I've read a huge book [1] of a broad research on universities in different countries, and this is what the book told. Science metrics, when used to determine s

I've read a huge book [1] of a broad research on universities in different countries, and this is what the book told. Science metrics, when used to determine scientific significance by government officials, become abused. This law was articulated back in 1920s, if I remember correctly. And this is one of the cases. Science was not like this until quite recently -- citation metrics were first used in the 1980s by neoliberal government of the UK (because those in the libertarian political spectrum tend to distrust public sector and love _efficiency_). The idea behind the use of citation ratings was to determine more efficient universities and support them. According to recent studies, this hasn't changed the hierarchy of universities in the UK -- it preserved it and actually made more rigid. As a side effect, there's this publications race. Still, British academia is rather modest in ratings: it only uses them to evaluate all university or a faculty. In countries that are trying to catch up in science, metrics are applied at the level of an individual researcher, and make bonuses or position depend on it. They demand a certain lever of a citation index, and demand papers published in journals no lower than Nth quartile in some ranking. This basically means you must abandon teaching, join as co-author on as many papers as possible. If one makes any good research, they usually split it into several papers over couple of years -- because bonuses. Some join so-called citation cartels, and this is probably one of them. [1] https://ecsoc.hse.ru/en/2016-17-4/192208750.html https://ecsoc.hse.ru/en/2016-17-4/192208750.html