The importance of publishing
Publishing scholarly work, and everything that goes with it, is one of the key ways in which university staff members share their findings, gain recognition, and contribute to the broader development of knowledge. There is often significant pressure to publish frequently, particularly in prestigious journals. This pressure generates perverse incentives that can undermine the quality of research and compromise methodological rigour and reproducibility. It can lead to strategic publishing, the fragmentation of research, and sometimes even questionable practices. The publication pressure inherent in the academic system also creates vulnerabilities that fraudulent organisations seek to exploit, including predatory journals.
Concerns about publication culture
Concerns about the current publishing landscape have been voiced for a long time. Beyond publication pressure ("Publish or Perish"), these concerns include the limited recognition given to outputs other than peer-reviewed articles, threats to academic integrity, limited reproducibility, commercial funding models and their associated costs, inequalities in access to journals and other publications, and the overburdening of the peer review system.
Steering towards integrity and new forms of publishing
Publications only contribute to scholarly progress if the research they report on is conducted with integrity. Academic integrity is under pressure, due in part to changes in funding, advancing digitalisation, the rise of generative AI, and an emphasis on societal solutions. At the same time, new forms of publishing are creating opportunities, and there are connections with programmes such as Recognition & Rewards, Open Science, and Digital Autonomy. Academic integrity is strengthened through maximum transparency: publishing research as early and as fully as possible, not only significant results, but all results, along with underlying data, protocols used, and other research materials.
The importance of contextual differences and strategic choices
It's important that researchers align their approach to publishing with the culture of their field and the requirements of their research funders. Academic research spans a wide variety of disciplines, each with their own methods, approaches, research culture, and publication culture. There is also considerable variety in the types of scholarly work that are published.
The Position Paper – Vision on Publication Culture offers a starting point for shared positioning and alignment, with a view to strengthening academic integrity and transparency. To help guide the development of a shared vision on publication culture within academia, it's important to:
- Provide insight into current publishing practices and the challenges experienced by researchers, other professionals, policymakers, and institutions.
- Outline a shared framework for future-proof forms of publishing that do justice to quality, diversity, societal impact, and openness.
- Encourage dialogue between knowledge institutions, funders, policymakers, and researchers about the desired culture and systems of recognition.
- Offer concrete tools for policy development and institutional strategies that contribute to a fair, inclusive, and transparent publishing environment.
The position paper provides a reference framework for researchers, research units, and support professionals, with ample room to translate the guiding principles into their own approach based on specific contexts (such as disciplinary differences) and strategic choices. Ultimately, this contributes to strengthening the quality of research and increasing the societal value of the knowledge that universities produce.
Source: UNL