University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico.
PLoS One. 2021 Oct 28;16(10):e0257340. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257340. eCollection 2021.
Despite the calls for change, there is significant consensus that when it comes to evaluating publications, review, promotion, and tenure processes should aim to reward research that is of high "quality," is published in "prestigious" journals, and has an "impact." Nevertheless, such terms are highly subjective and present challenges to ascertain precisely what such research looks like. Accordingly, this article responds to the question: how do faculty from universities in the United States and Canada define the terms quality, prestige, and impact of academic journals? We address this question by surveying 338 faculty members from 55 different institutions in the U.S. and Canada. While relying on self-reported definitions that are not linked to their behavior, this study's findings highlight that faculty often describe these distinct terms in overlapping ways. Additionally, results show that marked variance in definitions across faculty does not correspond to demographic characteristics. This study's results highlight the subjectivity of common research terms and the importance of implementing evaluation regimes that do not rely on ill-defined concepts and may be context specific.
尽管人们呼吁变革，但对于评估出版物、评审、晋升和终身教职的过程，应该旨在奖励高质量的研究、发表在有声望的期刊上并具有影响力，这一点存在着显著的共识。然而，这些术语具有高度的主观性，并且难以确切确定这种研究的具体情况。因此，本文回应了一个问题：美国和加拿大的大学教师如何定义学术期刊的质量、声望和影响力？我们通过对美国和加拿大 55 所不同机构的 338 名教师进行调查来回答这个问题。虽然我们依赖的是与行为无关的自我报告定义，但这项研究的结果表明，教师通常以重叠的方式描述这些不同的术语。此外，研究结果表明，教师之间在定义上的明显差异并不对应于人口统计学特征。这项研究的结果突出了常见研究术语的主观性，以及实施不依赖于定义不明确的概念且可能特定于上下文的评估制度的重要性。
