7 ms·

10% of papers being completely uncited is a little misleading. There is a long tail of papers with 1 or 2 citations that were hardly read beyond the abstract a

10% of papers being completely uncited is a little misleading. There is a long tail of papers with 1 or 2 citations that were hardly read beyond the abstract and only cited to up a paper's number of references and had a few good keywords. That research is effectively uncited. The reason for this isn't really surprising: Most research isn't that groundbreaking. Most research is done because if you don't produce a paper every now and then or else the university will fire you. So you crank out that study you did on the insulating properties of the grey squirrel's tail vs the red squirrel's tail and you keep your job, although nobody gives a crap about how warm a squirrel's tail is.

mehrdadn 9y ago
To be honest, now that you mentioned this, I'm really curious how warm a squirrel's tail is.
- ct0 9y ago
  Seriously, you should write a paper on it when you learn
  - Cyph0n 9y ago
    Not my field, but this[1] is kind of related. It looks at a certain type of squirrel native to southern Africa that uses its tail as a parasol to provide shade. [1]: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/physzool.57.1.30155968 http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/physzool.57...
- grkvlt 9y ago
  Me too. I discovered this paper: "Feeling the heat: Ground squirrels heat their tails to discourage rattlesnake attack" [0] which seems interesting and sort of relevant. It also turns out to have been cited only once so far. [1] 0. http://www.pnas.org/content/104/36/14177 http://www.pnas.org/content/104/36/14177 1. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/crossref-forward-links/104/36/14177 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/crossref-forward-links/104/36/14177
contact_fusion 9y ago
While I sympathize with your sentiment - indeed much research is done that is incremental, not groundbreaking - your comment does not accurately describe academic research. Full-time scientist positions, whether in academia or elsewhere, are competitive in the extreme. Even with tenure protections, if your hypothetical researcher does not generate impactful research, he or she could expect to be out of a job in relatively short order. In other words, just publishing a paper is not enough anymore. Scientists are constantly evaluated by their peers, not just in the form of peer review. PIs, in particular, are judged harshly by the amount and quality ("impact") of their work, and the grant money they bring in. (Fun fact: usually about half of all grants just go to the university; the PI only gets to keep, and use, a fraction of it.) Of course nowadays most PIs do not write the papers themselves. Most of the writing falls on postdocs and graduate students. The PIs are full-time writing grant proposals to fund such work. (Of course anything else, including teaching classes or advising graduate students, goes on top of this full-time job.) As any practicing scientist can tell you, grant committees fall easily for fashion and fad, which in the scientific community are driven by citations. The scientific process today is dominated by the grant mechanism, which is cyclic by design. A PI, when awarded a grant, funds grad students/postdocs/junior staff to produce research that is documented in the form of publications. These publications are used in turn as justification for a new grant, which will fund the next round of research. Citation-less papers are primarily useless in this regard, as the first evaluation a grant committee will make - often before even considering the scientific justification - is to examine the impact of the published work justifying it, which is usually measured algorithmically (citation number.) (Incidentally, the next step a grant committee will make is examining the reputation of the PI, which is a longer-term reflection of... citations.) It isn't hard to see why this incentivizes incremental work - groundbreaking work is risky and might not pay off; it takes time and resources, which are hard to obtain; and incremental work establishes a larger and more visible presence in the field, which is more likely to be noticed. To put it simply, in nearly all realistic scenarios - excluding very prestigious (and rare) open-ended fellowships that ask no questions of the researcher - the reason that paper on the insulating properties of squirrel tails would exist is because a grant was awarded funding that research. In other words, because somebody gave a crap about it.
- credit_guy 9y ago
ISL 9y ago
The squirrel cares.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  The squirrel is pretty unlikely to care about the relative warmth of its tail vs other tails. I tried to ask my mother once what women typically considered to be the dimensions of female attractiveness (e.g. breast size is something people commonly care about, while toe length isn't). Instead I got an answer consisting of a list of things a woman trying to be attractive would do before appearing in a public place. I asked whether facial features weren't considered a big part of attractiveness, and the reply was that yes, they are, but women devote almost no time to their facial features because they are basically impossible to change. SImilarly, a squirrel may be too cold, or too hot, but it can't really change its tail.
  - Parcissons 9y ago
    And that was the groundbreaking moment my hair extensions buisness moved into the park.
  - sterlind 9y ago
    besides makeup, you mean? remember, you're not looking at faces through an accurate depth camera, you're inferring facial geometry through color vision. mascara draws attention to the eyes, away from the chin. eye shadow provides the illusion of depth, which, combined with subtle application of blush or contouring foundation, totally changes the shape you see. you're really only inferring an oval from a small handful of points. you can control those points by accenting and concealing. not to mention hairstyles! bangs! glasses! rhinoplasty! but it's a time and money sink, and we're increasingly okay with our faces as they are.
    - thaumasiotes 9y ago
      You get to look at someone's face from many different angles while it moves around. The "accurate depth camera" model is more accurate than the "it's an optical illusion" model. Surgery is indeed a way to alter your facial features, but it's more intrusive than most.
CJefferson 9y ago
I think you hit an interesting example. What if there was a significant difference in insulating properties of squirrel tails? That could lead to new ways of making insulating fabrics. Quite a few of my research papers look like "we investigated reasonable question X. The answer turned out to be boring". Does that mean I shouldn't have done the work? We didn't know the answer would be boring in advance. Should I not publish? Then someone else might repeat the work. I think, if anything, science needs to publish more boring negative results, to stop people repeating the same boring experiments and not publishing.
albutr 9y ago
True, especially when you consider self-citations or citations that are basically a political back-scratch between collaborators.
kazagistar 9y ago
Agreed. The value of seminal papers is in the research they enable... the obscure, uncited branches are the payoff.

mehrdadn 9y ago

To be honest, now that you mentioned this, I'm really curious how warm a squirrel's tail is.

ct0 9y ago
Seriously, you should write a paper on it when you learn
- Cyph0n 9y ago
  Not my field, but this[1] is kind of related. It looks at a certain type of squirrel native to southern Africa that uses its tail as a parasol to provide shade. [1]: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/physzool.57.1.30155968 http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/physzool.57...
grkvlt 9y ago
Me too. I discovered this paper: "Feeling the heat: Ground squirrels heat their tails to discourage rattlesnake attack" [0] which seems interesting and sort of relevant. It also turns out to have been cited only once so far. [1] 0. http://www.pnas.org/content/104/36/14177 http://www.pnas.org/content/104/36/14177 1. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/crossref-forward-links/104/36/14177 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/crossref-forward-links/104/36/14177

contact_fusion 9y ago

While I sympathize with your sentiment - indeed much research is done that is incremental, not groundbreaking - your comment does not accurately describe academic research. Full-time scientist positions, whether in academia or elsewhere, are competitive in the extreme. Even with tenure protections, if your hypothetical researcher does not generate impactful research, he or she could expect to be out of a job in relatively short order. In other words, just publishing a paper is not enough anymore. Scientists are constantly evaluated by their peers, not just in the form of peer review. PIs, in particular, are judged harshly by the amount and quality ("impact") of their work, and the grant money they bring in. (Fun fact: usually about half of all grants just go to the university; the PI only gets to keep, and use, a fraction of it.) Of course nowadays most PIs do not write the papers themselves. Most of the writing falls on postdocs and graduate students. The PIs are full-time writing grant proposals to fund such work. (Of course anything else, including teaching classes or advising graduate students, goes on top of this full-time job.) As any practicing scientist can tell you, grant committees fall easily for fashion and fad, which in the scientific community are driven by citations. The scientific process today is dominated by the grant mechanism, which is cyclic by design. A PI, when awarded a grant, funds grad students/postdocs/junior staff to produce research that is documented in the form of publications. These publications are used in turn as justification for a new grant, which will fund the next round of research. Citation-less papers are primarily useless in this regard, as the first evaluation a grant committee will make - often before even considering the scientific justification - is to examine the impact of the published work justifying it, which is usually measured algorithmically (citation number.) (Incidentally, the next step a grant committee will make is examining the reputation of the PI, which is a longer-term reflection of... citations.) It isn't hard to see why this incentivizes incremental work - groundbreaking work is risky and might not pay off; it takes time and resources, which are hard to obtain; and incremental work establishes a larger and more visible presence in the field, which is more likely to be noticed. To put it simply, in nearly all realistic scenarios - excluding very prestigious (and rare) open-ended fellowships that ask no questions of the researcher - the reason that paper on the insulating properties of squirrel tails would exist is because a grant was awarded funding that research. In other words, because somebody gave a crap about it.

credit_guy 9y ago

ISL 9y ago

The squirrel cares.

thaumasiotes 9y ago
The squirrel is pretty unlikely to care about the relative warmth of its tail vs other tails. I tried to ask my mother once what women typically considered to be the dimensions of female attractiveness (e.g. breast size is something people commonly care about, while toe length isn't). Instead I got an answer consisting of a list of things a woman trying to be attractive would do before appearing in a public place. I asked whether facial features weren't considered a big part of attractiveness, and the reply was that yes, they are, but women devote almost no time to their facial features because they are basically impossible to change. SImilarly, a squirrel may be too cold, or too hot, but it can't really change its tail.
- Parcissons 9y ago
  And that was the groundbreaking moment my hair extensions buisness moved into the park.
- sterlind 9y ago
  besides makeup, you mean? remember, you're not looking at faces through an accurate depth camera, you're inferring facial geometry through color vision. mascara draws attention to the eyes, away from the chin. eye shadow provides the illusion of depth, which, combined with subtle application of blush or contouring foundation, totally changes the shape you see. you're really only inferring an oval from a small handful of points. you can control those points by accenting and concealing. not to mention hairstyles! bangs! glasses! rhinoplasty! but it's a time and money sink, and we're increasingly okay with our faces as they are.
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    You get to look at someone's face from many different angles while it moves around. The "accurate depth camera" model is more accurate than the "it's an optical illusion" model. Surgery is indeed a way to alter your facial features, but it's more intrusive than most.

CJefferson 9y ago

I think you hit an interesting example. What if there was a significant difference in insulating properties of squirrel tails? That could lead to new ways of making insulating fabrics. Quite a few of my research papers look like "we investigated reasonable question X. The answer turned out to be boring". Does that mean I shouldn't have done the work? We didn't know the answer would be boring in advance. Should I not publish? Then someone else might repeat the work. I think, if anything, science needs to publish more boring negative results, to stop people repeating the same boring experiments and not publishing.

albutr 9y ago

True, especially when you consider self-citations or citations that are basically a political back-scratch between collaborators.

kazagistar 9y ago

Agreed. The value of seminal papers is in the research they enable... the obscure, uncited branches are the payoff.