Do competitive forces tend to correct choice errors in journal selection due to imperfect attention on the part of researchers?

Abstract

For scientists, one of the most important points to consider is the right journals for research, current awareness, and publication of results. However, if scientists suffer from imperfect attention, they would pay attention to only a subset of journals in the subject category. Under this scenario, chief editors might affect preferences by using the journal’s salience to influence what scientists pay attention to. In this paper, we are going to address two related research questions: First, do competitive forces tend to correct choice errors in journal selection due to imperfect attention on the part of researchers? Second, does journal selection based on the choice of journal impact factor (JIF) quartiles produce the best journals in a multivariate indicator space? Using an attention game, we find that the competition between journals in the presence of positive externalities between the visibility of journals, pushes the best journals to increase their salience enough to overcome the distorting effects of imperfect attention. However, a visibility strategy based on JIF quartiles exhibits negative externalities between the ability of journals to attract attention. Therefore, we cannot guarantee that the most visible journals using quartiles are the preferred journals based on their impact on the development of the discipline. To illustrate this theoretical result, for the subject categories of Information Science & Library Science, and Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence (both in 2022), we found that the JIF quartiles do not reveal the impact classification of journals in a multivariate space of seven indicators.