I would like to highlight another aspect of the academia that has come to the fore in the past 15 years, which is the rapid rise of the publication indices such

I would like to highlight another aspect of the academia that has come to the fore in the past 15 years, which is the rapid rise of the publication indices such as the citations count and H-index. I blame Google Scholar and Analytics. The indices have brought about a number of new problems. The goal in academia is no longer primarily production of science, but mostly maximizing these indices ( see here “I am a bigger guy”). The number of co-authors have as a result greatly increased, with politicians and research managers becoming skilled in putting their names in like tens of papers a year. Savvy junior players are also learning to foster as many “collaboration opportunities” as possible. Another practice is permutation of authors: it costs me nothing to put your name at the end of my paper, and you do the same, so that our citations counts go up. Of course, in practice, I noticed, this often involves minor contributions. I think the ability “to collaborate“ will gradually be an official job requirement. Another striking feature of academia is the pyramidal structure of the system and rent-seeking. The professor collects the credit for the work of the students and postdocs. Of course there is some contribution, but a lot of time it’s commentary. When the researchers leave, the professor can hire new researchers to continue the topic. The credit for the professor adds up to a career on that topic. The career brings new grants, citations, awards, etc, all the while the professor is essentially acting as a manager than a scientist.