We hear a lot of criticisms concerning "open access" journals or predatory publishers of journals who charge money to publish the works of scholarly academics. However, there is not much being said about the journals with strong reputations-the elite journals-who seem to publish articles from the same small group of institutional affiliations with many of the same authors year-after-year.
Is there an affiliation bias among the elite journals? What should people who are locked out of these elite journals do to publish their works? Moreover, what makes an elite journal elite?
A very good point . Thank you for sharing. ....maybe am to unexperienced and down-scored to judge, anyway wish I was completely wrong.
Well, I tend to believe there is, to some degree, this bias..One needs to make an amazing breakthrough to get published in these journals and, even so, to be sure, be co-authored or endorsed by some agreed affiliated personality or institute.
No I don't think or rather do not want to think that there is affiliation bias.
A very good point . Thank you for sharing. ....maybe am to unexperienced and down-scored to judge, anyway wish I was completely wrong.
Well, I tend to believe there is, to some degree, this bias..One needs to make an amazing breakthrough to get published in these journals and, even so, to be sure, be co-authored or endorsed by some agreed affiliated personality or institute.
You have made a very difficult question to be answered in a few lines. It is not very difficult to see that a group of journals accepts the publication of papers that are prepared mainly by well known authors in specific fields not matter the relevance of its content. In general, papers prepared by other type of persons are normally rejected, independently of the quality of the paper or are very difficult to be published without the support of the editor or the reviewers or other well-known experts. It is difficult to say that this is the behavior of the majority of the most important journals or only of a minority of them.
On the other hand, the request of a fee for the publication of papers in a group of journals under the concept of the so-called “free access” is a mechanism that might be used to favor the publication of papers after the payment of the fee by the author and this is something that cannot be confirmed or excluded. In this case, it is also difficult to say how many journals are using this mechanism for its own benefit, if any, or that this happen only in a very few journals.
There are editors that trust of a group of authors and published the papers prepared by them, even without a review by others and independently of the quality or relevance of its contents, and are more strict with the publication of papers prepared by others authors independently of the quality of its content.
Personally I would advise not to give much attention at the name, but at:
Discussion about elite is an old one, but will not help someone who works and wants to present his/her work in a reasonable time period...
In many cases it could rather be an author bias (some elite journals prefer to publish papers by top authors - those who have already published a lot and got lots of citations) as they hope that their papers will be cited more, thus they can even further increase their impact factor.
Dear Reginald,
If you apply some Statistics, e.g. submitted (using polls) and published (which is obviously accessible), perhaps you have an answer to your question?
It is business; and everything is possible for retaining their position.
Glenn,
Wow! Your ideas are very helpful. They give me some strong pathways to seeking the truth about finding such biases, if such biases exist. I have conducted a few studies of my own with small samples based on content analysis of published articles in business journals. I found there are biases in institutional affiliation and journal type.
A cluster analysis, as you suggest, would be a better option. I think a single field first would be a prelude to a multifaceted study of several fields in terms of "elite" journal publication biases. There are a few published studies that show strong evidence that a journal is not a proxy for the quality of an article published in that journal, and a quality article is not necessarily a proxy for the quality of the journal in which it was published. In other words, there are a lot of articles published in elite journals that are cited very infrequently in the literature because of the myriad of reasons you allude to in your comments above. Citations are a direct measure of influence that an article is having on the field.
Glenn I appreciate your helpful suggestions. Thank you very much!
Here is a link to an article from Google Scholar, it has been posted to ResearchGate, that describes in detail some of the movement of top articles away from the elite journals to non-elite journals, as information technology has made it much easier to get your ideas visible to the world. Technology has taken some of the control, as Glenn alludes to from his earlier comment, from the elite journals. The paper below is very interesting and is evidence affirming this recent trend.
"Rise of the Rest: The Growing Impact of Non-Elite Journals" by Anurag Acharya et al (2014), from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266677265_Rise_of_the_Rest_The_Growing_Impact_of_Non-Elite_Journals
Article Rise of the Rest: The Growing Impact of Non-Elite Journals
Elite means a good cross-cultural content, original and actual ideas, highly professional editor-board. To publish you should have only strong wish. You may attend their interesting and amazing conference.I like it, because there are a lot of communication and discussion, even during breaks. Researchers share their ideas and get useful feedback. http://content.commongroundpublishing.com/vo/?FileID=&m=1b10f2a2-17c8-4807-be1d-334bed764c58&MailID=29644053
I agree. Bias exists due to the gatekeepers who tried to care for their own small networks of friends. Take a look at the content of the following manuscript on the declining influence of celebrities, in particular in the accounting arena.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274138526_The_diminishing_influence_of_celebrity_authors_in_a_diversified_world_of_accounting_journals
Article The diminishing influence of celebrity authors in a diversif...
Good answers.
Sometimes there are cliques which push certain methodologies over others, regardless of application. Thus, though I agree Reginald, that "Citations are a direct measure of influence that an article is having on the field," this is not always desirable.
For example, for a number of decades, statistical hypothesis testing has been largely applied very badly by concentration on p-values without type II error analysis. Finally this has recently become a topic of serious interest, even by "elites" who allowed this problem to occur, in my opinion, because of emphasis on papers that they produced which put far too much emphasis on studying the null hypothesis. At any rate, that is what appears to me to have obviously happened, though I have seen no scientific/statistical study on it.
In survey statistics, there have been periods where different methodologies have prevailed, lead by a few "elites." Statistics can be very "trendy," I think. You do not have to be a statistician to get quite a bit of the point by looking through the following paper I've saved and noted on other RG questions, which is something of an historical account:
"Ken Brewer's Waksberg Award article:
Brewer, K.R.W. (2014), “Three controversies in the history of survey sampling,” Survey Methodology,
(December 2013/January 2014), Vol 39, No 2, pp. 249-262. Statistics Canada, Catalogue No. 12-001-X.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/12-001-x/2013002/article/11883-eng.htm
He believed in using probability sampling and models together, but he explains the different approaches, the pros and cons."
''Is there an affiliation bias among the elite journals?'' In my opinion, yes, sometimes, in an extremely high degree.
''What should people who are locked out of these elite journals do to publish their works?'' To be really good in their topic and insist on submitting in such journals.
''Moreover, what makes an elite journal elite?'' First, the high number of citations of its papers, primarily, those from the elite group.
Regards
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