Publishing Instincts: An Exploration-Exploitation Framework for Studying Academic Publishing Behavior and "Home Venues"

TL;DR

This paper models academic publishing choices using an exploration-exploitation framework, defining 'Home Venues' as venues where scholars consistently publish, and analyzes their emergence and characteristics.

Contribution

It introduces a biologically inspired EE framework to understand scholars' venue selection and defines 'Home Venues' with empirical analysis of publication patterns.

Findings

Approximately 75% of computer science scholars follow EE patterns.

'Home Venues' stabilize after 15-20 publications.

Higher h-index and academic age correlate with higher-ranking HVs.

Abstract

Scholarly communication is vital to scientific advancement, enabling the exchange of ideas and knowledge. When selecting publication venues, scholars consider various factors, such as journal relevance, reputation, outreach, and editorial standards and practices. However, some of these factors are inconspicuous or inconsistent across venues and individual publications. This study proposes that scholars' decision-making process can be conceptualized and explored through the biologically inspired exploration-exploitation (EE) framework, which posits that scholars balance between familiar and under-explored publication venues. Building on the EE framework, we introduce a grounded definition for "Home Venues" (HVs) - an informal concept used to describe the set of venues where a scholar consistently publishes - and investigate their emergence and key characteristics. Our analysis reveals that the publication patterns of roughly three-quarters of computer science scholars align with the expectations of the EE framework. For these scholars, HVs typically emerge and stabilize after approximately 15-20 publications. Additionally, scholars with higher h-indexes, greater number of publications, or higher academic age tend to have higher-ranking journals as their HVs.