Where to Submit? Characteristics That Predict Submission to Social Work Vs. Extra-Disciplinary Journals

Background: Social work periodicals play a critical role in the discipline’s development. As social work has emerged as a profession, the number of disciplinary journals has increased dramatically, from perhaps 10 in the 1970s to over 65 today. Yet a paucity of research has examined publication patterns and related issues despite the importance of social work journals to the profession. This study examined the effects of personal and professional faculty characteristics on decisions to disseminate high-quality scholarship in disciplinary social work periodicals.

Methods: We collected data from tenure-track social work faculty (N=289) affiliated with PhD conferring programs to conduct this cross-sectional study. To procure a national sample of tenure-track social work faculty, we used a list of social work schools (N=75) with PhD programs from the website of the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work (GADE). Faculty were asked: When you have a high-quality piece of scholarship in your substantive area of interest, do you tend to submit it to a disciplinary social work journal or to an extra-disciplinary journal? Respondents were then asked to indicate their response on a dichotomous response key (i.e., social work journal, extra-disciplinary journal), as well as personal (e.g., age) and professional (e.g., rank) characteristics.

Results: Regarding personal characteristics, the typical faculty respondent was roughly 52 years old (SD=10.63), female, and European American. In terms of professional characteristics, the sample was evenly split between the three tenure-track ranks and exhibited a diverse area of research interests. The most common area of interest was health (24.6%), followed by child welfare (14.5%), aging/gerontology (8.3%), diversity (6.2%), violence (5.5%), substance use (4.2%), policy (3.5%), and other (33.2%, a catchall category that could not be coded into one of the previous categories). The study reveals that 70% favored submitting their high-quality scholarship to extra-disciplinary outlets. The results of the two-step sequential logistic regression indicated age and area of research interest were significant predictors, with the latter exhibiting large effects. Faculty whose areas included child welfare, diversity, and substance use/misuse (vs. health research interest–reference) as their research interest were significantly more likely to prefer a disciplinary journal. Additionally, faculty who prioritized publishing in extra-disciplinary periodicals tend to rate top-tier social work journals lower in terms of their quality.

Implications: The present study’s findings suggest that extra-disciplinary journals may be viewed more favorably among many social work faculty. To be clear, the results suggest that any such perceptions likely vary according to research interest. For example, faculty in child welfare may have different perceptions compared to those with health as a substantive area of interest. Social work’s status as a profession is arguably contingent upon the quality of the works published in its disciplinary journals. Ideally, it is arguable that a substantial percentage of social work faculty should be disseminating their best work in disciplinary journals to advance the profession’s development. In turn, this body of high-quality scholarship attracts attention from other disciplines, raising the profile of the social work profession.