Author perspectives on the academic publishing process: initial observations from a large-scale global survey

Authors are at the heart of academic publishing, but their voices are underrepresented in discussions about improving the academic publishing system.

To understand the viewpoints of authors on various aspects of academic publishing and the challenges they face, the Editage Insights team developed a large-scale survey entitled “Author perspectives on the academic publishing process” and made it available in December 2016. The survey received 8,795 responses in total.

Based on the interim results drawn from 5,293 survey responses, the paper Authors’ perspectives on academic publishing: initial observations from a large-scale global survey published in Science Editing presents some interesting and thought-provoking trends that were observed in the authors’ responses, such as their interpretation of plagiarism and decisive factors in journal selection, as well as their thoughts on what needs to change in the publishing system for it to be more author-friendly.

Some of the most important findings of the survey are: the majority of the authors found manuscript preparation to be the most challenging task in the publication process, and the impact factor of a journal was reported to be the most important consideration for journal selection. The authors have noted several other critical findings in the paper.

Another fundamental aspect the survey tried to address is what changes authors wish in the publishing system. More than half of the participants indicated the areas for improvement in the current publishing system, indicating the necessity of making the journal publication process more author-centred.

Read the paper to find out the kind of changes authors hope to see in the current system.

This paper, published in Science Editing, has been reprinted with permission.   

Citation: Sci Ed 2018; 5(1): 39-43. https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.116