Earlier in my career, both in graduate school and thereafter, I was told by a number of people that I should only try to publish in top-ranked journals, as publications in 'bad journals' are likely to be held against job-candidates. At least anecdotally, I have heard that this type of advice is common, perhaps even the received wisdom among job-candidates and faculty at grad programs. But is it accurate?
A number of years ago (all the way back in 2012), I did some informal data collection on that year's job-market, and what I found seemed to tell a very different story. I found that publications in non-top-20 journals not only didn't appear to hurt candidates for R1 jobs (as roughly half of R1 hires had at least one non-top-2o publication). I also found that non-top-20 publications appeared to help candidates for jobs at 'teaching' institutions (as roughly 2/3 of all hires for these jobs had no top-20 publications and 1/3 had publications in non-top-2o journals).
When I found this, I was still on the job-market myself, with only two minor publications (both 'replies') in a top-20 specialist journal and two publications in lower-ranked journals. So I decided to take a risk: I decided to stop focusing so much on top-ranked journals and instead started sending papers to lower-ranked journals. Over the next two years (2013 and 2014), I published nine articles, all in lower-ranked journals. And what did I find? My interview numbers dramatically increased (mostly at 'teaching' schools, but also the occasional R1 interview).
Now, of course, all of this is anecdotal. I am reporting it again now, however, because a scientific study, 'Do Publications in Low-Impact Journals Help or Hurt a CV?", was just carried out testing the hypothesis, at least in a sample of academics in psychology. And what did they find? Here are some key passages from the study's abstract:
Two experiments revealed that an applicant was rated as stronger when several weak publications were added to several strong ones, and was rated as weaker when the weak publications were removed. A third experiment showed that the additional weak publications were not merely viewed as a signal of additional strong publications in the future; instead, the weak publications themselves appear to be valued. In a fourth and final experiment, we found that adding a greater number of weak publications also strengthened the applicant, but not more so than adding just a few. The study further suggests that the weak publications may signal ability, as applicants with added weak publications were rated as both more hard-working and more likely to generate innovative research ideas. Advice for tenure-track psychology applicants: Don’t hesitate to publish in even the weakest journals, as long as it does not keep you from publishing in strong journals. Implications of the market rewarding publications in low-impact journals are discussed. (my emphasis)
Oh, and the idea that better-ranked journals publish better work? This new study found that studies in top-ranked science journals reproduce less often than studies in lower-ranked journals. To wit:
In which journal a scientist publishes is considered one of the most crucial factors determining their career. The underlying common assumption is that only the best scientists manage to publish in a highly selective tier of the most prestigious journals. However, data from several lines of evidence suggest that the methodological quality of scientific experiments does not increase with increasing rank of the journal. On the contrary, an accumulating body of evidence suggests the inverse: methodological quality and, consequently, reliability of published research works in several fields may be decreasing with increasing journal rank. (my emphasis)
So much for conventional wisdom!
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