Publication practices in discipline-oriented fields as perceived by researchers in a public university in Mexico

Abstract

This article reviews scientific publication as a practice across academic discipline-oriented communities through an empirical and exploratory study with 352 researchers from a Mexican public state university. An online survey was applied to learn how researchers perceived their scientific labor in their academic disciplinary fields. Answers to items related to publication practices were analyzed (6 from a total of 41 items). Using a qualitative approach, we interpreted the results based on Robert Merton's classic contributions to the sociology of science about the normative structure that regulates scientific activity. Our findings suggest that demanding institutional environments lead to varied scientific practices for academic production. Most researchers perceive that both locally produced and foreign-produced knowledge is used in their disciplinary fields, but in all disciplines a part of the scientific community perceives practices that are in tension with Merton's scientific norms, such as being more interested in acquiring personal fame than expanding the knowledge base, committing plagiarism, intentionally fragmenting research in order to publish more papers, and playing the role of evaluator anchored in personal beliefs and opinions rather than universal values for the production of scientific knowledge. This has implications for the training of scientists at a graduate level who participate in specialized practices and are learning to write and publish in specialized textual genres such as research articles.