5 ms·

As someone who now works in astronomy, I'm not at all surprised at the high self-citation rate for the field. It is true that a lot of papers are published by

by cbanek 7y ago

As someone who now works in astronomy, I'm not at all surprised at the high self-citation rate for the field. It is true that a lot of papers are published by large consortiums. For example, at LSST (where I work), if you have been working on the project for 2 years, you are considered a "builder" and added as an author to all major project wide papers. Those papers, which tend to be long and full of great stuff, are cited a lot, and have hundreds of authors. I wonder how many of these papers are where the first author has cited other papers where they are the first author. (Or really, at least the first few authors) It seems like for the data shown, it is just if anyone in the author list is anywhere in the author list of the citation? Also for some research niches, you may be one of the few people writing papers on a subject. There's no one else to cite. I do think there's some very valid points about bringing the person up to speed on previous research that brought them to the current paper. But I don't think those citations should really count as a citation in terms of metrics for how successful a scientist is. To be honest, I find all the metric gaming about number of papers and citations to be ridiculous. I don't hear many people saying they want to write the best paper in their field, or something new. It all seems to be a numbers game these days. Academic career growth hacking, if you will.

Jhsto 7y ago
> I wonder how many of these papers are where the first author has cited other papers where they are the first author. Also, it's worth mentioning that countries which support PhD via publication essentially require you to conduct self-citing research. This is to show you've had a common thread between your research, and that the PhD can be defended as to have all the papers be considered to be on the same subject.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- skohan 7y ago
  To be honest it seems perfectly reasonably for a researcher to bring up their own related work. Maybe there should just be a separate metric which separates self-citations so it's transparent.
  - Bartweiss 7y ago
    The most extreme cases of self-citation are definitely bad news. There seem to be some authors and author groups who rely almost entirely on self-citation for impact factor, allowing them to get by with irrelevant or unchecked work. It might be possible to detect that with a metric like self-citation or high author-placement self-citation as a fraction of overall citations. But overall, it seems like this metric should be limited to exploratory use. There are wholly legitimate cases of frequent self-citation, like mathemeticians pioneering a new technique, or astronomy research groups which cite a large support team and product many sequential findings. Discerning an apparent citation-mill like Vel Tech R&D from a legitimate research group like the LSST requires thought, not just statistics. Meanwhile, the most egregious self-citers are usually doing something else wrong too. Robert Sternberg wasn't just self-citing, he was reusing large amounts of text without acknowledgement, and abusing his journal editorship to publish his own works without peer review. The Vel Tech author in the article seems to be citing his own past works which are irrelevant beyond vaguely falling in the same field, and the enormous range in his work (from food chain models to neurobiology to machine learning to fusion reactors) makes me suspect it's either inaccurate or insignificant. Ioannidis is damn good at what he does, and was far too sensible to broadly condemn high self-citation researchers. But it would be a real shame to see self-citation rate blindly added to university standards the way citations and impact factor were. The lesson here is that reducing academic impact to statistical measures of papers doesn't work, not that we need some more statistical measures.
o09rdk 7y ago
This probably varies by field, but the "large project" thing can be gamed too. So, for example, in biomedicine you often have lots of people on a paper who might only read a draft, make some trivial suggestions, and then be added as an author. As a result, there's this pressure for large groups to form, where everyone is added and everyone can cite each other. This doesn't mean the projects are bad, but it does lead to individuals with large citation counts primarily because they find ways to add themselves to everything, regardless of their level of effort. People should get credit where it's due, and large projects involve lots of people. But what defines a "project" has become very vague. I've become extraordinarily disillusioned with academics. Science gets done but the rewards seem to filter preferentially to those who are able to game the system, and the system exists out of a need to make one's self look as productive as possible, in areas where contributions are generally necessarily tiny or nonexistent, even among very competent people, because the problems are hard and because so many people see the same things at the same time.
- cbanek 7y ago
  I don't disagree with what your saying, but I think LSST's builder concept is actually quite amazing and the opposite side of that coin. For people building the telescope (think hardware, software, logistics, everything before the science can be done), many of whom are not academics, and don't typically get authorship or write papers, it's great to get credit for working on the project in a formal, public way. You don't even have to edit or provide some kind of task directly related to the paper either, which I agree can get somewhat clique-ish.
  - abricot 7y ago
    Wouldn't it make more sense to adopt the way Hollywood does crediting by then crediting everyone but with a note on how they contributed?
  - Bartweiss 7y ago
    The builder concept is actually really appealing. Academia can tend towards the same problem as consulting, where tasks get sharply split between "credit-producing" and "not worth doing". Answering questions about your past papers; looking over someone else's proposed methodology; or cleaning up an internal tool into one you can share are all great tasks for advancing the field, but none of them bolster a CV, earn grants, or help you get tenure. If you want credit for them, you usually have to commit lots more time to the task, like running a formal discussion, becoming an author, or polishing the tool into an OSS contribution. All too often, the result is siloed projects and work abandoned as soon as it's published. (How many papers offering some novel twist on priming or ego depletion could have been turned into replication-and-extension if past authors had been involved?) Especially in astronomy, with large projects and lots of non-PhD team members, this makes so much sense. (I believe something similar may happen at LIGO - if not formally then at least in practice?) If work is going to be judged by authorship, it's only fair to recognize that at a certain point the groundwork and floating aid people give is comparably valuable to the act of writing up some chunk of the text.
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> To be honest, I find all the metric gaming about number of papers and citations to be ridiculous. That's the main issue, isn't it? Citations are a bit like tokens that can be exchanged for funding, so they become a commodity that people are incentivised to hoard and trade. That is just the worse kind of environment to promote good quality research. The only thing it can promote is ...lots of citations.

by cbanek 7y ago

Jhsto 7y ago

> I wonder how many of these papers are where the first author has cited other papers where they are the first author. Also, it's worth mentioning that countries which support PhD via publication essentially require you to conduct self-citing research. This is to show you've had a common thread between your research, and that the PhD can be defended as to have all the papers be considered to be on the same subject.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
skohan 7y ago
To be honest it seems perfectly reasonably for a researcher to bring up their own related work. Maybe there should just be a separate metric which separates self-citations so it's transparent.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  The most extreme cases of self-citation are definitely bad news. There seem to be some authors and author groups who rely almost entirely on self-citation for impact factor, allowing them to get by with irrelevant or unchecked work. It might be possible to detect that with a metric like self-citation or high author-placement self-citation as a fraction of overall citations. But overall, it seems like this metric should be limited to exploratory use. There are wholly legitimate cases of frequent self-citation, like mathemeticians pioneering a new technique, or astronomy research groups which cite a large support team and product many sequential findings. Discerning an apparent citation-mill like Vel Tech R&D from a legitimate research group like the LSST requires thought, not just statistics. Meanwhile, the most egregious self-citers are usually doing something else wrong too. Robert Sternberg wasn't just self-citing, he was reusing large amounts of text without acknowledgement, and abusing his journal editorship to publish his own works without peer review. The Vel Tech author in the article seems to be citing his own past works which are irrelevant beyond vaguely falling in the same field, and the enormous range in his work (from food chain models to neurobiology to machine learning to fusion reactors) makes me suspect it's either inaccurate or insignificant. Ioannidis is damn good at what he does, and was far too sensible to broadly condemn high self-citation researchers. But it would be a real shame to see self-citation rate blindly added to university standards the way citations and impact factor were. The lesson here is that reducing academic impact to statistical measures of papers doesn't work, not that we need some more statistical measures.

o09rdk 7y ago

This probably varies by field, but the "large project" thing can be gamed too. So, for example, in biomedicine you often have lots of people on a paper who might only read a draft, make some trivial suggestions, and then be added as an author. As a result, there's this pressure for large groups to form, where everyone is added and everyone can cite each other. This doesn't mean the projects are bad, but it does lead to individuals with large citation counts primarily because they find ways to add themselves to everything, regardless of their level of effort. People should get credit where it's due, and large projects involve lots of people. But what defines a "project" has become very vague. I've become extraordinarily disillusioned with academics. Science gets done but the rewards seem to filter preferentially to those who are able to game the system, and the system exists out of a need to make one's self look as productive as possible, in areas where contributions are generally necessarily tiny or nonexistent, even among very competent people, because the problems are hard and because so many people see the same things at the same time.

cbanek 7y ago
I don't disagree with what your saying, but I think LSST's builder concept is actually quite amazing and the opposite side of that coin. For people building the telescope (think hardware, software, logistics, everything before the science can be done), many of whom are not academics, and don't typically get authorship or write papers, it's great to get credit for working on the project in a formal, public way. You don't even have to edit or provide some kind of task directly related to the paper either, which I agree can get somewhat clique-ish.
- abricot 7y ago
  Wouldn't it make more sense to adopt the way Hollywood does crediting by then crediting everyone but with a note on how they contributed?
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  The builder concept is actually really appealing. Academia can tend towards the same problem as consulting, where tasks get sharply split between "credit-producing" and "not worth doing". Answering questions about your past papers; looking over someone else's proposed methodology; or cleaning up an internal tool into one you can share are all great tasks for advancing the field, but none of them bolster a CV, earn grants, or help you get tenure. If you want credit for them, you usually have to commit lots more time to the task, like running a formal discussion, becoming an author, or polishing the tool into an OSS contribution. All too often, the result is siloed projects and work abandoned as soon as it's published. (How many papers offering some novel twist on priming or ego depletion could have been turned into replication-and-extension if past authors had been involved?) Especially in astronomy, with large projects and lots of non-PhD team members, this makes so much sense. (I believe something similar may happen at LIGO - if not formally then at least in practice?) If work is going to be judged by authorship, it's only fair to recognize that at a certain point the groundwork and floating aid people give is comparably valuable to the act of writing up some chunk of the text.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

>> To be honest, I find all the metric gaming about number of papers and citations to be ridiculous. That's the main issue, isn't it? Citations are a bit like tokens that can be exchanged for funding, so they become a commodity that people are incentivised to hoard and trade. That is just the worse kind of environment to promote good quality research. The only thing it can promote is ...lots of citations.