Who Pays for Online Content? A Media Dependency Perspective Comparing Young and Older People

This study examines predictors of online content purchases through media dependency theory and comparing young and older people. It focuses on actual online content purchases instead of willingness-to-pay used in previous studies. The effects of two dimensions of media dependencies are compared: intensity and referent scopes. Social media dependency and mobile media dependency are examined specifically, in addition to general Internet dependency as new media dependency. Our results show young people make more actual purchases of online content than older people. Predictors of online content purchases include age group, online shopping habits, ownership of mobile applications and mobile devices, Internet referent dependency, and social media intensity dependency. New media referent dependency is more important than intensity dependency for predicting online content purchases.     

Open access and predatory publishing: a survey of the publishing practices of academic pharmacists and nurses in the United States

Objective:Academics are under great pressure to publish their research, the rewards for which are well known (tenure, promotion, grant funding, professional prestige). As open access publishing gains acceptance as a publishing option, researchers may choose a “predatory publisher.” The purpose of this study is to investigate the motivations and rationale of pharmacy and nursing academics in the United States to publish in open access journals that may be considered “predatory.”Methods:A 26-item questionnaire was programmed in Qualtrics and distributed electronically to approximately 4,500 academic pharmacists and nurses, 347 of whom completed questionnaires (~8%). Pairwise correlations were performed followed by a logistic regression to evaluate statistical associations between participant characteristics and whether participants had ever paid an article processing fee (APF).Results:Participants who had published more articles, were more familiar with predatory publishing, and who were more concerned about research metrics and tenure were more likely to have published in open access journals. Moderate to high institutional research intensity has an impact on the likelihood of publishing open access. The majority of participants who acknowledged they had published in a predatory journal took no action after realizing the journal was predatory and reported no negative impact on their career for having done so.ConclusionThe results of this study provide data and insight into publication decisions made by pharmacy and nursing academics. Gaining a better understanding of who publishes in predatory journals and why can help address the problems associated with predatory publishing at the root.     

Misconceptions in Van den Broeck's representation of misconceptions about learning disability research

The methods and conclusions of Van den Broeck (in this issue) are evaluated from two perspectives: (a) statistical considerations and (b) theoretical models of IQ and achievement, specifically reading achievement. We consider the statistical model proposed by Van den Broeck for the regression-based discrepancy model (RDM) to be either irrelevant or conceptually inconsistent with current models of IQ and achievement. The resulting simulation produced exemplar cases that are not realistic in terms of practice. The theoretical representations of IQ and achievement were, in our understanding, inconsistent with contemporary models of either. We suggest that acceptable models support the use of the RDM as it has been proposed by us and by others as one component of the determination of the presence or absence of a learning disability.