ArticlePloS one2021
How faculty define quality, prestige, and impact of academic journals.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reconsidering Excellence in the Chemical Sciences: Lessons from First-Generation Chemists.ACS central science · 2026Article
- A survey of how biology researchers assess credibility when serving on grant and hiring committees.PeerJ · 2026Article
- Article
- Historical and ongoing inequities shape research visibility in Latin American aquatic mammal paleontology.Communications biology · 2025Article
- A twofold perspective on the quality of research publications: The use of ICTs and research activity models.PloS one · 2025Article
- From impact metrics and open science to communicating research: Journalists' awareness of academic controversies.PloS one · 2025Article
- Shifting the Level of Selection in Science.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
- Verification of nucleotide sequence reagent identities in original publications in high impact factor cancer research journals.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2024Article
- Designing a Framework for Evaluating the Scientific Productions.International journal of preventive medicine · 2024Article
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- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite the calls for change, there is significant consensus that when it comes to evaluating publications, review, promotion, and tenure processes should aim to reward research that is of high "quality," is published in "prestigious" journals, and has an "impact." Nevertheless, such terms are highly subjective and present challenges to ascertain precisely what such research looks like. Accordingly, this article responds to the question: how do faculty from universities in the United States and Canada define the terms quality, prestige, and impact of academic journals? We address this question by surveying 338 faculty members from 55 different institutions in the U.S. and Canada. While relying on self-reported definitions that are not linked to their behavior, this study's findings highlight that faculty often describe these distinct terms in overlapping ways. Additionally, results show that marked variance in definitions across faculty does not correspond to demographic characteristics. This study's results highlight the subjectivity of common research terms and the importance of implementing evaluation regimes that do not rely on ill-defined concepts and may be context specific.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.