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If you work on a bigger LHC experiment (ATLAS or CMS) you publish about 100 papers a year. I'm on the "author list" for many hundreds of papers that I contribut

by dguest 6y ago

If you work on a bigger LHC experiment (ATLAS or CMS) you publish about 100 papers a year. I'm on the "author list" for many hundreds of papers that I contributed nothing to and never read. It's actually very difficult to get yourself taken off the author list. I'm sure my H-index is great, but it's completely bogus. Some organizations have stopped counting papers with over some number of authors (i.e. 1000) which is progress, but by that metric I'm the author on zero papers a year.

unixhero 6y ago
Gordon? You're late.
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  Been playing Black Mesa recently, what an awesome remake!
  - unixhero 6y ago
    Yeah it is stunning, isn't it.
contravariant 6y ago
Wait, so all the papers you were part of had more than 1000 authors?
- dguest 6y ago
  Almost every paper I've been a part of. Some of us will do a few independently, but if we want to use LHC data it has to include everyone on the collaboration on the author list.
  - helsinkiandrew 6y ago
    Did a quick search and found the LHC papers, all the ones I looked at have around 1K authors: https://lpcc.web.cern.ch/lhc-data-publications https://lpcc.web.cern.ch/lhc-data-publications
    - dguest 6y ago
      Alice and LHCb are around 1k. ATLAS and CMS are closer to 3k. There are some very cool experiments at CERN that have less than 100 members, which typically take advantage of either existing LHC interaction points[1] or the accelerator chain that feeds the LHC[2]. [1]: https://faser.web.cern.ch/the-collaboration https://faser.web.cern.ch/the-collaboration [2]: https://base.web.cern.ch/content/people https://base.web.cern.ch/content/people
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> Some organizations have stopped counting papers with over some number of authors (i.e. 1000) which is progress You reminded me of this classic paper: https://improbable.com/airchives/classical/articles/peanut_butter_rotation.html https://improbable.com/airchives/classical/articles/peanut_b...
helsinkiandrew 6y ago
> I'm on the "author list" for many hundreds of papers that I contributed nothing to and never read. Are you asked for permission to be added as an author? What if the research was 'bogus' or at least parts of it were incompetently/poorly done and the paper is discredited.
- dguest 6y ago
  We earn the right to be on every paper after working on the experiment for around a year. After that it's automatic: there's theoretically a way to remove yourself from specific papers but no one ever does. It's a convoluted process that has to be approved by the highest ranking person in the collaboration. The question about bogus science is an interesting one: In theory by putting 3000 authors on every paper the collaboration we are ensuring more scrutiny for every result. And indeed, our internal review is far more rigorous than the peer review that we get from the journal. As far as I know, no journal has ever rejected a paper from ATLAS or CMS, which is a pretty good track record for O(thousands) of papers. There is a flip-side, of course: this system also hinders innovation. When 3000 people are "authors" on your result, any one of them can to hold it back from publication. We tend to do choose more conservative techniques in the interest of getting anything at all past internal review. Personally, I don't think aiming for a 100% success rate in publication is a healthy way to do fundamental research. I'd rather see some slightly questionable papers submitted to journals now and then, since lowering the bar to get to that stage would mean making more interesting ideas public.
  - helsinkiandrew 6y ago
    I understand that advances at LHC rely on a huge amount of people and it would be cumbersome if everyone was fighting to get on papers rather than contributing technically. But once you get above a few hundred authors - outside the team that might understand and care what the paper is about, I'm not sure I'd value everyones or anyones contribution, if I was hiring that person into a new research position Perhaps its lucky I don't work in physics funding or recruitment.
    - 6y ago

by dguest 6y ago

unixhero 6y ago

Gordon? You're late.

sammorrowdrums 6y ago
Been playing Black Mesa recently, what an awesome remake!
- unixhero 6y ago
  Yeah it is stunning, isn't it.

contravariant 6y ago

Wait, so all the papers you were part of had more than 1000 authors?

dguest 6y ago
Almost every paper I've been a part of. Some of us will do a few independently, but if we want to use LHC data it has to include everyone on the collaboration on the author list.
- helsinkiandrew 6y ago
  Did a quick search and found the LHC papers, all the ones I looked at have around 1K authors: https://lpcc.web.cern.ch/lhc-data-publications https://lpcc.web.cern.ch/lhc-data-publications
  - dguest 6y ago
    Alice and LHCb are around 1k. ATLAS and CMS are closer to 3k. There are some very cool experiments at CERN that have less than 100 members, which typically take advantage of either existing LHC interaction points[1] or the accelerator chain that feeds the LHC[2]. [1]: https://faser.web.cern.ch/the-collaboration https://faser.web.cern.ch/the-collaboration [2]: https://base.web.cern.ch/content/people https://base.web.cern.ch/content/people

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> Some organizations have stopped counting papers with over some number of authors (i.e. 1000) which is progress You reminded me of this classic paper: https://improbable.com/airchives/classical/articles/peanut_butter_rotation.html https://improbable.com/airchives/classical/articles/peanut_b...

helsinkiandrew 6y ago

> I'm on the "author list" for many hundreds of papers that I contributed nothing to and never read. Are you asked for permission to be added as an author? What if the research was 'bogus' or at least parts of it were incompetently/poorly done and the paper is discredited.

dguest 6y ago
We earn the right to be on every paper after working on the experiment for around a year. After that it's automatic: there's theoretically a way to remove yourself from specific papers but no one ever does. It's a convoluted process that has to be approved by the highest ranking person in the collaboration. The question about bogus science is an interesting one: In theory by putting 3000 authors on every paper the collaboration we are ensuring more scrutiny for every result. And indeed, our internal review is far more rigorous than the peer review that we get from the journal. As far as I know, no journal has ever rejected a paper from ATLAS or CMS, which is a pretty good track record for O(thousands) of papers. There is a flip-side, of course: this system also hinders innovation. When 3000 people are "authors" on your result, any one of them can to hold it back from publication. We tend to do choose more conservative techniques in the interest of getting anything at all past internal review. Personally, I don't think aiming for a 100% success rate in publication is a healthy way to do fundamental research. I'd rather see some slightly questionable papers submitted to journals now and then, since lowering the bar to get to that stage would mean making more interesting ideas public.
- helsinkiandrew 6y ago
  I understand that advances at LHC rely on a huge amount of people and it would be cumbersome if everyone was fighting to get on papers rather than contributing technically. But once you get above a few hundred authors - outside the team that might understand and care what the paper is about, I'm not sure I'd value everyones or anyones contribution, if I was hiring that person into a new research position Perhaps its lucky I don't work in physics funding or recruitment.
  - 6y ago