Published Article / Research has two important objectives: the contribution to scientific discourse and the identification of solutions for the challenges societies, government, business and industry face. Research should be in the public domain. The publication and presentation of research results are important activities academics need to engage with. Through publications and presentations are societies informed of the positive influence and impact research can bring to them. This paper will focus on the importance of publications and how emerging scholars can be assisted to get their research published. A case study is presented of the Interim, an in-house academic journal.

This thesis builds a public goods case for government intervention in the academic journal market. Synthesizing information from interviews with the existing quantitative and qualitative literature accomplishes this goal. The cost of doing business in the academic publishing market has steadily risen over time. In response, an “open access” (OA) movement has formed. Members of the movement argue that making academic research freely accessible to anyone with an Internet connection is the ideal way to control these costs. Others, however, are satisfied with the status quo. Determining who pays what price to allow free access has become increasingly important. National open access initiatives could be implemented without government aid if universities and academic libraries worked together; however, a collective action problem prevents cooperation. The government has tools that could be used to help these stakeholders transition to an open access status quo.

本研究主旨在於探討學術期刊普遍禁止一稿多投的現象與其成因。文章中將使用考慮出版者以及學術投稿者的兩階段模型來刻劃投稿、審查，以及投稿規則決策的過程。 初步模型將呈現當投稿者無明顯時間偏好以及各期刊審稿延遲時間一致時，一稿一投或是一稿多投規則對於整體學術產業而言並無差異。其後本文第四章將導入差異審稿延遲所帶來的影響並得出擁有較高聲望的期刊為避免在一稿多投制度下次級期刊利用較快的審查速度奪取較高品質的文章因而將不願意開放一稿多投的結論。 本研究後部分章節將分析各投稿規則對於整體產業福利水準之影響並得到以下結論。一稿一投制度不見得會為整體產業帶來福利增進，但由於投稿者與出版者之間利益不一致性的存在終將難以使得一稿多投成為最後的均衡投稿規則。 / This paper attempts to explore “why the journals in most academic fields like economics refuse to accept Multiple-submission (or simultaneous submission).” In this study, we use a two-stage model involving publishers and academic authors to illustrate the process of submitting, reviewing, and the submission policy determining. The first model shows an indifference result for the whole academic industry to adopt a Sole-submission or a Multiple-submission rule when authors’ utility is time-irrelevant and the reviewing delays of both journals are identical. We latter introduce the effect of differentiated refereeing delay of journals on the authors’ submission behavior in chapter 4 and show that a journal with higher prestige will refuse to adopt multiple submission rule to avoid the possibility that a faster reviewing process may give the less prestigious journal ability to “steal” high quality papers from the more prestigious one under multiple-submission. The welfare is further studied in the later sections. We calculate the overall welfare of the industry and find that even thought the current sole-submission system is not necessarily welfare superior than multiple-submission, it seems that the rigidity of the submission rule is hard to be removed due to the conflicting interests between authors and publishers.

En deskriptiv visuell innehållsanalys genomfördes med en korpus bestående av vetenskapliga artiklar från 30 topprankade tidskrifter jämnt fördelade på de tre disciplinerna matematik, medicin och utbildningsvetenskap, med syfte att undersöka om det fanns ett samband mellan tidskrifternas disciplintillhörighet och den grafiska formgivningen. Kartläggningen omfattade layout (bl.a. sidformat, spalter, marginalstorlek, användning av grafiska element, placering av tabeller, figurer och pagina) och typografiskt utseende hos titel, rubriker, brödtext och abstrakt (t.ex. teckenstorlek, textjustering, teckengrovlek, typsnitt, färg och radavstånd). Resultaten visar att disciplinerna använde olika men även gemensamma konventioner i sitt grafiska utseende. Matematik uppvisade enkelspaltig layout med liten typografisk variation, genomgående användning av typsnitt från familjen Transitional eller Transitional/Didone för hela dokumentet, avsaknad av kulört färg och sällan användning av grafiska element. Medicin uppvisade större variation med användning av kulört färg, icke-centrerad typografi med både sansseriff- och seriff-typsnitt, grafiska element och ramar som förstärker det ofta använda dubbelspaltiga gridsystemet. Utbildningsvetenskap uppvisade en grafisk design som återfanns i båda disciplinerna, men påminde mest om matematik till utseendet. Kodbok ingår i sin helhet som bilaga. Uppsatsen i sig är delvis formgiven med utgångspunkt i de erhållna resultaten. / A descriptive visual content analysis was conducted on research articles from 30 academic journals with highest impact factor equally distributed between Mathematics, Medicine and Education research, to examine whether a correlation could be established between academic discipline and graphic design conventions used. The survey included layout aspects (e.g. size of pages and margins, text columns, use of graphic elements, placement of tables, visuals and page numbers) and typographical appearance of title, sub-headings, body copy and abstract (e.g. character height, weight, alignment, typeface, use of colour and inter-line distance). The results show that the disciplines used different but also shared some common graphic design conventions. In Mathematics often a single-column layout was used, with a small typographic variation, using a single Transitional or Transitional/Didone typeface for the entire document, not using any colour and seldom using any graphical elements. Medicine showed greater variation, using colour, non-centered typography combing sans-serif and serif typefaces, graphical elements and frames emphasising the often used double-column grid system. Education research shared appearance common for both disciplines, leaning mostly towards Mathematics. This thesis is in its entirety written in Swedish and is typeset partially in accordance with the findings from this survey. Code book is included.