The misalignment of incentives in academic publishing and implications for journal reform.
Jennifer S Trueblood, David B Allison, Sarahanne M Field, Ayelet Fishbach, Stefan D M Gaillard, Gerd Gigerenzer, William R Holmes, Stephan Lewandowsky, Dora Matzke, Mary C Murphy, Sebastian Musslick, Vencislav Popov, Adina L Roskies, Judith Ter Schure, Andrei R Teodorescu
Author Information
Jennifer S Trueblood: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. ORCID
David B Allison: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. ORCID
Sarahanne M Field: Department of Pedagogy, University of Groningen, Groningen 9712 TJ, The Netherlands. ORCID
Ayelet Fishbach: The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Chicago, IL 60637. ORCID
Stefan D M Gaillard: Institute for Science in Society, Radboud University, Nijmegen 6525 HJ, The Netherlands. ORCID
Gerd Gigerenzer: Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin 14195, Germany. ORCID
William R Holmes: Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. ORCID
Stephan Lewandowsky: School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TU, United Kingdom. ORCID
Dora Matzke: Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1018WS, The Netherlands. ORCID
Mary C Murphy: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. ORCID
Sebastian Musslick: Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabr��ck, Osnabr��ck 49090, Germany. ORCID
Vencislav Popov: Department of Psychology, University of Z��rich, Z��rich CH-8050, Switzerland. ORCID
Adina L Roskies: Department of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3090. ORCID
Judith Ter Schure: Department of Epidemiology and Data Science, Amsterdam University Medical Centers, Amsterdam 1081 HV, The Netherlands. ORCID
Andrei R Teodorescu: Department of Data and Decision Science, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel. ORCID
For most researchers, academic publishing serves two goals that are often misaligned-knowledge dissemination and establishing scientific credentials. While both goals can encourage research with significant depth and scope, the latter can also pressure scholars to maximize publication metrics. Commercial publishing companies have capitalized on the centrality of publishing to the scientific enterprises of knowledge dissemination and academic recognition to extract large profits from academia by leveraging unpaid services from reviewers, creating financial barriers to research dissemination, and imposing substantial fees for open access. We present a set of perspectives exploring alternative models for communicating and disseminating scientific research. Acknowledging that the success of new publishing models depends on their impact on existing approaches for assigning academic credit that often prioritize prestigious publications and metrics such as citations and impact factors, we also provide various viewpoints on reforming academic evaluation.
