This question is based on the following facts (publish or perish):
"Do you feel overwhelmed by the number of research papers in your field?
Do you wonder if you’re missing key ideas that could be critical for your research program? Does it feel like the deluge is only getting worse?
You’re not imagining things. According to research from the University of Ottawa, in 2009 we passed the 50 million mark in terms of the total number of science papers published since 1665, and approximately 2.5 million new scientific papers are published each year.
What’s driving this publication explosion?
At its most basic level, we’ve seen a substantial increase in the total number of academic journals. As of 2014 there were approximately 28,100 active scholarly peer-reviewed journals. Add to this the increasing number of predatory or fake scientific journals, which produce high volumes of poor-quality research, and you have a veritable jungle of journals to wade through.
Another key factor is the sheer number of publishing scientists worldwide, which is increasing at a rate of approximately 4-5% per year. In British Columbia and Alberta alone, we’ve seen the conversion of more than seven colleges to universities in the past decade, and with these changes come new pressures on faculty to publish.
This pressure to “publish or perish”—and the increased competition amongst this growing pool of scientists—has resulted in some researchers becoming what’s termed “salami slicers.”
They divide papers into the least publishable unit in order to lengthen their publication list, increase the chances of being cited, and increase the opportunity to publish in journals with a high impact factor. This further contributes to the volume of papers published."
http://blog.cdnsciencepub.com/21st-century-science-overload/
Over half of decade ago, Price (one of the founders of bibliometrics) predicted that the marginal usefulness of each additional paper will diminish as the volume of research keeps growing. But nobody thought of the pathologies that we are observing now - the predatory journals and the publish or perish pressure caused by the quantification of science. As a result, the volume of research seems to grow, but the quality, relevance, and contribution of an average publication seem to diminish.
I refer to this phenomenon as 'knowledge pollution' - when it is becoming exponentially difficult to find good relevant works in the ocean of 'academic waste.'
Quality is always better than quantity. Research should change society's life for the better, otherwise, it is just printed paper.
Hi,
Yeah, it has to be accepted that there is an excessive number of scientific articles. It may be because, many scholars aspire to hold PhDs sooner to find a better place in the scientific fraternity. Apart from this, to gain reputation people are more focused on increasing their number of articles. As long as they are authentic, it is a healthy trend. If not, it needs to be taken notice of.
I raised this exact same issue in a book review in the New Zealand Journal of French Studies in 2003.
As I said back then, the roots of the problem with the work in question "could be said to encapsulate an ongoing problem in modern scholarship: the need to be continually in print, ready or not. The roots of the problem are largely financial as a glance at (the author's) final acknowledgements will attest.
The scholarship was flawed, but I don't think my review went down well at the time. And clearly the problem has not gone away.
An abundance of knowledge is not new, for this was already the case for the thinkers in the time of the Enlightenment. Leibniz is regarded as the last philosopher who was able to represent the knowledge of his time in the natural sciences and humanities as a universal scholar.
This is by no means only a regrettable "overflow", but the consequence of the increase of education both within the advanced societies and in all countries that had to live long in oppression and colonialism. This, of course, also offers opportunities for new approaches. Everyone knows that the world is more complicated and thus less manageable for the individual. One answer to this problem is to work in teams of scientists.
The revolution in technical knowledge processing has in turn become a means of gaining knowledge much more easily and clearly today than in the past, for example through online information systems. All in all: for an old problem at the same time appropriate answers develop to solve it, at least approximately.
The mass is not decisive, but the quality. The most unreliable and poorest tools today are probably those that attempt to bring about an evaluation through the number of citations or rankings of journals, in the value of which many young scientists have a firm belief, without the contributions themselves ever having been read by the evaluators.
I think and I am sorry to say this is not healthy because all or most of us are scholars or academicians and our universities only related our careers upgrading to publishing the papers and this is in fact very away from the true skills and experiences that we ought to have it and also to just have the required number of published papers that may be low quality ... but only to have the required number only to upgrade ...
Rizk Elazhary
I see in your commentary on the question of the evaluation of scientific achievements more agreement than contradiction to my criticism. I think the existing methods for obtaining rankings and assessments of the scientific significance of a text to a certain extent serve their purpose, but they are by no means valid for all works.
That is why it is necessary to discuss this again and again and to find better methods of validation, at least as a supplement. Many reviewers are in time trouble with their work, and if a contribution is exceptional, they may not be able to recognise its value at all, but use a formal criterion, which has little to do with the content, as a reason to reject the article.
There is every reason to wait a bit with your own publications in order to make a book out of them, this is also evaluated by the editorial staff of the publishing house, but my own ideas can be presented much more differentiated than in a small journal article.
https://www.researchgate.net/project/EXPONENTIAL-KNOWLEDGE-AUTOMATION
Exponentiality is not stable and must end up in something, most probably in singularity as JvNeumann envisioned.
The quantitative explosion is mainly due to science and academia being tied to the (mass) production assembly line.
I can still separate the wheat from the chaff, concerning my professional field of study and action.
True scholarship and creative originality are like a craft, resulting in higher workmannship.
Yes, it is normal in the absence of a fair assessment of the scientific institutions of researchers and their work and competencies.
Publishing is recognized by a neutral third party. Otherwise, science is not monopolized in most science institutes
I agree with my colleagues. The focus should be directed more on the quality not the quantity! Quality research is very useful and crucial in all fields.
This is not a healthy competition... some people just they wanted to show more number ... They threaten people and take the publications and add the names of the person who is not at all involved in the work...it is ridiculously..
and no ethics at all...
I think that due to plethora of knowledge in every field and expansion and opening of new paths in knowledge is growing exponentially and this will leads us to a developed and sophisticated world.thanks
Dear Chris William Callaghan , "Too much exponential generation of information and not enough knowledge- and not enough wisdom" => It is cause and effect of the publishing games in academia where ideas and idea originators are left behind. They value pseudo numbers like citations and collaborations, etc. It's different from the past.
I believe there is a need for a revolution in research to see new generation of scientists, who can make great achievements. there are professors who publish a paper every week , and they do not have any clue about what is written inside the research. I think the promotions and prizes in scientific research should be given based on the innovation not based on the quantity.
Ahmed Ismail Ebada True. And those people have defined the rules. Nowadays, it only depends on your luck to find a good professor to work with.
Here I am sharing a highly entertaining and thoughtful contribution that simply underlines that peer-review is NOT the gold standard but a story, an illusion that is so often repeated that everyone believes in it... https://www.wired.com/story/peer-reviewed-scientific-journals-dont-really-do-their-job
Is it more difficult to find papers that may be applied and solve real-life problems these days? Or, is it only me?
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