Abstract
Here, we study readers’ choice in a context in which scholar’s attention is drawn to salient attributes of academic papers such as importance or accessibility. An article’s attribute is salient when it stands out among the paper’s attributes relative to that attribute’s average level in the choice set. In our model, scholars may attach disproportionately high consideration to salient attributes of academic articles. This paper shows that, depending on the writing complexity in determining article importance, scientific communication in some research fields exhibits accessibility–salient equilibria in which scholars are most attentive to accessibility and less sensitive to article importance. Generalist disciplines (the social and human sciences) with an abundance of multidisciplinary journals which publish research in several fields can be described in this way. In other academic disciplines, scholars are attentive to article importance and are to some extent insensitive to differences in accessibility. There, journals compete on article importance, which can be over-supplied relative to the efficient level of a scholarly paper. One academic discipline with an abundance of highly-specific journals within a sub-field of physics/mathematics/engineering can be described by such equilibria. We also explore the possibility of radical change in scholarly communication when the use of writing complexity in determining article importance changes drastically, whereby a journal acquires access to a revolutionary system of determining articles whose importance is at a much lower writing complexity that its competitor journal. There, when the marginal complexity in determining importance is low, a large improvement in importance entails only a small decrease in accessibility. This allows the academic journal to set a salient high article importance and to win the scholars’ attention, which is named as the ‘Nature effect’.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Baldwin, M. (2015a). Credibility, peer review, and nature, 1939–1990. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 69(3), 337–352.
Baldwin, M. (2015b). Making “Nature”: The History of a Scientific Journal. Chicago, USA: University of Chicago Press.
Bordalo, P., Gennaioli, N., & Shleifer, A. (2016). Competition for attention. Review of Economic Studies, 83, 481–513. https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdv048.
Bultitude, K. (2011). The why and how of science communication. In P. Rosulek (Ed.), Science Communication. Pilsen: European Commission.
Crawford, S. Y., Hurd, J. M., & Weller, A. C. (1996). From print to electronic: The transformation of scientific communication. Medford, NJ: Information Today.
Fechner, G. T. (1966). [First published 1860]. In: D. H Howes & E. G. Boring (Eds.), Elements of psychophysics [Elemente der Psychophysik] (Vol. 1) (H E. Adler, Trans.). United States of America: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Fry, J. (2003). The cultural shaping of scholarly communication within academic specialisms. Ph.D. thesis, University of Brighton.
Fry, J., & Talja, S. (2004). The cultural shaping of scholarly communication: Explaining e-journal use within and across academic fields. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 41, 20–30. https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.1450410103.
Garcia, J. A., Rodriguez-Sanchez, R., & Fdez-Valdivia, J. (2015). The author–editor game. Scientometrics, 104(1), 361–380. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1566-x.
Garvey, W. D., & Griffith, B. C. (1963). The American Psychological Association’s Project on Scientific Information Exchange in Psychology. Report No. 9. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Garwin, L., & Lincoln, T. (2003). A century of nature: Twenty-one discoveries that changed science and the world. University of Chicago Press. http://www.nature.com/nature/history/century.html. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
Gratzer, W. (2017). Nature—The Maddox years. The History of the Journal Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06241. http://www.nature.com/nature/history/full/nature06241.html. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
History of the Journal Nature. http://www.nature.com/nature/history/index.html. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
Landow, G.P. (2005). A review of Aileen Fyfe’s science and salvation: Evangelical popular science publishing in Victorian Britain. www.victorianweb.org. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
Markel, M. (2012). Technical communication (10th ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. (2012). The Penny Magazine of the society for the diffusion of useful knowledge. Windsor: Charles Knight.
Talja, S. (2002). Information sharing in academic communities: Types and levels of collaboration in information seeking and use. New Review of Information Behaviour Research, 3, 143–160.
Tebeaux, E., & Dragga, S. (2010). The essentials of technical communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tenopir, C., & King, D. W. (2000). Towards electronic journals: Realities for scientists, librarians, and publishers. Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association.
Tenopir, C., & King, D. W. (2007). Perceptions of value and value beyond perceptions: Measuring the quality and value of journal article readings. Serials, 20(3), 199–207.
Tenopir, C., King, D. W., Edwards, S., & Lei, W. (2009a). Electronic journals and changes in scholarly article seeking and reading patterns. Aslib Proceedings, 61(1), 5–32. https://doi.org/10.1108/00012530910932267.
Tenopir, C., King, D., Spencer, J., & Wu, L. (2009b). Variations in article seeking and reading patterns of academics: What makes a difference? Library and Information Science Research, 31(3), 139–148.
Tuominen, K., Talja, S., & Savolainen, R. (2003). Multiperspective digital libraries: The implications of constructionism for the development of digital libraries. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54, 561–569.
Whitley, R. (2000). The intellectual and social organization of the sciences (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Acknowledgements
This research was sponsored by the Spanish Board for Science, Technology, and Innovation under Grant TIN2017-85542-P, and co-financed with European FEDER funds.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
García, J.A., Rodriguez-Sánchez, R. & Fdez-Valdivia, J. Competition between academic journals for scholars’ attention: the ‘Nature effect’ in scholarly communication. Scientometrics 115, 1413–1432 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2723-9
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2723-9