5 ms·

> In our opinion, it is difficult to believe that the majority of authors with excessive rates are able to consistently produce large quantities of high quality

> In our opinion, it is difficult to believe that the majority of authors with excessive rates are able to consistently produce large quantities of high quality or groundbreaking research, with their input to each paper being substantial and within norms of what constitutes co-authorship Huh, I thought providing the general direction and sanity-checking the results is the norm of what constitutes co-authorship for a top professor.

mvdtnz 2y ago
Do you think any one person can provide direction and sanity-check the work of more than 5,000 papers in a year? I don't.
- thinkingtoilet 2y ago
  Where did you get the 5000 number?
  - mvdtnz 2y ago
    From the research paper that the article is discussing. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08989621.2024.2445280 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08989621.2024.2... > Namely, rates on T2 of up to 212 publications per year, and 5792 new coauthors per year, compared to up to 28.3 publications per year and 173 new coauthors per year on NL. This is despite that the NL list is weighted with more senior researchers, often at the pinnacle of their careers – and hence – likely to have higher rates.
    - LPisGood 2y ago
      That is 212 papers, not 5000. 5000 is the number of new authors of those 200 papers.
      - Xelynega 2y ago
        Looks like the number is off, but is their point any different with 212 papers? I still think that it would be impossible to give any meaningful support to 212 papers in a year. That's a new paper every 1.72 days.
      - aaplok 2y ago
        Those 200 papers correspond to 4 papers per week, or more than 1 paper every other day for the whole year, weekends and holidays included. Coauthored with thousands of people they'd never published with before. It's a rather incredible rate.
        araes 2y ago
        And that's before you have to try and actually write for grant funding, perform any actual substantial research (that took more than 1.5 days), serve as an editor or reviewer to do any of that "peer reviewed" part, go to a conference on your subject, deal with students, teach, or really anything else with academia. Writing for grant funding alone has already been a big complaint about how long and difficult it can be with limited success rates in a lot of fields. Time constraints of being a reviewer and how much of your own academic time you have to give up has been a major complaint. They're all time consuming. And then a paper / 1.5 days. Really, from having been in academia for a little while, putting out something well thought out once a month seems rather fast. Edit: It would interesting as follow-on research to look at the specifics of suspicious cases. What kinds of methods are being used to "game the system." What kinds of exploits are being employed? Are there common patterns among the suspicious crowd? Why publish 1x when you can publish the same 10x? Copy and paste data from other people's work? "Lorem ipsum" papers that nobody reads? Extensive citation circles where they all cite each other 50x? Graphs / tables that just look like gibberish data? Very obvious LLM use that has many of the common hallmarks and speaking patterns?
        Yoric 2y ago
        Yeah, you're listing some of the reasons I left academia.
anticensor 2y ago
My stance is at least one full concept or one data point or else no authorship to that person.
- baxtr 2y ago
  What if you’re the guy who is keeping the lab running, ie the guy who is securing the funding?
  - dekhn 2y ago
    Simply securing funding and being a manager does not qualify for authorship (based on the read on multiple journals submission policy). I don't think this is universally observed or even really policed, so it's fairly common to see people who really did not contribute anything (even sitting in on a weekly progress report and giving feedback) listed as the last/corresponding author.
    - sgt101 2y ago
      Which should be treated as misconduct. Folks who do this should be shunned by their peers and driven out of academia. It's exploitative and coercive.
      - EA-3167 2y ago
        Unfortunately people like that tend to run academia.
      - sieste 2y ago
        Not as exploitative as the anonymous reviewer report that asked to add 15 additional papers to our lit review ... all by the same author.
        krull10 2y ago
        I’ve had that happen in notes from an editor telling me that in addition to addressing reviewer comments I should cite a whole bunch of their completely unrelated articles when submitting a revision. But I have also been a reviewer in a situation where a supposed broad review article for a preeminent journal completely ignores citing a massive amount of relevant prior work (except, conveniently, the authors’ own work, which in many cases was cited over more relevant and important earlier work), including a large number of my own articles.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
zipy124 2y ago
You are correct, in a large number of fields the PI (principal investigator) goes at the end, the big boss of the lab who manages it and often handles funding and the likes. Similar to the C-suite in a company.
scythe 2y ago
This is a social norm sometimes, but it is very much not sufficient for authorship according to the stated criteria at most journals and ethical standards boards. Usually "authorship" is supposed to mean something like "a substantial contribution to the research content and full approval of the published text". For example, at Medical Physics, an author must: - Have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; AND. - Been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND. - Given final approval of the version to be published.
lumost 2y ago
The issue is that this distorts the perception of what a good researcher does. If the goal is simply to stamp your name on as many papers as possible, and have other papers (perhaps your own) cite those papers…. Then we’re pretty far from incentivizing researchers to do something novel.

mvdtnz 2y ago

Do you think any one person can provide direction and sanity-check the work of more than 5,000 papers in a year? I don't.

thinkingtoilet 2y ago
Where did you get the 5000 number?
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  From the research paper that the article is discussing. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08989621.2024.2445280 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08989621.2024.2... > Namely, rates on T2 of up to 212 publications per year, and 5792 new coauthors per year, compared to up to 28.3 publications per year and 173 new coauthors per year on NL. This is despite that the NL list is weighted with more senior researchers, often at the pinnacle of their careers – and hence – likely to have higher rates.
  - LPisGood 2y ago
    That is 212 papers, not 5000. 5000 is the number of new authors of those 200 papers.
    - Xelynega 2y ago
      Looks like the number is off, but is their point any different with 212 papers? I still think that it would be impossible to give any meaningful support to 212 papers in a year. That's a new paper every 1.72 days.
    - aaplok 2y ago
      Those 200 papers correspond to 4 papers per week, or more than 1 paper every other day for the whole year, weekends and holidays included. Coauthored with thousands of people they'd never published with before. It's a rather incredible rate.
      - araes 2y ago
        And that's before you have to try and actually write for grant funding, perform any actual substantial research (that took more than 1.5 days), serve as an editor or reviewer to do any of that "peer reviewed" part, go to a conference on your subject, deal with students, teach, or really anything else with academia. Writing for grant funding alone has already been a big complaint about how long and difficult it can be with limited success rates in a lot of fields. Time constraints of being a reviewer and how much of your own academic time you have to give up has been a major complaint. They're all time consuming. And then a paper / 1.5 days. Really, from having been in academia for a little while, putting out something well thought out once a month seems rather fast. Edit: It would interesting as follow-on research to look at the specifics of suspicious cases. What kinds of methods are being used to "game the system." What kinds of exploits are being employed? Are there common patterns among the suspicious crowd? Why publish 1x when you can publish the same 10x? Copy and paste data from other people's work? "Lorem ipsum" papers that nobody reads? Extensive citation circles where they all cite each other 50x? Graphs / tables that just look like gibberish data? Very obvious LLM use that has many of the common hallmarks and speaking patterns?
        Yoric 2y ago
        Yeah, you're listing some of the reasons I left academia.

anticensor 2y ago

My stance is at least one full concept or one data point or else no authorship to that person.

baxtr 2y ago
What if you’re the guy who is keeping the lab running, ie the guy who is securing the funding?
- dekhn 2y ago
  Simply securing funding and being a manager does not qualify for authorship (based on the read on multiple journals submission policy). I don't think this is universally observed or even really policed, so it's fairly common to see people who really did not contribute anything (even sitting in on a weekly progress report and giving feedback) listed as the last/corresponding author.
  - sgt101 2y ago
    Which should be treated as misconduct. Folks who do this should be shunned by their peers and driven out of academia. It's exploitative and coercive.
    - EA-3167 2y ago
      Unfortunately people like that tend to run academia.
    - sieste 2y ago
      Not as exploitative as the anonymous reviewer report that asked to add 15 additional papers to our lit review ... all by the same author.
      - krull10 2y ago
        I’ve had that happen in notes from an editor telling me that in addition to addressing reviewer comments I should cite a whole bunch of their completely unrelated articles when submitting a revision. But I have also been a reviewer in a situation where a supposed broad review article for a preeminent journal completely ignores citing a massive amount of relevant prior work (except, conveniently, the authors’ own work, which in many cases was cited over more relevant and important earlier work), including a large number of my own articles.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

zipy124 2y ago

You are correct, in a large number of fields the PI (principal investigator) goes at the end, the big boss of the lab who manages it and often handles funding and the likes. Similar to the C-suite in a company.

scythe 2y ago

This is a social norm sometimes, but it is very much not sufficient for authorship according to the stated criteria at most journals and ethical standards boards. Usually "authorship" is supposed to mean something like "a substantial contribution to the research content and full approval of the published text". For example, at Medical Physics, an author must: - Have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; AND. - Been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND. - Given final approval of the version to be published.

lumost 2y ago

The issue is that this distorts the perception of what a good researcher does. If the goal is simply to stamp your name on as many papers as possible, and have other papers (perhaps your own) cite those papers…. Then we’re pretty far from incentivizing researchers to do something novel.