Why do you publish? On the tensions between generating scientific knowledge and publication pressure
| Date | 18 September 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-01-2017-0019 |
| Published date | 18 September 2017 |
| Pages | 529-544 |
| Author | Nora Hangel,Diana Schmidt-Pfister |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
Why do you publish? On the
tensions between generating
scientific knowledge and
publication pressure
Nora Hangel
Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, Indiana
University Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, and
Diana Schmidt-Pfister
Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Integration”,
University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine researchers’motivations to publish by comparing
different career stages (PhD students; temporarily employed postdocs/new professors; scholars with
permanent employment) with regard to epistemic, pragmatic, and personal motives.
Design/methodology/approach –This qualitative analysis is mainly based on semi-structured narrative
interviews with 91 researchers in the humanities, social, and natural sciences, based at six renowned
(anonymous) universities in Germany, the UK, and the USA. These narratives contain answers to the direct
question “why do you publish?”as well as remarks on motivations to publish in relation to other questions
and themes. The interdisciplinary interpretation is based on both sociological science studies and philosophy
of science in practice.
Findings –At each career stage, epistemic, pragmatic, and personal motivations to publish are weighed
differently. Confirming earlier studies, the authors find that PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in
temporary positions mainly feel pressured to publish for career-related reasons. However, across status
groups, researchers also want to publish in order to support collective knowledge generation.
Research limitations/implications –The sample of interviewees may be biased toward those interested
in reflecting on their day-to-day work.
Social implications –Continuous and collective reflection is imperative for preventing uncritical
internalization of pragmatic reasons to publish. Creating occasions for reflection is a task not only of
researchers themselves, but also of administrators, funders, and other stakeholders.
Originality/value –Most studies have illuminated how researchers publish while adapting to or growing
into the contemporary publish-or-perish culture. This paper addresses the rarely asked question why
researchers publish at all.
Keywords Motivation, Performance indicators, Publishing, Career stage, Narrative interviews,
Research profession
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Scientificresearch is concerned with the production of knowledge, in order toachieve a better
understanding of the world.Scholarly publications ensure a widedistribution and constructive
exchange of the generated knowledge among researchers. In a different light, publications
emerge as a prominent theme in science studies: in a context of intensifying competition for
measurable successes, publications have become the main currency for passing the respective
evaluation dynamics. However, most studies so far have illuminated how researchers publish
while adapting to or growing into the contemporary publish-or-perish culture. In this paper,
we address the rarely asked question why researchers choose to publish at all. Inquiring into
individual researchers’motives and reasons to publish helps us to better understand current
tensions within the practices of knowledge generation.
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 69 No. 5, 2017
pp. 529-544
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-01-2017-0019
Received 9 January 2017
Revised 18 April 2017
20 June 2017
Accepted 20 June 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
529
Scientific
knowledge and
publication
pressure
Several studies address the facets of altering publishing practices from various
directions. Focusing on the evaluation mechanisms, many scholars show that the prevalence
of publication-related performance indicators, such as journal impact factors or publication
and citation indices, fosters a systemic quest for publishing large quantities of articles of
measurable value (Colwell, 2012; Fochler et al., 2016; Ingwersen and Larsen, 2014).
While quantitative research, such as tracking publication quantity over time
(e.g. Jiménez-Contreras et al., 2003) or categorizing contributorship statements
(Larivière et al., 2016) may underline the scope of changing publication practices, they
reveal little about the underlying motives of individual researchers to publish their work.
In fact, bibliometric and scientometric literature has been calling for further
interdisciplinary, mixed-methods inquiry to learn more about unintended effects
(de Rijcke et al., 2016). Studies at the individual level repeatedly hint at mainly negative
social tendencies, such as questionable behavior in the process of text-generation, including
honorary and ghost authorship (e.g. Wislar et al., 2011) and other forms of exerting or
exploiting authorship (Gollogly and Momen, 2006), or, much earlier in the research process,
in researchers’decisions about collaborative engagement (Melin, 2000; Müller, 2014a).
While finding publication-related norms and practices to be in flux, these literatures tend to
point to negative implications for scientific knowledge production at large.
Sociological and historical science studies have repeatedly revealed an inherently
ambivalent value basis in scientific practice (Latour and Woolgar, 1986; Merton, 1942/1973,
1957; Mitroff, 1974; Shapin, 2008). Hackett (1990, p. 265) elaborates on tensions between
intrinsic and instrumental values in academic science, a conceptual orientation which we
can build on. Interestingly, recent empirical studies show that individual researchers keep
holding high epistemically relevant values as ideals while being increasingly frustrated in
view of actually converse practices (Schmidt-Pfister and Hangel, 2012; Sponholz and
Baitsch, 2005; Wöhrer, 2014b). One might assume that this tension between epistemic and
pragmatic values is felt strongest by junior academics, who are most forced to accumulate
performance-based recognition, best proven by measurable publication output, in order to
survive fierce competition for future jobs. According to recent qualitative research on the
incentive mechanisms in scientific publishing and on implications of evaluative principles
on the epistemic, pragmatic, and personal dimensions of publishing, these tensions are not
limited to certain disciplines and apply to all career stages (Casadevall and Fang, 2012;
Fochler et al., 2016; Müller, 2014a, b; Tijdink et al., 2016).
Much interview-based research has arrived indirectly at the issue of researchers’
motivations to publish in a measurable manner, while analyzing more comprehensive
narratives of researchers on all kinds of professional issues and situations
(Fochler et al., 2016; Müller, 2012, 2014a,b). Our own analysis of equally wide-stretched
interviews in the humanities, social, and natural sciences confirms the stark emphasis of
researchers on publishing in “evaluable”ways in response to all kinds of growing
pressures –even across all career stages. Interestingly, however, if we start from the
opposite angle, namely, by directly asking interviewees why they publish at all, we gain a
more complex picture of co-existing epistemic, pragmatic, and personal motivations.
After a short caesura, most respondents answered “because I want to,”followed by
“because I have to,”or the other way around. The agglomerate of motivations underlines
that researchers across ranks and disciplines still publish in order to strive for rewards
other than directly measurable publication success. While this is true for all career stages,
we find different motivational emphases at each stage.
In the remainder of this paper, we focus on researchers’personal accounts of their
motivations why they publish. After discussing our empirical and conceptual basis, we
relate the similarities and differences in researchers’motivations to publish to their career
stage –as an important cultural frame for their attitudes and actions. We then discuss how
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