Communicating knowledge: How & why UK researchers publish & disseminate their findings

"The motivations that lead researchers to publish in different formats – particularly in scholarly journals – differ significantly across disciplines. Researchers in the sciences are more likely to see publication in a learned journal as a ‘natural’ means of communication with their desired audience, while their colleagues in engineering, the humanities and the social sciences are more likely to see it as meeting essentially external requirements for research assessment and career advancement.

In these latter disciplines, therefore, the rise of journals is more closely associated with an environment where there is increasing emphasis on measuring, assessing, and evaluating research, its outputs and impact."

(HEFCE on behalf of JISC, UK, 2009)

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