Abstract
The use of digital technologies has transformed the processes of writing for academic journals and the dissemination and preservation of academic work. It has also made the measurement of the impact of publications in academic journals easier and this information more accessible to authors. In this article I discuss some of the ways in which digital technologies have changed writing for academic journals as well as how digital technologies are being used in the submission and review of journal articles. This includes ways in which academic work can be stored and shared, the use of citation management tools, and the sharing of research materials once an article has been accepted for publication. I also give an overview of how digital technologies are being used in the review of journal articles including the use of plagiarism detection software. Issues in online publishing are outlined as is the development of open-access journals and the rise of predatory publishers. Social media and journal publishing and the use of multimodality in research article writing are also discussed.
Keywords
Introduction
Digitization has influenced every aspect of the academic publishing process and has been the driver behind ways in which the impact of publications is now measured and how academic work can be found and retrieved (Wiley, nd.). Digitization has also made the publication of more journals possible to the point where in 2018, there were 33,100 English language peer-reviewed journals, which, together, published over 3 million articles a year (Johnson et al., 2018) and this is still increasing. Digitization has also made many more journals accessible than was the case in the past. The affordances that digitization and digital media provide, thus, have both facilitated and maintained changes and in the processes and practices of writing for publication that were simply not possible before the advent of the technologies which have enabled them.
Most journals, for example, now use a digital platform for the entire publication process, from submission of journal articles, through to the management of reviews, the submission of revisions, sending proofs to authors and the final publication of journal articles. Articles now appear much more quickly in digital forms. Journal articles, thus, are now available anywhere, anytime. You just need to have an internet connection (Medip Academy, 2016) and, of course, an institution which can provide you with access to the journals. Digitization has also led to faster communication of academic knowledge, new levels of accuracy and preservation of work, increased archival space, the ability to easily link to other similar research, and easier measurement of journals’ impact factors (Medip Academy, 2016).
Social media is now being used to alert people to academic content as well as build up academic contacts and networks. Indeed, as Stacy Konkeil has argued: The rise of social media over the past decade – and related cultural expectations about the ability to create and engage with online content – is arguably one of the biggest drivers of change in how research is consumed (Wiley, nd., 9).
Even the way we read (and write) for publication is increasingly digital as we search, sift, and access content that we use for our work. Digital media makes it easier for academics to stay up to date with published research through journal and Google Scholar alerts as well as to share their work with other people through online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs (Barton and McCollough, 2018). New media, further, have had a significant impact on how researchers are able to communicate their work through the use of digital genres such as blogs, for example, where authors are now able to present their work to a more diverse audience with different degrees of expertise in their subject area than was the case in the past (Luzón, 2013).
In addition, journal articles are becoming more multimodal and hypertextual due to the ever increasing affordances of digital technologies (Perez-Llantada, 2016). In terms of the actual writing, files can now be created, stored and shared in a number of different spaces beyond the individual computer. People can use, for example, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive to do this. Writers are also able to use these kinds of digital repositories to work collaboratively on texts with other authors who are in a different physical location, especially in the sciences where multi-researcher projects and multi-author research articles are common. People also now use digital citation management tools such as EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks and Zotero to help with their writing rather than doing their references and citations manually.
Research articles, as mentioned above, are now nearly always submitted online through a digital platform. The review process is handled online, and reviews are shared with authors and reviewers online. Proofs are increasingly being done in online writing environments and documents such as publication agreements are also often done online. Once an article has been accepted for publication, a ‘pre-publication’ version of the article can be posted online. Some journals in the area of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and applied linguistics, further, are encouraging authors to share their research materials online through the IRIS repository when the paper has been accepted (Marsden et al., 2016), a digital repository for instruments and materials for research into second languages. The Research Data Alliance (https://rd-alliance.org/), a group with over 8,400 members from 137 countries which promotes data-sharing and data-driven research, has similar goals.
Publishers are increasingly using digital object identifiers (DOIs) as well as other identifiers such as PubMed ID (for biomedical research), Handle, URN (Uniform Resource Name), and ARK (Archival Resource) (Thor Knowledge Hub, nd.). Readers can subscribe to ‘in press’ and new issue alerts which go by names such as Advance articles (Oxford University Press), Early View (Wiley), Articles in Press (Elsevier) and stay up to date with research through these.
It is also now much easier to access publication impact information than it was in the past; that is, how often the ‘average article’ in any particular journal has been cited within a particular period (usually 2 years), its
immediacy index – the average number of times an article is cited in the year it is published
h-index – an author metric which measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications of a researcher
SNIP – Source Normalised Impact per Paper – a metric which compares each journal’s citations per publication with the citation potential of its field
Metrics, however, do need to be treated with caution as some, such as the h-index, may work against less established authors and favour authors who are already well published.
Some journals show the number of views of an abstract as well as the number of views of the full article online. Publication success is not now counted in terms of numbers of subscribers but numbers of downloads of an article with many journals showing their most downloaded articles. These numbers of viewings and downloads, further, are updated automatically making the data much more live and current than it was in the past.
Authors can create and, to some extent, manage their own profile on sites such as Google Scholar which is then automatically populated and updated by the site. Google Scholar does not, however, rely solely on peer-reviewed journals for its sources (Nygaard and Bellanoca, 2018) so is not necessarily as focussed as some other citation metrics such as those outlined above. These sorts of citation metrics often contribute to decisions about hiring and promoting academic staff as well as funding research projects (Nygaard and Bellanoca, 2018), as well as legitimize some scholarly practices (such as publishing peer-reviewed journal articles) and de-legitimize others (such as publishing in a language other than English, publishing in non-peer-reviewed journals and in some cases, publishing in book chapters, handbook and encyclopedia entries). As Nygaard and Bellanoca (2018: 33) point out: The nature of categorizing inevitably “valorises some point of view and silences another” (Bowker and Leigh Star, 1999: 5–6).
As such, developing bibliometrics becomes a choice about what is to be valorized – what can be counted as scholarly. Journals are now very often using plagiarism checking software such as
Online Journals
There are now, due to advances in technologies, increased possibilities for publishing in journals that are solely online. An advantage of this is that it may be possible to have your work published much more quickly and disseminated more widely than is the case with print-based journals. A further advantage of these journals is that the number of hits on your article can be tracked, and it is easy for your work to be cited. Additionally, space is much less of a problem with online journals, which means that your article can be easily linked to externally stored data where it can be amplified and extended at no extra cost. Perceptions about (solely) online journals are not always positive, however, and promotion and tenure committees do not always give equal weight to them as they do to journals that also have a print-based presence.
As with all journals, however, you need to check with an online journal if it is peer reviewed, if it has a reputable editorial board, if it has an impact factor, and if it has some endurance, meaning it has been around for a while. If the online publication has an institutional affiliation, it helps if it is one that is generally well regarded in your field. It is also important to ascertain that the online journal is indeed an academic journal and that you are actually dealing with the editor of the journal. Unfortunately some ‘predators’ take advantage of newer academic writers wanting to get published. Colic-Peisker (2012) reports the case of one of her students who submitted an article to an online journal. The article was accepted with no revisions only three weeks after the article had been submitted. This is very unusual as the review process normally takes about three months or more. The same acceptance message also asked for a $200 submission fee. Upon examination, Colic-Peisker found that someone else was using the name of the editor and that the student’s letter of acceptance had not come from the actual journal editor.
Open Access
Some online journals may also be open-access, meaning that readers do not have to subscribe to the journal in order to obtain access to your article. This has the advantage that people can read and cite your work more easily than with other modes of publication. Tang et al., (2017), for example, in a study which examined how open access increases citations of published research show this. Curno and Oeben (2018) also provide data which supports the citation advantage open access journals have over subscription journals. It is important, however, that if a journal is open access that is has a peer-review process and that it aims for the same scholarly standards as other journals since this will influence the amount of esteem your article is given and how valuable it will be for your academic and professional goals.
When journals are not open access, authors who are working in countries where their institutions cannot afford to pay for journal subscriptions may be disadvantaged. Some governments (in more well-off countries it has to be said) have mandated open-access for research articles that result from work that they have funded. A number of publishers are responding to this by delaying open access to their journals for a year after the initial date of publication; others delay the open access beyond that. If, however, you want your article to have immediate open access (Gold Open Access) you usually have to pay a fee for this. The pricing information for early open access is usually listed on the journal’s homepage and can range from $500 to $5,000 US dollars. There is also a move to what is called Green Open Access where a pre-publication copy of an article (not the final approved version) can be made publicly available either before or immediately upon publication of the article on the journal’s website. Sometimes, however, authors post their article on their personal website or on other social network and file sharing sites. In many cases, these contravene article licensing terms and copyright law and you may be asked by the publisher to remove the article from the site (Johnson et al., 2018).
Predatory Journals
Digital media have facilitated both the proliferation and activities of predatory journals. You need to be cautious, then, if a publisher writes to you saying they would like to publish your work as a book or an article (usually for a fee, although this might not be disclosed at this point). Below is an example of the kind of email you might receive from one of these publishers: Dear Professor, My name is Richard and I am the editorial assistant of the International Journal of Teaching and Learning English. I have had the opportunity to read your paper and can tell from your work that you are an expert in this field. Therefore, I would like to personally invite you to submit manuscripts to our journal (Fazel and Hartse, 2017: 200).
Our students receive requests such as these regularly, and we tell them to ignore them. The publisher may, however, pursue someone who does not reply with a message such as: Did you get my last email about Invitation for paper submission? We hereby forward it again, please kindly confirm receipt (Soler and Cooper, 2019: 6).
Often these publishers do not have a peer review process and are not considered acceptable publishers from most institutions’ points of view. These are some suggestions, however, for identifying a predatory journal:
no academic information is provided about the editor and members of the editorial board
the publisher’s owner is named as the editor of the journal
the publisher does not reveal its physical location
the journal falsely claims to be listed in legitimate indexing services
Bo-Christer Björk (2017) from the Hanken School of Economics in Finland who has researched the peer review publication process extensively gives the following advice to early-stage researchers: Do not submit to predatory journals. If you receive an email from a journal asking you to submit a manuscript, do not consider it, and especially if the journal is called something along the lines of “International Journal of Basic and Applied Science”. It is extremely rare for serious academic journals to solicit papers by bulk email, perhaps with the exception of special issues, and even then they would only be sent to members of closed email lists (2017: 4).
The picture of predatory journals is further complicated by the rise of hijacked journals (journals which use fake websites that mimic authentic and reputable journals and their websites), journal phishing (where someone creates a fake website similar to an authentic website and attempts to direct users to that site), fake peer-reviews (where the contact details for a suggested reviewer routes requests for review back to the researchers themselves who write the review), ghost and gift authors (people who did not actually contribute to the paper), and misleading metrics (Dadkhah et al., 2016; Ferguson et al., 2014; Teixeira da Silva and Dobránszki, 2015). Indeed, developments in digital technologies have made this type of fraud easier to carry out as people can now easily set up the online infrastructure that will enable them to do this. They, thus, are able to create websites that look like real journal websites, and use email accounts and submission systems which impersonate well-known academics and well-known journals.
Social Media and Academic Publishing
Publishers are increasingly using social media to increase both the visibility and connectivity of their journals. Elsevier, Springer, Taylor and Francis, Wiley-Blackwell and SAGE, for example, all have Twitter accounts that they regularly use to let people know about their latest publications. They also use Facebook for a similar purpose. Some publishers such as Elsevier (2014) give explicit advice to authors on how to promote their article to get maximum impact through the use of social media.
Sites such as ResearchGate (www.researchgate.net/home.Home.html), Academia.edu (www.academia.edu) and Figshare (figshare.com) are another way you can let people know about your research. These sites allow you to list your published work and, if the publisher of the work allows, place copies of articles on the site, although some are now asking people to pay to have a web site although this is not revealed at the start. Some sites, however, are now charging for some of their services, such as establishing a personal website or gaining access to analytics. These charges are typically not revealed, however, when users initially sign up for the service and come as a surprise to them.
ResearchGate also has a facility through which people can ask an author for a copy of his or her article, often described as an e-print, which can be sent to them directly without having to place the article formally on the website. ResearchGate also has a facility where researchers can post questions they would like answers to. In addition, ResearchGate keeps you informed as to how many times an article you have posted on the site has been read. I, for example, was surprised to learn that an article I placed on ResearchGate (Paltridge, 2014) has been read over 10,000 times since I posted it.
So what is the benefit of using sites like ResearchGate and Academia to build academic reputation? Nicholas et al. (2018) interviewed early career researchers (ECRs) in China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Spain, the UK and the US about their use of digital means for conducting and publicizing their research. They found that early career researchers are: warming to the potential of today’s innovative digital means of conducting and publicizing research. [Social scholarly networks], and [ResearchGate] in particular, are gaining ground among ECRs. When asked whether social networks help them build and enhance their reputation and, if so, how, half of the ECRs replied yes, with an increase in visibility and citations, and therefore a maximization of research impact, thought to be the main benefits (Nicholas et al., 2018: 390).
However, it is important to find out how you are permitted to share your article such as by looking at the ‘How can I share it’ page published by Figshare (http://www.howcanishareit.com/).
Blogs that are helpful for academic writers include Patter (https://patthomson.net/), The Scholarly Kitchen (https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/), the official blog of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, Belcher Writing Advice (https://wendybelcher.com/writing-advice/) and Nick Hopwood’s blog (https://nickhop.wordpress.com/), the London School of Economics’ Writing for Research (http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/writingforresearch/). The kind of content on these blogs covers areas such as writing the introduction and conclusions sections of journal articles, writing journal articles from a PhD thesis, and turning a conference paper into a journal article (https://patthomson.net/). The Scholarly Kitchen discusses topics such as the rise of peer review, peer review in a world of ‘alternative facts’, and whether peer review should change. Belcher’s writing advice blog covers matters such as how to write and read journal articles and how to hire and work with a copy editor. Nick Hopwood’s blog discusses what he calls ‘the great wall of rejection’ and how to deal with it and the London School of Economics blog includes topics such as assessing your research and publication choices and how to cope with reviewers’ feedback.
Curating an Online Presence
The American Psychological Association (APA) gives advice on developing an online presence using sites such as Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. They suggest you do this, first of all, by simply Googling yourself. The next thing you should do is create a LinkedIn profile, making sure it not only matches your CV but also builds on it. They then suggest you look at your Facebook page, if you have one, and see what it reveals about your private life. You should double check your private settings to make sure only the people you want to see your postings can see them. As Macchi (2015) points out, potential employers are increasingly using social media to find out about job applicants. In the US, for example, 77 percent of organizations use social media to recruit candidates, and 20 percent use it to learn more about potential candidates so it’s important that you are happy with what is out there, online, about you.
Another way in which you can extend the reach of your research is by using a video abstract (Spicer, 2014) for your paper. A video abstract is a short (2–3 minute) animation in which you explain your methods and findings and the contribution your research makes to the field. Coccetta (2018) has researched video abstracts showing how they can be used to enhance an article’s accessibility and visibility and improve its chances of being cited. Audiences for video abstracts and paper abstracts, she points out, are very different. Video abstracts are aimed at the general public rather than an academic audience. There are a number of ways you can do a video abstract. You can talk to the camera, you can do PowerPoint with a voice over, or it can be an animation which combines voice over, animation, images, and text. You can do the video abstract yourself or the publisher can do one for you but there is a fee. Wiley, for example, charges $1,500 for this. Wiley also provides links to software to help you with this (https://www.useloom.com/).
Multimodality and Academic Publications
Digitization has enabled publications to be much more multimodal than they have been in the past allowing the use of colour more often in Tables and Figures as well as the ability to upload other files that support the paper that make use of audio, video, and animation etc. Stanley and Stevenson’s (2017) article on novice English language teacher talk published in Linguistics and Education, for example, combines video, audio and text. Some journals, however, specialize in this type of article. An example is Audio Visual Thinking which publishes video essays such as the article ‘Culture, creativity and disappearing celluloid’ by Andrew Dawson and Sean Holmes (https://www.audiovisualthinking.org/videos/7-celluid/) which combines, text, audio and video. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy publishes articles which combine home video and other visual sources in their articles.
There are also other genres now being used in academic publishing which draw on the multimodal affordances of digital media. An example of this is visual abstracts (Sancho-Guinda, 2015) which combine textual and visual features, aiming to capture the ‘take home’ message of the paper. These might be images or key figures from the paper or they might be a specially created image which is distinct from other images in the paper. Cell is an example of a journal which requires this latter kind of abstract, saying they should help readers quickly identify papers which are most relevant to their research interests (Cell, nd.). Other journals such as the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) employ video methods articles (Hafner, 2018) which draw on the affordances of digital video to allow other researchers to see intricate details of cutting-edge scientific experiments rather than having to work out how they were carried out by reading a text (JoVE, nd.). This use of video, accompanied by spoken narration, provides opportunities for scientists ‘to ‘speak to’ their audience’ (Hafner, 2018: 35) and also delivers key meanings which are frequently lost in more traditional research articles. Video methods articles, thus, greatly enhance communication as well as save time and resources for researchers who are wanting to replicate the research methods described in a particular article (Hafner, 2018).
Conclusion
This article has discussed how the use of digital technologies has changed the processes of writing for academic journals and the dissemination and preservation of research. Digital technologies have also made measurement of the impact of publications in academic journals easier and this information more accessible to authors. Digitization is being used in the submission and review of journal articles, and in the storing and sharing of academic work. Digital technologies are also now being used in the review of journal articles including the use of plagiarism detection software by academic publishers. Digital technologies, further, have enabled the development of online publishing, open-access journals, but also, unfortunately, the rise of predatory publishers. But what digital technologies can help you do now, which was not as possible in the past, is help with researching and writing as well as provide you with more options for reporting on your research. They can also help you get read and get cited so that you can maximize the impact of your research.
