A self-designed questionnaire was used to investigate the publishing motivation and submission orientation of 629 educational researchers in colleges and universities. The results show that the publishing motivation of educational researchers in colleges and universities is diverse, driven by internal motivation, external motivation and growth motivation. Among them, development motivation (evaluating professional title and meeting graduation requirements) and internal motivation (purely out of academic interest) are the most important motives. The educational researchers are different in their gender, age, professional title, educational background, university type and academic status. It is found that “the older the age, the higher the professional title and educational background, the more diverse motives for publication.” The policy of “Breaking the Five-Only” will have a significant impact on the choice of journal level of more educational researchers in submitting their contributions, while it will not have much impact on the enthusiasm or initiatives of submitting, the preferred target journals and the primary factors in the selection of contributing journals. Discipline recognition and meeting the annual assessment of schools are still the mainstream factors in choosing target journals when they contribute. Therefore, the paper evaluation of educational researchers in colleges and universities should adhere to classified management and hierarchical evaluation, and dialectically look at the value tendency of journal selection under the influence of “Breaking the Five-Only.” As a matter of fact, keeping educational researchers’ enthusiasm to contribute and maintaining the quality standard of academic papers should be the proper meaning of the policy.