In this study, researchers surveyed academic librarians about their open access publishing practices. This analysis explores approaches to journal selection, awareness of open access options, and self-archiving practices. Fifty percent of the librarians in this study considered free open access when selecting a potential journal for publication,…

This article discusses the role of university academics as researchers. In present-day society which touts instant gratification, the primary role of a university is being undermined. In Malaysia, academics no longer teach and research as they please but are 'guided' by government agencies and influenced by the priorities of funding agencies. One…

Academics are under increasing pressure to publish, particularly in peer-reviewed journals. This external pressure is clearly expressed by the "publish or perish" dictum. Studies have shown that academics' engagement in research and their research productivity are influenced by personal as well as environmental factors. Based on an…

With the dissemination of knowledge in higher education, the publish or perish principle has become the norm for academics around the world to remain competitive. The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) phenomenon has thus emerged in academia and been utilized as a benchmark for research excellence and tenure considerations. While research has…

While it has been stressed repeatedly that academics nowadays have come to face extensive pressure, the extent and distribution of pressure to publish and to secure third-party funding has not been systematically investigated on a large scale. Based on the Zurich Survey of Academics, a representative large-scale web survey among academics working…

Objectives: We sought the answer to one major research question--Does psychology have a more defined culture of research than social work? Methods: Using "U.S. News and World Report" 2012 and 2013 rankings, we compared psychology faculty (N = 969) from their 25 top ranked programs with a controlled sample of social work faculty (N = 970)…

This article examines the perceptions of early-career, fixed-term researchers in Finnish universities towards changing careers. It maps out the reasons this group has considered the change and where they see themselves in five years. As a theoretical framework, a synthesisation of variables related to career change, created by Ryan, Healy, and…

There is a dearth of research on the perceptions of faculty members in educational leadership regarding open access publications. This reality may exist because of a lack of funding for educational leadership research, financial obstacles, tenure demands, or reputation concerns. It may be that there are simply fewer established open access…

The pressure to publish or perish or, more recently, to be visible or vanish, marginalises a culture of critical reading and reflection that has historically been the province of book reviews. Today, book reviews are roundly rejected by academic bureaucrats as unimportant, easy to write and hence, easy to get published, mere summaries, uncritical…

The current discourse on research productivity (how much peer-reviewed academic output is published by faculty) is dominated by quantitative research on individual and institutional traits; implicit assumptions are that academic writing is a predominately cognitive activity, and that lack of productivity represents some kind of deficiency.…

The trend towards neo-liberal policies which began in the 1980s has caused public finances around the world to be linked to market forces rather than state allocation. In consequence, the sharp reduction in public funding allotted to the education sector has affected both social values and educational quality. With the growing influence of…

The last 20 years have brought major workload changes for academics globally, with the feeling that an academic in today's global higher education industry has three full-time jobs (research, teaching and service). Following recent Government reforms, the Australian higher education sector has been forced to redefine itself in a more commercial…

In recent times "publish or perish" has become the motto of academia. This paper provides some basic insights into the process of publishing, the view from the perspective of the editor of the journal and gives helpful hints to improve the odds of getting published in the right journal and communicating with the right audience. The need…

This paper outlines the nature of predatory open-access journals. These are journals that do not exist as vehicles to promote research or the efforts of scholarly organizations, but exist simply as a means for profit. As with many efforts in education and the social sciences, when financial incentive is the main driving force, quality and…

We extended the research on autonomy-supportive teaching to universities and examined the relationships between autonomous motivation to teach and autonomy-supportive teaching. Autonomously motivated university instructors were more autonomy-supportive instructors. The freedom to make pedagogical decisions was negatively correlated with external…