4 ms·
you wouldn't believe how many people cite that paper as "Wulf et al." when that's practically more characters than saying "Wulf and McKee" I notice these thing
by deater 5mo ago
you wouldn't believe how many people cite that paper as "Wulf et al." when that's practically more characters than saying "Wulf and McKee"
I notice these things a bit more as she was my PhD thesis advisor
- marricks 5mo agoThere's only two authors! That's so rude!
- bjourne 5mo agoWhy? For all the automatic academic score tracking systems it doesn't matter one bit if it is Wulf et al. or Wulf and McKee.
- john_strinlai 5mo agoits about respect, not about academic score tracking systems
- mattkrause 5mo agoThe automated ones don't care, but it absolutely matters for the informal credit assignment process that actually runs academia. I really wish we had a better way to "name" papers. Big clinical trials often have an acronym (often hilariously forced: "CXCessoR4"). That takes the emphasis off (one) lead author but it's implausibly hard to make up one for every research paper.
- bjourne 5mo agoWhat "informal credit assignment"? It's automated and it runs entirely on quantitative data.
- remexre 5mo agothe one where i think of a particular piece of work, and i know who did it, then tell a student "oh, see if $author's group published anything else about this." i'm not using software for this if this is off the top of my head, and it's the sort of thing that, at scale, hurts the forgotten author and their students
- bjourne 5mo agoI see. The informal credit assignment process is something that only runs inside of your head.
- ohnei 5mo agoRight, academics who deligate their entire intellectual life to GPT will be unaffected.
- bjourne 5mo agoRight, and everyone else unaware of this made up "informal credit assignment process".
- ohnei 5mo agohttps://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- mattkrause 5mo agoI don’t know that everyone would label it like that, but it’s inarguably true that success in academia comes from your reputation/name recognition. Metrics are often attempts to formalize this but they’re not how most people actually make decisions: nobody is inviting seminar speakers or choosing collaborators because they have a high h-index. If anything, it goes the other way: name recognition gets you invited to speak or collaborate, which makes more people aware of your work, which boosts metrics.
- 5mo ago
- halJordan 5mo agoSo we're talking about this woman's contribution. And you're talking about how the system is depriving her of recognition. Do you see the inherent tension in what you're claiming vs the lived experience of everyone in this post (including you!)?
- mattkrause 5mo agoCmon…We’re saying that a certain style of reference gives her less credit than might be due. Not none at all. One paper doesn’t make a career (she wrote many dozens), it’s not always cited weirdly, and even if it is, some people may remember the coauthors (as they should). But since you mention lived experience, I’ll add that I’ve certainly been asked if I’m "even aware" of results from co-authored papers where my name was listed second—-and I don’t think this is very uncommon experience.
- setgree 5mo agoIt’s also not correct; et al. is conventionally applied to three or more authors (it means “and others,” plural)
- SecretDreams 5mo agoet al should never be applied when only two authors!!!
- fsckboy 5mo ago...unless the second one is named Alfred and is an informal person
- SecretDreams 5mo agoBruce et al
- thaumasiotes 5mo ago> you wouldn't believe how many people cite that paper as "Wulf et al." when that's practically more characters than saying "Wulf and McKee" Wulf et al. Wulf and McKee 35% less isn't usually described as "practically more". It'd be interesting to see someone use the unabbreviated form; I have a hunch they wouldn't know to say "et alia".
- tomjakubowski 5mo agoHow did you arrive at 35% less? The first is 11 characters, the second is 14, and 3/14 is 21%.
- thaumasiotes 5mo agoThat is a good question. As you say, it's 21%. I had the 11 and the 14 correct; I don't remember how I got 35%.