Researchers are willing to trade their results for journal prestige: results from a discrete choice experiment

The research community’s fixation on journal prestige is harming research quality, as someresearchers focus onwhereto publish instead ofwhat. We examined researchers’ publicationpreferences using a discrete choice experiment in a cross-sectional survey of international healthand medical researchers. We asked researchers to consider two hypothetical journals and decidewhich they would prefer. The hypothetical journals varied in their impact factor, formattingrequirements, speed of peer review, helpfulness of peer review, editor’s request to cut results, andwhether the paper would be useful for their next promotion. These attributes were designedusing focus groups and interviews with researchers, with the aim of creating a tension betweenpersonal and societal benefit. Our survey found that researchers’ strongest preference was for thehighest impact factor, and the second strongest for a moderate impact factor. The leastimportant attribute was a preference for making changes in format and wording compared withcutting results. Some respondents were willing to cut results in exchange for a higher impactfactor. Despite international efforts to reduce the importance of impact factor, it remains a driverof researchers’ behaviour. The most prestigious journals may have the most partial evidence, asresearchers are willing to trade their results for prestige.