A global questionnaire survey of the scholarly communication attitudes and behaviours of early career researchers

Abstract

This article describes an international study informed by a 3-year-long qualitative longitudinal project, which sought to discover the scholarly communication attitudes and behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs). Using a combination of small-scale interviews and a larger-scale survey, ECRs were questioned on their searching and reading behaviour, publishing practices, open data, and their use of social media. Questionnaire invitations were sent out via publisher lists, social media networks, university research networks, and specialist ECR membership organizations. Onethousand and six-hundred responses were received, with many coming from China, Russia, and Poland. Results showed that ECRs are adopting millennial-facing tools/platforms, with Google, Google Scholar, social media, and smartphones becoming embedded in their scholarly activities. Open data sharing obtains widespread support but somewhat less practice. There are some differences in attitudes and behaviour according to age and subject specialism.

National comparisons of early career researchers' scholarly communication attitudes and behaviours

“…The survey was distributed internationally, but this paper focuses on just the eight countries previously mentioned for the reasons already given. Some of the other results of the survey have already been published (Jamali et al ., 2019; Nicholas et al ., 2020).…”

Conjoint analysis of researchers' hidden preferences for bibliometrics, altmetrics, and usage metrics

“…Through survey segments right before and after the experiment's ranking tasks, we collected participants' demographics as well as further information on their usual strategies during literature research and on their notions about research indicators. Both from previous literature (Nicholas et al, 2020b; Niu & Hemminger, 2012; Tenopir et al, 2009; Tenopir et al, 2011; Tenopir et al, 2016) as well as from personal experience we had reason to believe that in real literature research scenarios the respective researchers would often determine their orders of preference based on more complex heuristics, involving more criteria than the six indicators we could ask for in our experiment. As for instance Tenopir et al (2011) have shown, there are in particular several qualitative aspects researchers look out for when deciding what to read.…”

“…On the other hand, regarding criteria for judging reading trustworthiness, the most highly rated statement was “Peer‐reviewed journals are the most trustworthy information source,” indicating the type of publication venue to be an important aspect in this regard. In another international survey aimed at early career researchers, Nicholas et al (2020b) found a journal's prestige, rank, and impact factor as well as ease of access to be influential factors for participants when deciding what to read.…”

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“…Under these circumstances, predatory publishing may be even more of a challenge to young researchers (millennials 2 ): just making their way, they have to publish to progress, so that the enticements of getting published easily in predatory journals may speak to them even more strongly, especially as, being as yet unversed in the ways of academe, they may be ignorant of the real nature and possible repercussions of the practice. This is of crucial importance, for, as Harbingers research has shown, ECRs' 3 stance towards developing trends in the scholarly undertaking promises to lead the way in shaping its future character, indeed, may very well be instrumental in bringing about an overhaul of the scholarly communications system [Nicholas et al, 2019[Nicholas et al, , 2020. After all they are millennials and attempting to re-arrange the world to their values and behaviors.…”

“…The first three years involved repeat interviews with nearly 120 ECRs from seven countries and the fourth year featured a questionnaire study which sought to confirm the results of the qualitative data obtained and to follow up on some of the original findings. Much of the findings have been widely published (see reference list) and summaries of the interview and questionnaire stages can, respectively, be found in [Nicholas et al, 2019[Nicholas et al, , 2020]. What we have not done to date though, is to publish what we discovered about predatory publishing and ECRs, and given the considerable rise in predatory journals over the period of the Harbingers study and the amount of research produced about them, literally hundreds of papers published, we wish to contribute our findings to the body of knowledge.…”