TOURISM RESEARCH ASSISTANTS’ PUBLICATION PERFORMANCE AND OPINIONS ON PUBLISHING

The aim of this study is to evaluate tourism research assistants' academic publication performance and their opinions on doing scientific research (publishing). Besides; the factors negatively affecting their scientific productivity, persons who prompt them to do academic publications (article, conference paper, book, book chapter) and their satisfaction level of building academic carrier in tourism have also been investigated as the sub-purposes of the study. In order to determine the population of the study, 109 public universities' web sites have been examined and 269 research assistants who are being employed in 62 units (faculty, graduate school and institute) have been confirmed. The online-questionnaire has been conducted with 123 research assistants. According to the findings of the study, research assistants; do publications mostly as conference papers, consider being academician as a lifestyle, display sensitivity to publication ethics, do academic publications with motivation to contribute tourism industry and tourism researches' scientific development, have positive continuity in publication performance and feel free in doing academic publications.