This paper is based on a keynote presentation given in May 2024, at the "PASAA Journal" Forum at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. The presentation was titled "Strangers in a Strange Land: Writing for Publication," and offered advice to researchers, mostly focused on getting published in journals in the field of…

Abstract This essay explores the accelerating trends of academic publishing, and the increasing number of academic journals, in terms of the trade-offs and paradoxes they present to academics. As more gets published, less gets read. Expectations for 'productivity' (defined as more publications) continue to rise. Proxy measures of quality, like…

Peer review in journals is in crisis, and its current situation and sustainability are increasingly concerning for academics and scientific communities. We identify this crisis as part of an evolutionary step in the continuous development of science, arguing that peer review maintains a central role. We analyse the emergence and historical…

The aim of this paper is to provide a number of reasoned and evidence-supported arguments and a list of recommendations for reducing the impact of academic rejection. A brief literature review examined the prevalence and negative impacts of academic rejection including its purported purposes, predictors, and consequences. Findings revealed that…

The philosophy of "publish or perish" has already been adopted as a yardstick by the vast majority of Chinese higher education institutions in their attempts to benchmark Western research universities in recent years, which has led to increasing pressure on university teachers to produce research publications. This paper addresses this…

There is increasing impetus for higher-degree-by-research students to publish during candidature. Research performance, including higher degree completions and publication output, commonly determines university funding, and doctorates with publishing experience are better positioned for a career in softening academic labour markets. The PhD by…

This essay builds on a review of studies in education. Journal editorship is explored from the mentoring, democratic, and international perspectives. Trends are examined within the publishing culture around these three editorial functions. Theoretical groundwork is provided for exploring contemporary journal editorship and its challenges and…

All business faculty should be interested in the circumstances under which the most productive academic authors publish their work. This is because success in publishing connects closely with universities' decisions on tenure and promotion and with opportunities for merit-based pay increases and alternative employment. The purpose of the present…

This conceptual article explores the notion of educational researchers operating as public intellectuals. To do this, I situate my analysis within a broader tradition of public intellectual work in the American academy. I also offer a framework for three specific forms of public intellectual work, supported by relevant examples, which can be taken…

Academics are expected to write for publication and meet publication targets in research assessment processes. These targets are set by national bodies and institutions, and they can be daunting for academics at the start of a research career. This article reports on an intervention designed to address this issue, writer's retreat, where academics…

This article explores the role of publication in taking forward the work of the doctorate. Low publication rates from doctoral degrees have been noted as a problem in the quality of doctoral education for preparing students to participate in research cultures. At the same time there is ambivalence and some resistance among doctoral supervisors and…

Background: Publication is the primary means of contributing to and establishing credibility within the scientific community. Some researchers have reported an increase in the average number of authors per manuscript for some scholarly journals in the past two decades. Whereas author proliferation may be warranted in some cases, other reasons for…

The peer review system in professional publications of scientific information is discussed in four articles. Topics discussed include the effects of information technology on scholarly communication channels, the publish or perish syndrome, the incidence of misrepresentation in scientific research, reasons for increasing difficulties in…

Getting papers published in the (largely English-language) international literature is important for individual researchers, their institutions, and the academic community, and the resulting pressure is being felt increasingly in China as a result of top-down policy initiatives. For many researchers, reaching this goal involves two intersecting…

This paper looks at the issue of how scholarly publishing in electronic forums affects the academic tenure process. Currently, scholarly publication as it relates to the merit and promotion process is generally defined as publication in refereed journals or as publication of scholarly books. This definition, implying a fixed language-based text…