What Motivates Authors of Scholarly Articles? The Importance of Journal Attributes and Potential Audience on Publication Choice
Open accessAbstract
In this article we examine what motivations influence academic authors in selecting a journal in which to publish. A survey was sent to approximately 15,000 faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers at four large North American research universities with a response rate of 14.4% (n = 2021). Respondents were asked to rate how eight different journal attributes and five different audiences influence their choice of publication output. Within the sample, the most highly rated attributes are quality and reputation of journal and fit with the scope of the journal; open access is the least important attribute. Researchers at other research-intensive institutions are considered the most important audience, while the general public is the least important. There are significant differences across subject disciplines and position types. Our findings have implications for understanding the adoption of open access publishing models.
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OA journals are particularly attractive to authors pressurized for high publication productivity.
“Thus, OA journals are particularly attractive to authors pressurized for high publication productivity [158-160].”
From Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World (2021) · cites this paper as [160]
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References 26 · Cited by 77
- Authors
- Tenopir, C., Dalton, E., Fish, A., Christian, L., Jones, M., & Smith, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Tennessee at Knoxville (US)
- Indiana University Bloomington (US)
- University of California, Davis (US)
- Corresponding author
- Tenopir, Carol
- Venue
- Publications
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2016-07-18
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 22
- ISSN
- 2304-6775 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2481204400
- Cited by
- 77
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 5
- FWCI
- 22.57
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Publications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Mellon Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Keywords
- scholarly publishing, journal selection, author motivation, journal reputation, open access publishing, research audiences, disciplinary differences, academic researchers, postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, faculty
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