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I think the subtext here is that academic culture should become more like OSS culture, where your reputation is built on the content of your commits rather than

by Cushman 16y ago

I think the subtext here is that academic culture should become more like OSS culture, where your reputation is built on the content of your commits rather than just having your name on a project somewhere.

nocipher 16y ago
I fail to see how it changes things in a fundamental way. Having your name on a paper is supposed to mean that you contributed to the results of that paper. This is how you build up your reputation: you publish lots of relevant results. This is only possible if you continue to work and publish, which in turn makes you a more sought after partner for collaboration. In the same vein, if your contributions are consistently minimal, then you will be less sought after which will lower your frequency of publication. In essence, the current system already correlates rewards with the quality of one's contributions. Thus, the proposed changes do not affect how one garners reputation. Instead, I think the subtext is that the current body of research papers could be significantly improved, but isn't because there is no system in place to revise them in a distributed manner.
jessriedel 16y ago
To elaborate on what nocipher said: The problem is not that people are getting their names on projects to which they didn't contribute much[1]. The problem is that hiring committees only care about new scientific works you are producing and not about other ways to contribute to science such as fixing typos, pedagogy, etc. If you want to incentivize such work, you either need to change the criteria upon which universities hire (unlikely) or give supplementary rewards such as cash prizes (possible). [1] Yes, there are times when it is hard to tell who contributed what to a scientific work. And sometimes people get too much/little credit. But this isn't a massive issue, nor is it something that can be fixed by adopting an OSS culture. Software is often much more modular than science is, so it is often possible to put individual names on commits. But at those times when software is more like science--such as when several smart people are sitting around designing over-arching ideas/structure/strategy for a large project--then software faces a similar difficulty in teasing out individual contribution.

by Cushman 16y ago

nocipher 16y ago

I fail to see how it changes things in a fundamental way. Having your name on a paper is supposed to mean that you contributed to the results of that paper. This is how you build up your reputation: you publish lots of relevant results. This is only possible if you continue to work and publish, which in turn makes you a more sought after partner for collaboration. In the same vein, if your contributions are consistently minimal, then you will be less sought after which will lower your frequency of publication. In essence, the current system already correlates rewards with the quality of one's contributions. Thus, the proposed changes do not affect how one garners reputation. Instead, I think the subtext is that the current body of research papers could be significantly improved, but isn't because there is no system in place to revise them in a distributed manner.

jessriedel 16y ago

To elaborate on what nocipher said: The problem is not that people are getting their names on projects to which they didn't contribute much[1]. The problem is that hiring committees only care about new scientific works you are producing and not about other ways to contribute to science such as fixing typos, pedagogy, etc. If you want to incentivize such work, you either need to change the criteria upon which universities hire (unlikely) or give supplementary rewards such as cash prizes (possible). [1] Yes, there are times when it is hard to tell who contributed what to a scientific work. And sometimes people get too much/little credit. But this isn't a massive issue, nor is it something that can be fixed by adopting an OSS culture. Software is often much more modular than science is, so it is often possible to put individual names on commits. But at those times when software is more like science--such as when several smart people are sitting around designing over-arching ideas/structure/strategy for a large project--then software faces a similar difficulty in teasing out individual contribution.