Study limitations
With 132 journals providing responses the sample size was not large
enough for us to make wide-ranging assumptions about journal practice.
Also, not all questions in the self-assessment are applicable to all
subject areas. A further limitation was the fact that we defined the
criteria for our own rating of 1-3 which we then applied consistently
across all journals in the study, whereas each journal rated itself
independently of any other journal and with no specific criteria against
which to judge. We also added āuā and ān/aā categories for our rating,
which were not available to journals for the self-assessment. Journals
were also operating independently of each other and not necessarily
familiar with common practice and system solutions, whereas we had the
benefit of observing what was a common or acceptable standard across
multiple journals, or what practices were in place simply because of
available system solutions.