Published in The Australian, 25 January 2017

Journal rankings are driving “publication anxiety” among academics who feel the pressure to publish mounting as administrators increasingly use the metrics in recruitment and promotion, an international survey of researchers shows.

The surveyed academics also believe journal rankings perversely influence the research agenda as they inhibit innovative and risky research in favour of safe, conformist studies.

The study by La Trobe University researchers Darryl Coulthard and Susan Keller, which is one of the first to provide empirical data on the subject, says that journal rankings “need to be examined as a priority” given they have become so important to academic careers.

“The survey results show that academics feel under enormous pressure to publish,” they say. About 40 per cent of the researchers reported that worry about journal publications is a “constant burden”, according to the findings.

Dr Coulthard and Dr Keller surveyed 275 information systems academics, mainly from Europe (47 per cent), Australasia (24 per cent) and North America (18 per cent).

About 70 per cent of the researchers believed journal rankings were responsible for the increased pressure to publish and 90 per cent said promotion and tenure were largely achieved by publishing in the top journals.

The survey found a “clear fear” that the pressure to publish would prompt academics to increasingly research what they considered most likely to get published rather than what was important.

“Journal ranking systems and the top journals do influence how and what is researched and while this may provide guidance and instruction, it also provides a model of conformity,” they said.

About 60 per cent of the researchers said the top journals mainly published “safe, incremental research” and less than a third agreed they were diverse in the regions and methodologies they published. Only 28 per cent said journal rankings encouraged work on “difficult problems”.

The majority of researchers agreed the system encouraged research that was mainstream (82 per cent) and conforming (75 per cent). Almost a quarter believed journal rankings inhibited work on “important problems” (24 per cent) and emerging issues (23 per cent).

Compounding the issue, most academics felt they had insufficient time to undertake their research. Nearly 70 per cent said a significant amount of their research was conducted in their own time and was unpaid.

Women were more worried about getting enough publications and reported they had the least time to undertake research, while qualitative researchers and those undertaking cross-disciplinary studies were also more affected.

“This isn’t a new issue but we’re arguing that it has become far more intensive, and far more significant, as universities are looking much more at journal rankings when making important decisions such as appointments and promotions,” said Dr Coulthard.

National Tertiary Education Union president Jeannie Rea said her union routinely represented academics who were “unfairly targeted for not being able to reach unrealistic targets” for publications.

“There is little interest from the university management perspective to find more nuanced approaches,” Ms Rea said of the reliance on journal rankings to benchmark research productivity.

“They seem to be focused on increased output at the expense of sustaining research quality or staff welfare.”

The pressure to publish was felt by all academics but affected early career researchers and those on fixed-term contracts in particular, Ms Rea said.