Science magazine quotes Gardner in article on choosing academic journals

Science magazine quoted Susan Gardner, a professor of higher education and director of the Rising Tide Center and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maine, in the article “For academics, what matters more: journal prestige or readership?” The article focused on how to choose which academic journals to submit publications to, and what researchers should prioritize when making those decisions. Gardner said that researchers should stay true to their own values as much as possible, but that pretenure faculty members need to think strategically when going for tenure, since “prestige and ranking matter a lot” especially at research-intensive universities. “Once [faculty members] have tenure … they can have a voice in deciding what is going to be counted or what is going to be rewarded. Unfortunately, until they have that rank, I don’t know how much they can really move the needle,” said Gardner.