![]() There are some promising signs that science is moving the right direction, albeit slowly. There is a growing awareness - exemplified in articles, essays, conference splinter-sessions, and online discussions - that publish or perish is a problem. Ultimately, we need to recognize that this is an institutional issue operating at all levels, from grant funders to graduate students, and that the only way to solve this is through systematic reform, which takes both time and determination. The have little, if any, incentive to encourage scientists to publish less, as that would directly impact their bottom line.Īnd so the calls for reform of the publish-or-perish model are met with resigned shrugs and exhausted repetitions of this is just the way it is.Īs a scientific community, we prioritize publication above everything else because it’s an easy, lazy way to filter out the rafts of applicants competing for seemingly every open position, grant, and award. The system - an entire hiring, promotion, and award apparatus constructed around the locus of publish or perish - is just too big for any individual to fight.Īnd then there’s the academic publishing machine, which pulls in tens of billions of dollars of annual revenue and enjoys profit margins that would make an oil baron blush. But they can’t change the system from within because they’re too busy just trying to survive: They’re told the rules of the game - publish more than your peers - and if they decide not to play by those rules, they will be passed over in faculty searches for peers who do. Young scientists, on the other hand, typically want a different system and are willing to try new ideas. They won their positions in the current system, and because the system worked for them, they naturally didn’t feel any tremendous urge to change how things work. They were told that they needed to publish a lot of papers, they did, and they got jobs. The senior scientists who advised me years ago to “just keep writing papers,” for instance, were almost certainly giving their honest assessment. ![]() Although most of them mean well, and would probably prefer a more just and sane reward model, the system - an entire hiring, promotion, and award apparatus constructed around the locus of publish or perish - is just too big for any individual to fight. It’s a trap of inertia that has locked in incentive structures for everyone, from first-year graduate students to full professors. I believe that progress in reforming the publication and advancement model in science has stalled because the vast majority of scientists are too entrenched in the current system to do anything about it. What’s going on?Īnd then there’s the academic publishing machine, which pulls in tens of billions of dollars of annual revenue and enjoys profit margins that would make an oil baron blush. While department chairs may argue that they have a holistic approach to hiring and promotion, their recipes can be a closely guarded secret - and only one American university has signed onto the San Francisco Declaration. And yup, you still need to publish to get ahead. Scientists remain suspicious of the integrity of their colleagues’ work. Yet here we are, years later, and nothing much has changed. Notable examples include the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, in which signatories support avoiding mere journal rankings as a measure of research success, or the Hong Kong Principles, which, among other avenues to increase the integrity of science, encourage member institutions to employ a broader range of metrics for measuring success. Some of these same scientists have proposed concrete solutions and recommendations for preventing fraud and protecting research integrity. And critics have also pointed out how publish or perish results in the gaming of the publication system, with scientists seeking to gain as high a “score” as possible - as measured by publication metrics like h-indices - ignoring the principles of scientific integrity in the process. They’ve explained how this pressure has led to the rise of so-called “predatory journals,” which offer little-to-no barriers to publication for a price (although for many scientists outside of mainstream research centers, these journals can be one of the only ways to gain recognition). They’ve noted how the insatiable need to feed the academic beast with ever more papers pushes scientists to sacrifice quality for quantity, leading to rushed, shoddy, and even fraudulent research. Scientists and others have been calling out the shortcomings of this narrow-minded approach for more than a decade. Related Economics GPA Rules Weed Out Students of Color
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