How Authors Select Journals: A Test of the Reward Maximization Model of Submission Behaviour

Many accounts of how scientists select journals for their papers suggest that the dominant consideration is the maximization of professional rewards: scientists are assumed to try to publish in the most prestigious possible journals, and, if rejected, to work their way down the prestige hierarchy of journals, until acceptance is secured. In this study, biochemists were surveyed to determine the relative influence of various factors upon their selection of journals for the submission and resubmission of their papers. Citation data were then used to test hypotheses derived from the reward maximization model of submission behaviour. It was found that journals were primarily selected on the basis of the audiences they reach, rather than the rewards they confer, and the reward-seeking model of selection behaviour found little or no support.