Publisher's Synopsis
The aim of this research study is to explore author-perceived quality characteristics of Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) journals. One of the most, if not the most, important issue today facing scholarly communication is what constitutes quality in the publishing and dissemination of research findings. This research, using sixteen previously identified and researched measures of quality for STM journals, explores the most important of these measures as well as illustrating what user characteristics might affect quality ratings and perceptions. The methodology employed was triangulated data from a small number of volunteer full-time faculty members of Long Island University (LIU), using three different research techniques: questionnaire survey, focus groups, and semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Several user factors affecting the importance of perceived journal quality attributes are found in this explorative study at a high level of significance, including new findings around gender differences, differences between tenured and untenured faculty, and differences by discipline, among some possible others. To compare the relative strength and importance of all of the previously researched quality factors, the sixteen attributes studied were placed into a two dimensional map classifying the relative strength of each through an integrated measure of importance and awareness for each attribute. The study identified some significant differences by discipline, gender and tenured status. Overall, the three most important attributes were the reputation of the journal, the estimated length of time to article publication, and the readership of the journal. The findings bring new insight into this area for the scholarly research community.
