Understanding Author Choices in the Current Conservation Publishing Landscape

Abstract

Conservation literature addresses a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary questions and benefits most by representing a diverse range of authors, particularly those from countries where much conservation work is focused. In other disciplines, it is well known that barriers and biases exist in the academic publishing sphere, which can impact research dissemination and an authors career development. Here, we used a Discrete Choice Experiment to determine how different journal attributes impact authors choices of where to publish in conservation. We identified three demographic groups across 1038 respondents who have previously published in conservation journals, each exhibiting different publishing preferences. Only two attributes showed a consistent response across groups: cost to publish negatively impacted journal choice, including for those in high-income countries, and authors had a consistent preference for double-blind review. Authors from middle-income countries were willing to pay more for society-owned journals, unlike authors from higher-income countries. Journals with a broad geographical scope, which were Open Access, and which had higher impact factors were preferable to two of the three demographic groups. However, we found journal scope and Open Access were more important in dictating journal choice than impact factor. Overall, our findings demonstrate that different demographics experience different preferences or limitations depending on attributes such as a journals Open Access policy. However, the scarcity of published authors from low-income countries highlights further, pervasive barriers to representation in conservation research. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations to conservation-related journals to reduce barriers to publishing and ultimately benefit conservation science.