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Seeking to understand how today's scholars may, indeed should go about building, maintaining and showcasing their professional reputation, the literature review presented here explores the reputational opportunities available to them in the increasingly open-values based, digital and networked environment of Science 2.0. Using a conceptual framework developed with the help of the European Commission and specifically designed for conducting analytical reviews and audits of the reputational value of scholarly activities, this study, examines in some detail the practices –more than 30 of them- that comprise the present-day scientific undertaking from a reputation-accruing angle.

CIBER Research were tasked to investigate how researchers in the health domain went about selecting journals to publish their papers, what tools they used to help them and what their perceptions of new scholarly communications trends were, especially in regard to predatory journals. This was achieved through a mixture of questionnaire surveys and qualitative interviews, both of which were addressed at researchers themselves, and those who support their research, such as librarians and research managers. More broadly we also interviewed industry experts and players. We discovered that researchers are essentially self-sufficient in the way they go about journal selection, relying mostly on their own experience. Intermediaries were developing an increasing range of services to support researchers in their publishing endeavours, including training events and websites.Librarians felt on the whole that researchers need to understand how to recognise predatory journals and that it was better to use the criteria explained in Think, Check, Submit. There is clear mismatch between what intermediaries say and what researchers do or believe. Whitelists are common and serve multiple purposes including underpinning research evaluation processes and helping novice researchers. As to health whitelists, we could find no evidence of any in use and both researchers and intermediaries expressed a degree of support for one to be available – an average of 60% expressed interest at some level. As to predatory publishing it would still seem commonplace, and not just in the obvious undeveloped countries. It has spilled over into mainstream publishing, including potentially polluting repositories and citation indexes but there seems to have been little follow through. Many of our respondents, both researchers and intermediaries, know somebody who has published in a predatory journal, but none of the researchers would admit to doing so themselves. The pressure to publish is particularly the case with candidates for Doctorates who, in most countries, have not only to submit a thesis, but also a number of articles. This varies from country to country or even university to university. There was a common feeling that publishing in predatory journals was the consequence if anything of a lack of awareness, though I some cases it was unethical researchers taking a risk.

International audience

International audience; Early career researchers (ECRs) consider journals the central form of communication – but are concerned about pressure to publish.ECRs want to share but currently accept the closed publishing system because of the need to build a traditional reputation.ECRs know – and appear to care – little about publishers but trust them as publishing and reviewing facilitators.Editors are criticized for not managing peer review with better selection of reviewers.Megajournals are not seen as the future journal form and criticized for lack of selectivity.ECRs want open access/science in principle but are circumspect about their contribution to it.ResearchGate is a key force for change as ECRs consider it a mainstay communication and reputation platform.

International audience; This study presents findings from the first year of the Harbingers research project, a 3‐year longitudinal study of early career researchers (ECRs), which sought to ascertain current and changing habits in scholarly communication. The study recruited 116 science and social science ECRs from seven countries who were subject to in‐depth interviews, and this paper reports on findings regarding publishing and authorship practices and attitudes. A major objective was to determine whether ECRs are taking the myriad opportunities proffered by new digital innovations, developing within the context of open science, open access, and social media, to publish their research. The main finding is that these opportunities are generally not taken because ECRs are constrained by convention and the precarious employment environment they inhabit and know what is best for them, which is to publish (in high impact factor journals) or perish.

International audience; Early career researchers (ECRs) are of great interest because they are the new (and biggest) wave of researchers. They merit long and detailed investigation, and towards this end, this overarching paper provides a summary of the first‐year findings of a 3‐year, longitudinal study of 116 science and social science ECRs who have published nearly 1,200 papers and come from 7 countries and 81 universities. ECRs were interviewed in their own languages face‐to‐face, by Skype, or telephone. The study focused on the attitudes and behaviours of ECRs with respect to scholarly communications and the extent to which they are adopting new and disruptive technologies, such as social media, online communities, and Open Science. The main findings include: publishing in high‐impact factor journals is the only reputational game in town; online scholarly communities, and ResearchGate in particular, are gaining ground; social media are beginning to have an impact, especially in the dissemination arena; outreach activities have become more important; libraries are becoming increasingly invisible to ECRs; Open Science is not gaining traction; and more transformational ideas are being expressed, especially in the US and UK.