CIBER Research Ltd. Harbingers, Trust, and Reputation

"Are early career researchers the harbingers of change? Will digital natives who embarque on a career in research, carry the new information-seeking behaviour into the workplace with profound change to scholarly communication? Or will they, recognising their position as apprentices and reliant on guidance from mentors, be cautious and less adventurous than established colleagues? There is a complex of factors to consider here, a whole range of demographics and characteristics.

The Publishing Research Consortium has commissioned CIBER to carry out a world-wide, longitudinal study over three years of these 'digital natives' — researchers under 35 who have yet to achieve established or tenured positions.

The key question for all publishers is “on what basis do these researchers go about selecting the journal to which they submit?”. To answer that we will investigate the impact of open access publishing, social media and online networks on the process of reputation building. Does a change in the mechanisms of information seeking and use, citing, sharing, and collaborating presage a revaluation of the social capital of publishing and peer review?..."