Development and validation of Academic Publishing Involution Scale for College Teachers in China

Involution has emerged as a significant and compelling topic in the field of education. However, the absence of a suitable measurement tool for assessing college teachers’ publishing involutional behaviors has been a major challenge. This research aims to address this gap by developing and validating the Academic Publishing Involution Scale for College Teachers in China (APISCTC), which features items specifically designed to capture publishing involutional behaviors and offer a more comprehensive understanding of its components. The study involved a sample of 642 college teachers from a northern province in China, and the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses resulted in the identification of three factors: Quantity-Oriented Publication Strategies, External Resource Quality Enhancement, and Collaboration Avoidance Orientation, all of which demonstrated strong psychometric properties. The significant correlations between APISCTC as well as its three factors and publishing pressure further supported the criterion-related validity of the APISCTC. Consequently, the APISCTC can serve as both an assessment tool for college teachers to evaluate their publishing involutional behaviors and a research instrument for exploring the relationships between involutional behaviors and publishing pressure.