Source: Reuters

Uncertain payload: heavyweight titles aren¡¯t always best option, economists hear

With research excellence very much at the forefront of their minds, scholars could be forgiven for focusing on getting their work published in high-impact journals.

In a recent article, however, Daniel Rigby, professor of environmental economics at the University of Manchester, advises economics scholars to think twice before publishing in journals with high average citation counts.

, published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, found that there was no relationship between journals¡¯ impact factors and the perceived career payoffs from publishing in them. Professor Rigby and his co-authors also found that academics do not believe that publishing their papers in journals that have a large social impact outside academia will best advance their career, even though ¡°impact¡± was a key assessment criterion in the 2014 research excellence framework.

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The findings ¨C following research carried out with more than 900 environmental and agricultural economics academics ¨C suggest that ¡°there¡¯s a bit of a disconnect between advancing your career as opposed to having that broader impact in society¡±, Professor Rigby said. ¡°We did some [further] analysis where we split the big sample into different groups¡­but we still don¡¯t find a correlation between that broader [social] impact and career progression in any of the segments. There¡¯s not even a niche or group of researchers who seem to think that is the case.¡±

Even when his team examined UK results in isolation, no correlation between social impact and career advancement was identified.

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Given the clear importance of impact factors in applied science research, Professor Rigby suggested that the results could signal trouble for the future of interdisciplinary research and a retreat of academics back into subject silos.

¡°It could make it harder for the interdisciplinary collaborations that are required to address some of the big social and environmental problems of the day,¡± he said. ¡°You have people who are meant to be collaborating across disciplines who are going to be pulled in different directions in terms of where they want to publish: where for one group [journal] impact factors count and for the other it¡¯s just not how things are.¡±

He suggested that his findings could prompt scholars to take a more informed and discerning view of which journals will best serve their work and their careers, and not simply home in on high-impact publications.

¡°Given that this is the largest survey in this research area, people will, if they look at the lists [of journals identified by respondents as best for career progression], think¡­that¡¯s where I should target,¡± he said.

Professor Rigby did note, nonetheless, that the results were based on ¡°perceptions¡± and as such threw up some eyebrow-raising data.

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¡°When we do the segmentation into the six different groups [of academics], you¡¯ve got certain journals that are repeatedly appearing in the top three. But then you have frankly weird stuff, where for one group Science is top [and for] another group it¡¯s bottom for career progression.

¡°So there are certain segments ¨C with similar demographics ¨C that are either misperceiving what the career signals are or actually there is just quite a lot of variety out there in terms of how particular journals are perceived in subcultures.¡±

john.elmes@tesglobal.com