If you are a researcher who prefers to conduct your research in an "competitive" work environment, do you prefer "weak competition" or "intense competition" and why?
Dennis
Dennis Mazur
Most of the times good research if it is not published in a famous publication will remain anonymous. From my point of view it is not the number of articles or publications done in a year that determine the level of the competition. Publications are subject to evaluation on the basis of impact, number of citations, number of people that debate over the findings etc. Therefore it is not that the competition is weak or strong, from my point of view, it all end up to the bottom line and the financial resources one has at his disposal.
In order to be successful you have to invest a lot in order to become recognized in the field of study you are publishing but that comes at a higher cost ( publication fees, conference fees, travelling costs etc). Articles are evaluated based on the publication they appear in (an ISI article has a better impact then a B+ one) but it may also imply more work in order to publish in a journal with a better impact factor (the evaluation is more strict and may take more time before you know if the article is accepted or not, it may imply a "premium" costs etc ).
The problem with competition in research is there is no universal tool for measuring productivity. If you use number of publications, in my discipline a person doing monitoring studies can publish 20 to 30 articles per year, whereas in my research interest 5 articles will be impressive. If you use publishing in Nature, Science or other elite journals, you will find not all disciplines have access to such journals no matter how impressive the work - all research disciplines are equal but some research disciplines are more equal than others.
Competition is good if research field was a perfect capitalistic market. Because competition would force us to do better, find innovative ways of doing research and improving our productivity. But questions on tenure, grants, citation bias, publication bias, etc. show its a pipe dream.
Most of the times good research if it is not published in a famous publication will remain anonymous. From my point of view it is not the number of articles or publications done in a year that determine the level of the competition. Publications are subject to evaluation on the basis of impact, number of citations, number of people that debate over the findings etc. Therefore it is not that the competition is weak or strong, from my point of view, it all end up to the bottom line and the financial resources one has at his disposal.
In order to be successful you have to invest a lot in order to become recognized in the field of study you are publishing but that comes at a higher cost ( publication fees, conference fees, travelling costs etc). Articles are evaluated based on the publication they appear in (an ISI article has a better impact then a B+ one) but it may also imply more work in order to publish in a journal with a better impact factor (the evaluation is more strict and may take more time before you know if the article is accepted or not, it may imply a "premium" costs etc ).
"Weak" or "Intense" competition should not be an issue. The competition should be healthy. When we know someone is working in a particular topic in our group, we do not touch that. Rather we help author concerned in all possible ways.
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