3 ms·

With your 8 months experience you are making quite broad claims. Let's take the example used in the NYT report: doctors buying reviews to get their papers publi

With your 8 months experience you are making quite broad claims. Let's take the example used in the NYT report: doctors buying reviews to get their papers published. It has a clear root that is actually mentioned in the article: "Many of those authors were clinical doctors, who in China face intense pressure to publish." See also "Young Chinese doctors and the pressure of publication" http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60174-9/abstract http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... So this is really a management induced problem (just compare the number of doctors China produces and the number of available SCI journals to publish in). I don't see why it has to take generations to address. China is to a very large degree a relation based society. How to temper favoritism in academic evaluations is a real issue. It seems many organizations in China have outsourced this function to SCI publications. While quantification is a lesser evil their trust in SCI seems misplaced. There are for profit publishers out there who are happy to accommodate this demand for publications and these publishers are not necessarily Chinese. BTW "neng pian jiu pian" is a derogatory term for cheaters not something people take pride in.

fspeech 9y ago
More thoughts on doctors buying papers: Giving heavy weight to publishing is actually a good thing in the Chinese context. I hope they can fix the process instead of throwing out the baby with the bath water. In China medical education for most doctors is a post-secondary one instead of post-graduate. For a doctor to be able to write a proper paper, it shows at least a few qualities many others do not possess including abilities to read and write in English, keep up-to-date with medical research in one's specialty, and do some quantitative analysis etc. This is regardless of the originality or importance of the findings. Yes it is a low bar but it is still better than alternatives. The hospitals have a need to outsource evaluations to outside experts. SCI journals are the wrong targets to outsource to and the hospitals individually do not have resources to come up with alternatives. However regulators and funding agencies can. They should black list journals that are known to publish trash for profit. They should work with publishers to come up with alternative formats that de-emphasize impact factors but instead focus on the rigor of reporting: to publish your research does not need to be original as long as it is adding independent and verifiable data points to our knowledge base; you do need to be up-to-date on your methodology and rigorous in documenting the quality of your data, however. Indeed to ease the English writing difficulty, they can provide standardized templates that could actually ease the collection of machine readable data. This way while each publication may be low value, in aggregate they can provide real value. They could treat this as a "continuing medical education" issue. Of course this does not prevent real geniuses from publishing ground-breaking research in reputable journals. They need to be realistic in that most people are simply not qualified or lucky enough to come up with ground breaking research in their career, esp. when their main job is clinical rather than research.

fspeech 9y ago

More thoughts on doctors buying papers: Giving heavy weight to publishing is actually a good thing in the Chinese context. I hope they can fix the process instead of throwing out the baby with the bath water. In China medical education for most doctors is a post-secondary one instead of post-graduate. For a doctor to be able to write a proper paper, it shows at least a few qualities many others do not possess including abilities to read and write in English, keep up-to-date with medical research in one's specialty, and do some quantitative analysis etc. This is regardless of the originality or importance of the findings. Yes it is a low bar but it is still better than alternatives. The hospitals have a need to outsource evaluations to outside experts. SCI journals are the wrong targets to outsource to and the hospitals individually do not have resources to come up with alternatives. However regulators and funding agencies can. They should black list journals that are known to publish trash for profit. They should work with publishers to come up with alternative formats that de-emphasize impact factors but instead focus on the rigor of reporting: to publish your research does not need to be original as long as it is adding independent and verifiable data points to our knowledge base; you do need to be up-to-date on your methodology and rigorous in documenting the quality of your data, however. Indeed to ease the English writing difficulty, they can provide standardized templates that could actually ease the collection of machine readable data. This way while each publication may be low value, in aggregate they can provide real value. They could treat this as a "continuing medical education" issue. Of course this does not prevent real geniuses from publishing ground-breaking research in reputable journals. They need to be realistic in that most people are simply not qualified or lucky enough to come up with ground breaking research in their career, esp. when their main job is clinical rather than research.