then highlight the dangers of publishing in predatory journals, identifying some “red flags” that authors can look out for to avoid such journals. They then offer hints on how prospective authors can increase their chances of acceptance in mainstream journals and how they can get started in research and publishing. The purpose of this dialogue is to invite a re-envisioning of the current “publish or perish” perspective, which appears to be prevalent in most academic circles. Such negative framing is unhelpful and discouraging, especially to early-career academics who may be unfamiliar with the practices and processes involved. What is needed is a re-envisioning of academic publication from “publish or perish” to “publish and flourish”.


1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.


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