3 ms·
In plenty of cases, administration may require academics to publish in journals considered "prestigious". Before a shakeup at my undergrad, that was the case. I
by ajford 6y ago
In plenty of cases, administration may require academics to publish in journals considered "prestigious". Before a shakeup at my undergrad, that was the case. If you published in something the Chair didn't think was of merit, it would reflect negatively on a researcher/professor, and could (unofficially) count against you or set you back in working towards tenure.
I once spoke to someone at a conference on the subject of publishing (maybe some 6 years ago) who told me about a journal coup where a large majority of the editors and staff for a journal quit and started their own journal which was well received in the field and quickly becoming the journal of record. I can't quite remember what field it was, but I think it may have been related to neurology (non-human IIRC, as the individual had just given a presentation on cuttlefish cognition).
- hatmatrix 6y agoTrue - I mentioned the possibility for more funding but promotions is another thing. Part of the problem is that academic research is so specialized that it's often difficult to assess the quality of the research articles themselves - that and the sheer number of academics pumping out papers now - this makes prestige indicators indispensible for other researchers and administrators to make quick judgements about the quality of their researchers and also communicate this percieved quality externally (for university ranking, attract donors, etc.). Anyway, for a close community of researchers on a specific topic, it's possible that they can make such agreement (to start over with another journal) - but in general it would be quite difficult to coordinate such a consensus in a larger community.