While there exists an extensive body of literature on Early Career Researchers (ECRs), there has been a notable lack of focus on the hurdles encountered by ECRs in social sciences at local universities when it comes to academic publishing. This study addresses this gap by conducting in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 15 Chinese university…

Peer review in journals is in crisis, and its current situation and sustainability are increasingly concerning for academics and scientific communities. We identify this crisis as part of an evolutionary step in the continuous development of science, arguing that peer review maintains a central role. We analyse the emergence and historical…

Author-based metrics (ABMs) and journal-based metrics (JBMs), as well as citations, are the dominant currency of intellectual recognition in academia. These metrics and citations continue to be dominated by the Clarivate Analytics Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and are still widely used as a surrogate to determine prestige, scientific credit, and…

Journalism and mass communication faculty in Central Asian countries face increased institution and government pressure to produce research that appears in Scopus-indexed publications. This study interviews faculty members in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to examine how they attempt to meet these publication requirements. The findings suggest a…

Academic culture now places high expectations on researchers to demonstrate research productivity alongside teaching, leadership and knowledge exchange. In two studies of researchers across career stages in UK higher education institutions (HEIs), we examined workplace climate within academic departments as (1) supportive of researchers' needs for…

The paper reports two studies exploring the relationship between scholars' self-reported publication pressure and their self-reported scientific misconduct in research. In Study 1 the participants (N = 423) were scholars representing various disciplines from one big university in Poland. In Study 2 the participants (N = 31) were exclusively…

Grounding our work in shared commitments to community care, our collective of racially minoritized higher education scholars aims to resist the often overly competitive and isolating nature of research teams in graduate education. Our commitments to community care are also in opposition to a hyperfocus on productivity as a measure of success in…

The writing retreat has been positioned as an effective response to the pressure to "publish or perish" in higher education. An academic writing retreat is a professional development event that allows scholars to immerse themselves in writing for publication and to receive on-site support for that writing. In 2012, the Office of Research…

World University Rankings (WUR) are growing in prominence in the eyes of governments and universities around the world. Often this encourages the introduction of state- or institution-wide policies and regulations that put academics and graduate students under performative pressure to publish in international, peer-reviewed journals with a high…

Academics working in higher education institutions often take part in research activities as part of their role and are often under pressure to publish papers and source grant funding. In addition, academics going through the peer review process often experience negative feedback, criticism, and rejection on a regular basis. In this initial,…

The prerequisite for doctoral students in Chinese universities to obtain their degrees was to publish a certain number of papers in designated journals, which is the main pressure on doctoral students in China. This study focused on the publication pressure of doctoral students in pedagogy in China under the policy of breaking the 'five only',…

The aim of this paper is to provide a number of reasoned and evidence-supported arguments and a list of recommendations for reducing the impact of academic rejection. A brief literature review examined the prevalence and negative impacts of academic rejection including its purported purposes, predictors, and consequences. Findings revealed that…

Mental health challenges, notably anxiety, disproportionately affect graduate students, with research indicating a 41% prevalence rate compared to the general population (Evans et al.). Academic writing anxiety (AWA) stands out among these concerns, correlating with lower grades, self-esteem, and self-efficacy (Martinez et al.; Daly and Wilson;…

This study investigates a group of university teachers' beliefs and practice in using English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in China. Drawing on data from reflective frames and follow-up interviews, the findings shed light on the complexity and multiplicity of EMI teachers' beliefs, which directly shape how they engage in EMI teaching in their…

After years of working in academia, publishing articles, and being disheartened, David Waller came up with ten ways to help boost one's research profile. These strategies for academics are divided into two groups: (1) making the right choices; and (2) making the right connections. Waller concludes that it is important to remember that an…