4 ms·
There are professors at top institutions that publish more than a paper per week. Obviously they are not contributing with much more than just stamping their na
by nextos 6y ago
There are professors at top institutions that publish more than a paper per week. Obviously they are not contributing with much more than just stamping their name as last authors. Least to say, this is completely ridiculous.
- Calamity 6y agoHaving the citation's impact on one's H-index decay with author position would cause an interesting stir to the "academic game". I wonder if we would start seeing supervisor's bully for first authorship.
- lumost 6y agoThis would be the inevitable outcome. Currently the first author did the work, and the last author supported in some way (such as by supervising). This is purely by convention.
- sn41 6y agoH-index should go away, it cannot be fixed. Traditionally, academics have been encouraged to publish in prestigious venues. Metrics like H-index do not take this into account.
- ramraj07 6y agoComing full circle much? The h-index was touted as a better metric than judging someone’s paper by the merit of the journal since high profile researchers would get their papers in NSC easily even if it never served a purpose. The h-index is definitely less gameable than you think - the only effective way to game the h-index is to become completely illegitimate in your publishing, using farms like above. That would be easily identified if anyone even vaguely related to the field tries to read the titles and journal names.
- sn41 6y agoThere are moderate tools like multi-round double blind reviews to resolve such issues. A tool which was used to resolve issues among chemists and biologists is now running rampant over fields which do not have a high volume of citations. Mathematics is suffering, for example. An Annals of Math paper might have fewer citations than a paper in Journal of Applied Statistics. But the prestige is incomparable.
- sgt101 6y agoSo what's the problem there? The person going for a job in a maths department with an Annals of Maths citation isn't going to be in a competition with someone with a big H-index because of applied stats papers... the committee won't look twice at the statistician! On the other hand if the Annals of Maths person wants a job in stats then presumably they will also have stats papers (and the stats people will be keen to know.. "what about your amazing career in pure math?!"
- jonathanstrange 6y agoThe evaluation of scientists and academic staff needs to be done by independent evaluation panels based on a (subjective) assessment of the scientific merits of their publications. In every reasonable place it's also done that way. In addition to this, funding for time-limited contracts has to be treated similar to investment funding, i.e., evaluate very carefully in the beginning and do an internal evaluation of the performance afterwards (mostly to evaluate the initial evaluation) but avoid continuous evaluation and mostly only advise/help during the contract period. The worst thing to have is indicator counting of any kind. The system will be swamped with mediocre, sometimes almost fraudulent scientists who game it. (It's just too easy to game the system: Just find a bunch of friends who put their names on your papers, and you do the same with their papers, and you've multiplied your "results".) H-Index is also flawed. In my area in the humanities papers and books are often quoted everywhere because they are so bad. I know scholars who have made a career by publishing outrageous and needlessly polemic books and articles. Everybody will jump on the low-hanging fruit, rightly criticize this work, the original authors get plenty of opportunities to publish defences, and then they get their tenure. Publishers like Oxford UP know what sells and are actively looking for crap like that.
- gumby 6y agoAs the authors are typically listed alphabetically that would unwittingly have an inhumane result. (My name moved from the end of the alphabet to the middle when I married. I was amused that it actually makes a difference).
- bostonfincs 6y agoAuthors aren’t usually listed alphabetically in academic papers though, typically it is relative contribution (not saying alphabetical never happens though).
- icelancer 6y agoAlso depends on the journal; some have the most impactful author stated last.
- nickswalker 6y agoIt differs by research area. For example, the mathematics authorship convention is alphabetical. Computer science is by contribution.
- asciident 6y agoComputer science theory papers are alphabetical as well.
- cozzyd 6y agoIn large collaborations, this is common. See e.g. https://inspirehep.net/authors/1222902?ui-citation-summary=true https://inspirehep.net/authors/1222902?ui-citation-summary=t...
- ChainOfFools 6y agodifferent fields have different conventions regarding what a given authorship position implies in terms of work contributed to the paper. Some place very high weight on the last named author, others on first named, among many other permutations and subtleties. There's no single rubric for deriving relative effort from author name position. part of this is contingent upon citation formats used in different kinds of publications (and thus different fields) where long lists of authors are condensed to one two or three at most. this is not even getting into more locally scoped, second order inputs such as any given department's traditional handling of advisor vs. grad student power dynamics.
- ta988 6y agoLook at Didier Raoult in France. He is a perfect example
- 77pt77 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult#Citations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult#Citations
- 77pt77 6y agoThis varies a lot according to the area. Quite common in Biology and Chemistry. Less common in theoretical physics.
- andi999 6y agoComing up with a good problem to work on is the most difficult part in science.
- amitport 6y agoQuite the contrary, at least in computer science. Tons of good problems, actually developing a solution (and the theory and experiments to back it) is usually orders of magnitute more difficult. Another point is that to get to this volume the "researcher" probably have many papers that he/she had no part in. Not even formulating the problem. In the case of physicians I encountered senior doctors who just conditioned using the department's medical statistics on adding him/her as author. That is, every paper that uses this specific public medical data adss this author regardless of their contribution... (To be clear they not even necessarily have anything to do with the data collection beyond what they already are obligated to do at the hospit, just happen to be responsible on managing access it)
- andi999 6y agoGood problem also means it fits the reachable skill level of the person doing the work. Do we agree on that stuff like P=NP for example is not a good problem?
- api 6y agoThose remind me of the entrepreneurs who founded "dozens of companies." Yeah... maybe if you were on a meth IV drip and lived for 200 years...