Characteristics Of Academic Publishing Behavior Of University Liberal Arts Teachers And Its Influencing Mechanism

University liberal arts teachers are professional academics engaged in teaching and research activities in the humanities and social sciences.As one of the responsibilities of university liberal arts teachers,their efforts towards knowledge innovation are confirmed and propagated through publication.For individual teachers,academic publishing is closely related to their academic status,reputation and influence in the academic community,the evaluation and assessment concerning appointment,promotion,salary and reward in the professional environment.The mantra of "publish or perish" speaks of the situation university teachers struggle to survive.Based on the insider perspective of university liberal arts teachers,this study profiles the characteristics of their academic publishing behavior and influencing factors thereof.The study also explores the influence of the current academic system on the orientation,strategies and results among the publishing academics in an effort to establish the status quo of career development of university liberal arts teachers.Following a qualitative design informed by grounded theory,the study targets 38 liberal arts teacher participants from a balanced sample covering different universities and disciplines.The first-hand data,collected using in-depth interviews,textual analysis and participatory observation,consist of nearly one million words of interview transcriptions,personal documents and institutional texts.The data were systematically analyzed with stepwise conceptualization and categorization based on the original data.The study summarizes six typical academic publishing behaviors among liberal arts teachers,extracts the influencing factors,and establishes the influence mechanism model of university liberal arts teachers’ academic publishing behavior based on the logic chain of"institutional context-individual values and capital-publishing behavior".The main findings are as follows.1.Academic publishing behavior is a rational choice made by individual teachers under the guidance of their values according to their cognition of their publishing capital and their perception of the dual institutional context of universities and publishers.This rational choice covers a series of decision-making and implementation behaviors concerning publishing objectives,forms,institutions and paths.Six types of academic publishing behavior among university liberal arts teachers are identified:leading type,carefree type,enterprising type,investment type,coping type and avoidance type.2.The influencing factors of university liberal arts teachers’ academic publishing behavior can be approached on two dimensions:the individual level,including the internal academic professional values and the capital to publish;the institutional level,including the evaluation system of university teachers and the manuscript system of publishing institutions.On the individual level,publishing behavior is primarily guided by particular values derived from pursuing and awareness of an academic career.Secondly,it is restricted by the individual’s selective ability in the publishing market,which relies on their accumulated intellectual,social,economic,symbolic capital and position in the academic community.On the institutional level,the academic publishing behavior among university liberal arts teachers is directly or indirectly affected by various related systems.The university evaluation system,including the scientific research and personnel management systems,has significant time discipline,form regulation,and stimulation effects on teachers’ academic publishing behavior.Regarding publishers,the achievement standard,the way of collecting manuscripts,and the system of reviewing manuscripts also affect teachers’ submission orientation,quality judgment,result measurement,and intervention in reviewing manuscripts.3.In the influence mechanism model of "institutional context-individual values and capital-publishing behavior",the institutions of universities and publishers serve to contextualize and shape teachers’ publishing behavior.The reward and punishment policies convey value orientation and normative path and exert constraint,guidance and incentive.The system’s effectiveness depends on the different mechanisms of the two systems and the changes in their implementation.Teachers are found to "calculate" their way around the system rather than passively obeying the requirements.They recognize,evaluate and choose the rules in the system group,which reflects the individual initiative,among which personal values and capital play an important role.The type of publishing behavior depends on the combination of institutional constraints and the individual’s active choice.A context with strong institutional effectiveness encourages enterprising,investing and coping publishing behaviors,while leading,carefree,and avoidance publishing behaviors occur in the context of weak institutional effectiveness.The behavioral differences in the same institutional context depend on the level of values and capital investment.The research shows that academic publication is not only an essential way for liberal arts teachers to obtain academic recognition from universities and the academic community but also a way of life for them.The current evaluation and publishing system for university liberal arts teachers suffers from several problems,including dissociating academic value goals and the absence of professional recognition.These issues have resulted in the lack of due recognition of teachers’ academic level and contribution,the loss of academic autonomy in teacher research,the lack of fair upward mobility opportunities and the possibility of diversified development.It has also contributed to the various deviations in teachers’ academic publishing behaviors.As a response to this situation,we need to improve the evaluation system of universities and publishing institutions.We also need to give full play to teachers’ personal values and behavior change initiatives,optimize the academic publishing ecology,promote the academic career development of university liberal arts teachers for the prosperity and development of humanities and social sciences in China.