Cross-Institutional Investigation of Faculty Publishing in the United States, 2021-2022

The objectives of this study were to ascertain the awareness and attitudes of university faculty in the United States concerning journal publication, and specifically, the phenomenon known as "predatory publishing." The research questions that guided the development of the survey were:How do university faculty determine where to submit journal article manuscripts for publication?Are university faculty aware of the terminology, tools, and strategies related to predatory publishing and assessing the quality of journals?How is a faculty member's awareness or attitudes related to their prior experience in academia?Does a faculty member's knowledge of predatory journals affect which publishers they publish with and how they view the work of other scholars?This study was exploratory in nature, and the survey instrument developed for this purpose was not formally validated. The investigators designed the survey through a pilot study and consequently refined and expanded it to investigate a broader population. The resulting survey consists of 47 closed- and open-ended items with 136 total variables. The questions are organized into five sections: demographics, environment/department culture, history/experience, journal criteria, and predatory publishing.<br><br>The dataset resulting from this study consists of 1167 cases and 152 variables. The target population was faculty of any discipline who worked at a university in the United States and who were required to conduct and publish research as part of their position. The survey was sent to approximately 19,400 faculty at 17 doctoral-granting universities between September 2021 and May 2022.