All 3 entries tagged Esteem

New Call for Papers: Becoming a Productive Publishing Scholar

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/announcement/view/53

A new call for papers for the October 2024 issue of Exchanges considers productive authorship.

As you’ve hopefully read in Exchanges’ recent editorial, we have rolled out a new themed call for papers for the regular journal. While we’ve a number of ongoing calls for special issues currently, the Board and me thought it was overdue time to explore a themed section in the journal itself. And what better area to explore than one which we’ve been discussing for the past couple of years in researcher workshops here at Warwick.

• You can read the full text of the call here: Becoming a productive publishing scholar.

However, the short version is: we’re interested in papers exploring the paradigms, praxis or process which academics, at any career stage, encounter when balancing published output against the other demands on their time. Hence, papers on everything from overcoming challenges, through to effective strategic approaches or even ones arguing against the pressure to publish as a measure of academic esteem would be welcome. Critical reflections which examine personal experiences and coping mechanisms would be especially welcome, as these would be very well received by our readership I suspect.

Plus, as an interdisciplinary journal we’re aware that ‘productive publication’ has different meaning and imperatives across the disciplines. That has certainly been a theme we’ve heard about in our workshop discussions from participants. So, as a result, we would be especially interested in papers which either explore publication nuances from within particular disciplines, or those which alternatively offer comparative studies across a range of fields. Likewise, perspectives from early, mid or established career scholars would be equally valid and interesting, as I have no doubt in mind at all that there will be variations and subtleties worthy of exploration.

There’s plenty of time to get involved, or indeed have a chat with myself about potential papers, as the submission deadlines [1] run through to 2024. As always, myself and my editors look forward t reading your submissions! Happy writing.

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Endnotes

[1] There’s a longer deadline for editorially reviewed material like critical reflections, over peer-reviewed pieces.

Gareth Johnson : 01 Nov 2023 08:21 |  Tags: Call Career Esteem Life Output Papers Productive Publishing Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What are the Best Journal Indexing Services for Scholar–Led Journals?

What are the best indexes and article databases for a relatively small scholar led journal to be in? This is the question I’m currently pondering, following a conversation with a prospective author who was surprised we weren’t appearing in more locations. It’s no secret that Exchanges hasn’t traditionally been indexed in many places, more’s the pity. It’s one of the reasons why I wrote the index article in the latest issue was to try and enhance the visibility, and hence esteem, of articles published with us over the years.

Since we added DOIs to articles last year, I’ve been reasonably happy we’ve been working towards making the journal and its contents more discoverable, not to mention more readily and reliably citable. That said, at the back of my mind I’ve been thinking I really need to bite the bullet at some point and start increasing the locations where our articles are currently indexed. Hence, the author who asked some, I’ll be honest rather pointed, questions about why we weren’t indexed more widely brought the matter up my priority list to tackle. However, it’s not something that’s easy to resolve, as there are various challenges around getting indexed, and there are three which I find are especially vexatious.

The Art of Hegemonic Dominance

The first relates to one of my favourite topics: the domination of the academic publishing field by a limited number of commercial actors [1]. In this ‘market place’ [2], there’s a commercial driver for publishers to ensure that their own hegemonic dominance and profitability continues. One way this can be achieved is by denying non-commercial journals entrance into the organs of esteem metrics, e.g. databases like the Web of Science or Scopus. Coincidentally these particular indexes are owned by Clarivate Analytics [3] and Elsevier [4], who between them are responsible for a not-inconsiderable volume of scholarly publication as well.

Here there’s a bit of a futile cycle, where any new journal needs to gain in significance (what I’d call ‘reputational esteem capital’) which it builds through attracting higher quality/impactful papers. Higher esteem papers themselves are drawn to be published in titles which already have the highest esteem capital possible [5]. To increase this ranking a publisher needs to have their articles more readily discovered, and hence exposed through appearance in the most regularly used indexes. However, entrance to most of these big indexes is restricted to those journals who are already ‘significant’ in terms of their content. Hence, there’s no competitive advantage for the corporate owners of journals and indexes to let small scholar-led titles enter their indexes and grow in esteem; indeed there’s every argument this would essentially act as a counter to their continued dominance. It’s the ‘No Homer’s’ Club effect all over again.

Okay, some indecent, smaller scale journals have made their way past these gatekeepers and entered the ‘hallowed’ indexes, partly because of their longevity or contents. Unlike many short-term scholar-led publications [6], Exchanges has the advantage that we’ve been published for some years now, and have a body of work which slowly but surely is gaining citations. Citations are, for the most part, the sine qua non within publishing, the basic element from which esteem capital is constructed. So, to a degree we’re slowly but surely aggregating esteem every time we publish a new volume. However, given our focus on championing early career publications, strategically this means we’re unlikely to (typically) have 4* world-class research published with us. Why? Well, it’s a tragic fact that the current configuration of academic career esteem structures compels scholars to seek publication for their most ‘impactful’ works in titles already resplendent with high-esteem. Which means even if an ECR scholar might be tempted to consider publishing their finest work with us, for the good of their own career that’s normally an unlikely occurrence.

It doesn’t mean Exchanges isn’t publishing good, quality assured pieces of research literature. However, it’s likely papers within our journal will only become significant over time as they become more commonly cited, although where the author themselves becomes far more recognised as preeminent in their field there’s a notable upswing in interest in their earlier works. Given the thousands of downloads of our most popular papers, I might conclude that many of our authors may already be well on their way to achieving this sort of status within the Academy. It’s to our benefit certainly in terms of getting over that ‘significance’ hurdle to enter some indexes, but it’s one that takes a long, long time to achieve.

Disciplinarily and Suitability

The second big challenge is more prosaic and concerns the disciplinary fit of journals to particular indexes. The author who promoted my thinking asked specifically about one index which was valued within their particular field. I went away to have a look at this and discovered it only indexed around 160 titles, all of which were clearly a close disciplinary fit. I suspect, unlike the major commercial indexes, that these indexes which are often run by learned societies and other smaller sectoral bodies, would be far less concerned with our esteem credentials. However, Given Exchanges is explicitly interdisciplinary in terms of our content my strong suspicion is they’d be less happy to incorporate us because we’re not seen as a core, niche title for any discipline [7]. It tends (although not exclusively) to be the bigger, corporate indexes which are multidisciplinary. Hence, frustratingly our core mission to champion and promote research from all disciplinary traditions counts against us and our inclusion here.

Mechanistic Challenges

The third and final challenge is simply one of practicality and limited time resource. There are a LOT of indexes out there. It would, practically speaking, be a full time job to approach all of these and jump through their various hoops to try and garner entrance. Having glanced at a few of them, even finding a page which explains HOW you can propose your journal for consideration is somewhat obfuscated. I suspect, as discussed in the previous paragraphs, many of these indexes would decline to include us for reasons of esteem or disciplinarity.

Consequently, this could mean a whole lot of work for very little progress or achievement. It might seem like a more minor challenge, but given my role as Editor-in-Chief of Exchanges has a myriad of other responsibilities associated with it, I’m not sure how much time I could devote to this quest. As the only employed member of staff for dedicated to Exchanges, it’s not a task I could easily hand off to another member of the Editorial Board. I suspect they’d not be too keen to take it on either, and they do a whole lot of work for me already without a great deal of recompense.

Carry on Indexing

All of which makes me happy that I took the opportunity this week to discuss indexing Exchanges with our Warwick Library Scholarly Communications team. This team provides our back-office and tech support for Exchanges platform, but I’ve increasingly been hoping we can work more closely together on topics of mutual interest. Not simply those for the library and Exchanges, but also for matters of concern for the other journals variously published within the ‘Warwick Journals Family’ [8].

They’ve agreed to help with the practical approaches (hurray) and myself and the Board have been tasked with coming up with a wish list of indexes for them to target on our behalf. Which is what I’ll be drawing together over the next few weeks. Naturally, given the challenges above I’m not expecting overnight success, but I’m hopeful that with a few more indexes tracking our contents that Exchanges can continue to build on its previous successfully published content and increase our esteem in capital. In this way, maybe just maybe, one day we might even get one of the major indexes to take another look at us.

If any of our readers have thoughts, suggestions or advice to share on the subtle art of getting your journal index, as always, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Further Reading

Scholastica, 2017. Scholastica Blog, 21 June. https://blog.scholasticahq.com/post/index-types-for-academic-journal/

Endnotes

[1] Cf. my professional publications and thesis, which modesty prevents me linking to here.

[2] Ideologically I reject the idea of academic publishing being configured or perceived as a market. Sadly this commodification based ideal represents the common argot when one starts considering the competitive aspect the academic domain has acquired.

[3] Owner of (among other concerns) Thompson Reuters media empire

[4] One of the ‘Big Four’ academic publishers and owners of a sizable chunk of scholarly publishing and research management real-estate

[5] I’m talking here of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), created by Garfield as a metric of ‘significance’ for a journal. Not all journals are graced with a JIF, as they need to be ‘significant’ enough to appear in the Journal Citation Reports. Once again, the futile cycle and exclusionary practices of the academic publishing field are maintained.

[6] Many scholar-led journals which arise, often from a particular cohort of scholars and PGR students, which publish one or two issues before disappearing into obscurity once the reality of sustainable publication practices arise. Quality contents sure, but they’re not around long enough to start building esteem over time.

[7] Unproven, but anecdotally from past editors, I’ve heard that we’ve had limited to zero success previously with other indexers.

[8] It’s a side topic, but I think the Warwick Journals Family are a group of people locally who could work together and share experience a far more systematic and regular way. One more of those tasks I’ve got on the back burner at the moment, as I’ve yet to establish the best way to configure a meeting.

Gareth Johnson : 06 Jun 2019 14:00 |  Tags: Authors Databases Esteem Indexing Journals Led Prestige Scholar Value Visibility |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Rebranding Exchanges for a New Era

Names are always important. They clarify purpose, demonstrate intent and provide almost imperceptible social cues for readers. Two names in particular are occupying my thoughts today. The first applies to my dedicated assistant editors, who labour behind the scenes on Exchanges managing the quality assurance and copyediting processes. A fine body of scholars, who I’ve noticed are variously referred to as Exchanges ‘Editorial Team’ or ‘Editorial Board’. The former implies a more operational function. The latter meanwhile, confers a greater professional gravitas while reflecting the value their input and insight provides to Exchanges’ development as a serious, international, interdisciplinary journal of ECR research. This means, I’m schooling myself to use the latter as the default option, which means I’ll be updating all our supporting information in the coming weeks to reflect this shift.

Secondly there’s the name of the journal itself, or more acutely its subtitle. ‘The Warwick Research Journal’. If Exchanges only published research from IAS Fellows, and other Warwick researchers, then perhaps this name might still be suitable. Certainly, when Exchanges launched in 2013, this provided an encapsulation of how the journal operated and sourced its articles. However, today we’re increasingly publishing articles from researchers from a broader geographic region, within the UK but also internationally. This increased internationalisation and diversity of our authors can only be a good thing in terms of building up Exchanges prestige, and in turn, the value of publishing in Exchanges for authors. Consequently, this should also help enhance the diversity, scope and quality of articles submitted to us in the future.

This internationalisation agenda is operating behind the scenes too, as myself and the IAS Director, are looking to recruit more editors from Warwick’s global partner institutions. We already have two excellent Editorial Board members working with us from Monash University, Australia. They’ve made some great contributions to operations, along with encouraging colleagues to consider submitting to or participating in peer review processes for Exchanges. As with all my editors, the journal is enriched by their contributions.

All of which considerations lead me to the conclusion that the ‘Warwick’ part of the journal’s name increasingly doesn’t reflect the title’s full scope and direction, as much as it did in its early days. Hence, to reflect this growth and evolution of the journal, what I’m considering at the moment is shifting its name to something along the lines of “Exchanges: Journal of Interdisciplinary Research” (possibly with or without ‘the’ in front of ‘journal’). As a title I believe it projects a better statement of what the journal is about, and the kinds of articles we’d hope to host and hence our perception by potential authors and readers. It also doesn’t alter the strong brand associated with the core name, ‘Exchanges’.

While for now nothing is set in stone, Exchanges continues to grow and develop. Thus, I’d argue its name needs to do the same, as it moves forward into its next five years of exploration, revelation and discovery.

Gareth Johnson : 09 May 2018 10:21 |  Tags: Esteem Impact Marketing Rebranding |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem