WHAT DO AUTHORS CARE ABOUT?

1. WHAT DO AUTHORS CARE ABOUT? What over 50,000 STM Authors Tell Us Each Year

2. Understanding What Authors Say They Want • Anthropology of scholarly behaviour • Recording what they say • Measuring what they do • Principle of triangulation

3. What Do We Know Already? • User behaviour research • Information model for the journal

4. History of User Studies • 1950s and 1960s • Merton, Price and Garfield • 1970s • Garvey and Griffith, NSF Office of Science Communication, Don King, Woolgar and Latour • 1990s • Coles, TULIP, SuperJournal, Tenopir and King

5. Robert Merton • Inventor of the focus group • Merton’s social norms of scientific conduct • Universalism: new work is assessed by universal impersonal criteria • Communality: scientific knowledge should be common property • Disinterestedness: prime concern is the advancement of knowledge • Organized scepticism: knowledge should be continually subjected to critical scrutiny • Reflects stated values rather than actual behaviour: what they do is not what they say. • R Merton Sociology of Science, U Chicago P, 1973

6. William Garvey and Belver Griffith • American Psychological Association research surveys into author and reader behaviour • Early finding about reading • Survey data suggested journals readings low • Actually a mistake, failure to scale results from the sample to the whole scholarly universe • Unfortunately contributed to wide-spread library myth about “low use” of journals • Garvey & Griffith Science Communication Amer. Psychologist26(4).14, 1963

7. Time Scales: After Garvey Part of literature Original material incorporated into texts and references 12+ years Paper reviewed by annual review volume or journal 5+ years Oral Report at National Annual Meeting 18-24 months Paper cited in other articles 6+ years Journal Publication 2-3 years Report to medium-sized restricted audience Work completed 15 months Preliminary Oral Report 6 months Work starts

8. Rhetorical Processes • Publication is not just communication • Articles are written to persuade audiences that • a singular observation made by one observer is generally true for all observers at all times • The research reported is an enactment of the idealised scientific method • Networks of articles collectively construct the paradigm pro tempore for the collective scientific world view in a discipline • A G Gross Rhetoric of Science Harvard UP, 1996

9. Rhetorical Status of Research Information Private Co-workers Invisible college Speciality Discipline Public Create Discuss & revisit Criticism Formal public evaluation Formal confirmation Acceptance & integration OBSERVATION Informal research 1st draft Draft for comment COMMUNICATION Seminar/workshop/conference Draft mss Pre-print Science journalism CRITICAL EVALUATION Peer reviewed paper in a journal Review paper ACCEPTANCE AS FACT reference work prizes Formal monograph textbook history

10. Woolgar and Latour • Anthropological approach to the study of the science system • Steve Woolgar (now at the Oxford Internet Institute) and Bruno Latour spent time as observers in science laboratories studying the behaviour and culture of practising scientists • First example of an ethnographic approach • Woolgar & Latour Laboratory Life, Princeton UP, 1979

11. NSF Funded Studies • Office of Science Communication • Studies on the alternatives to paper and the way the paper system behaves • Main studies conducted by King Research • King, McDonald, Roderer Scientific Journals in the US, Hutchinson, 1981 • Precursor to Tenopir & King’s recent book

12. Methodologies for Studying Behaviour • Study the Users • Authors, Editors, Referees, Readers, Librarians • Opinions and behaviour • Numbers and groupings • Study the Outcomes • Papers, journals, publishers, libraries • Number, growth and organizational structure • Ulrich’s, ISI, websites etc.

13. Opinions and Behaviour • Opinions: traditional market research • Questionnaires and Focus Groups • Research to establish “language” • Open not closed questions • Sample selection • Channel biases • Moderators ideally independent • Behaviour • Move (inferred use of journal issue) • Cite (inferred value) • Download (inferring reading) • Link (inferred importance)

14. Key Research Studies • Opinion-based • Coles 1993 • Elsevier Editorial Strategy Survey 1993-6 • Tenopir & King 1995-2003 • Behaviour • Use: various library shelving studies • Citation analyses: Garfield 1960s… • Download behaviour: 1993-4 TULIP, 1995-6 SuperJournal, 2001/2 Nicholas and City University Studies • Outcomes • De Solla Price, Garfield, and many others

15. Real drivers Coles 1993: Motivation to Publish

16. Coles 1993: Choice of Journal quality speed habit collection

17. Elsevier Research 1999 –2003 How do authors choose a journal to publish in? • They already know the subject coverage of their research paper and its quality and approach • They select the set of most appropriate journals in terms of subject coverage • They match the general quality of their paper (best, good, ok) to a class of journals (top, middling, run-of-the-mill) with the same subject and approach • From that class they select a specific journal based upon experience

18. Elsevier Research 1999 – 2003 • Most Important Factors: • Reputation • Refereeing quality • Refereeing speed • Impact factor • Production speed • Editor/Editorial Board • Physical quality • Publisher services Key Factors: Which Category? Marginal Factors: Which Journal? Journal Hierarchy within a Discipline Impact Factor Reputation Editorial Standard Publication speed Access to Audience International Coverage Self Evaluation A&I Coverage Society Link Track Record Quality/Colour Illustrations Service Elements, e.g. author instructions, quality of proofs, reprints, etc Experience as Referee J J ? A J ? J ? J J B J J ? J J C J

19. Constructing a Journal Information Model • What researchers want as an author • What researchers want as a reader • How does a journal deliver this? • How does the entity responsible for the journal do this? • What are the consequences? Can the model account for or predict publishing behaviour?

20. Information Functions of the Journal • Classical journal functions • Registration • Certification • Dissemination • Archiving

21. What do researchers want as authors? • REGISTRATION: to register a discovery as theirs and made by them on a certain date • to assert ownership and achieve priority: being first • CERTIFICATION: To get their research (and by implication, themselves) quality stamped by publication in a journal of known quality • to establish a reputation, and get reward: being in the best journal • DISSEMINATION: To let their peers know what they have done • to attract recognition and collaboration: being read by all your peers • ARCHIVE: To leave a permanent record of their research • renown, immortality: a secure place in the literature

22. What do researchers want as readers? • Reassurance as to its status and quality • prestige and authority ⇒ CERTIFICATION • Material that is appropriate to their research interest • specialisation and relevance ⇒DISSEMINATION • Tools that allow the material to be located and browsed • browsing and indexing⇒NAVIGATION • Availability of sources over time • persistence and continuity ⇒ARCHIVE

23. Needs READERS constant citation authority specialisation continuity navigation Functions JOURNAL registration certification dissemination archive navigation Behavioural/Functional Model Needs AUTHORS • ownership • reputation • recognition/audience • renown Provided by the publishing entity through • third party authority (rhetorical independence) • brand identity management • long-term management of continuity • technology

24. Nature of content Objective knowledge about external facts in the world Subjective knowledge about internal critical processes Each author has his own critical faculties All authors equally able to make “discoveries” Each author’s “discoveries” can only be his Credit goes to who is “first” Priority and speed of publication paramount Priority and speed unimportant Very strong Very weak Registration function Effect of Nature of Content on the Model humanities sciences

25. The Effect of Subject Area on the Model Subject variation Small to Medium Scale Experimental Theoretical & Large Scale Experimental Peer review as methodological and quality filter Theoretical paper, review re- “does”theorem or proof Small fields where quality of researchers’ work is known to peers HEP Theoretical Physics Maths Most quantitative disciplines Very strong Very weak Certification function

26. Ave co-authorship level 2002 High Energy Physics 4 Effect of Coauthorship Levels on the Model Pre-print or self-archiving culture? Unimportant Registration Certification Traditional journal culture Crucial 1 Level of Co-authorship 100s

27. Author Studies: 2003 Results • Major ongoing study at Elsevier through the Author Feedback Programme • Continuous monitoring of author perceptions via questionnaire survey covering all 1200 primary Elsevier titles (225,000 sent per year, 79,000 returned, 35% response rate) in science, medicine, technology, social science • Authors are asked to rate performance of the Elsevier title they have just published with against their previous journal publishing experience • This allows us to gather comparative data on authors irrespective of where they publish

28. Please indicate whether you agree or disagree with the following statements concerning the above journal. Questionnaires: An Example

29. Respondents: Status and Roles • Almost all authors are tenured/professional researchers • Hardly any are (graduate) students • Almost all authors are engaged in R&D as their main role

30. Respondents: Organization • Majority of authors work in the university sector

31. Respondents: Age Profile • Most authors are between 26 and 65 years old, with 60% between 36 – 55 • Age 26+ represents first post-doctoral job • Outside of US most authors retire from 60 – 65

32. Respondents: Productivity • 74% of authors have published 1.2 – 10 papers/yr • The mode have published about 5/yr

33. Respondents: Refereeing Activity • 83% of authors acted as a referee in the last year • Nearly a third refereed more than 4 papers in this period

34. Respondents: Editorial Board Activity • Majority of authors do not serve as editorial board members

35. Respondents: Priority Ranking 2 1 6 5 7= 7= 4 3 • Quality • Speed • Editor • Services

36. The network maturity scores cover authors' use of Email, WWW, Telnet and FTP.  To simplify the analysis, the usage of these four networks is expressed as a mean percentage.Although FTP and Telnet are included in the maturity scores, the greater weighting is given to WWW and Email usage.  It is reasonable to assume that a frequent user of Email and the WWW, who also uses FTP and Telnet, is likely to be more "comfortable" with IT, than a frequent user of Email and the WWW, who does not use FTP and Telnet. Network MaturityScore usage Email WWW Telnet/FTP High >80% daily daily weekly Middle 70-80% daily daily occasional Low <70% daily weekly never Network Maturity

37. Network Maturity: Rank Order

38. Conclusions • Most authors are professional researchers in a university environment, publishing about 5 papers per year. As authors they are very journal-focused. • Most authors act as referees at least once (a minority several times) a year and are not editorial board members • They choose to publish from a set of journals selected first on specialisation and coverage and then subdivided by quality and utility. The actual journal chosen depends upon personal experience. These choices are intimately connected with brand identity issues of journals NOT publishers • They care passionately about the quality and speed of the journals they use but not to the exclusion of all other factors • Results are broadly similar across all subjects – but adoption and comfort of use of IT still varies widely