In an article in University World News sept 7th the authors, Altbach and de Wit, argues that too much academic research is being published. See http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20180905095203579
All universities want to resemble the highest ranked and demands journal publications from their PhDs (instead of monographies), their faculty knows that ”publish or perish” is the rule, etc. This causes overload of submissions to the most highly ranked journals and an unsustainable stress on the peer review system. Predatory journals exploit the demand to be published. At the same time, I would like to add, there are probably fewer and fewer serious readers of many published papers, and authors seem sometimes only browse other papers to produce supporting references for what they are writing.
But I cannot agree with the authors solutions: to concentrate research resources so only some highly ranked universities produce new research. What is your view? (Read the article)
Well, the rule I actually stood by was "publish and perish." Which is a little harsher, but no less true for many....
Too much crap is published. Why? Blame the universities, blame academic vanity, blame the publishers, blame the internet..on and on.
The fact remains that we know which the best and worst journals are. Concentrate on the former, discard the latter, give a little thought to the inbetweenies. Actually read the stuff submitted by applicants for academic posts!!! Radical, I know....
Remember, as people get older they might not was the agravgation of publishing "well". Simpler methods are readily available.
Christopher NOCK
Well, the rule I actually stood by was "publish and perish." Which is a little harsher, but no less true for many....
Too much crap is published. Why? Blame the universities, blame academic vanity, blame the publishers, blame the internet..on and on.
The fact remains that we know which the best and worst journals are. Concentrate on the former, discard the latter, give a little thought to the inbetweenies. Actually read the stuff submitted by applicants for academic posts!!! Radical, I know....
Remember, as people get older they might not was the agravgation of publishing "well". Simpler methods are readily available.
Christopher NOCK
Hi Sabine!
It's busier, but is it more competitive? As a very old lag, I might like to think that, with so many grad students about, average standards today are a little lower. The highest standards are about the same. The lowest standards are down the toilet somewhere. But, that might just laggitis kicking in....?
As for original work, a good search of RG just might reveal some...try the "Ns"!!!😁🇬🇧
NOCK
I feel that we should not complain over too much information, just find good ways to handle it.
What about this with ”publishing”? It was 30 years ago a fantastic thing to make ones paper available in a journal spread over a large number of universities - on paper. Journals could not afford (and did not want to) to print crap and had a rather restrictive peer review process, run mainly by experienced researchers. Today (nearly) all distribution is digital and the researcher can publish a paper him-herself on the web in a blink of an eye. However, we still want a journal to do that for being counted as research, with a peer review process (now not always managed by wizards), and have to wait a year or two. Sometimes the paper improves by this, sometimes it is more unclear.
Can’t we start all over in some new way? (As an example - a wiki article can reach a good quality by first being published in a draft-like version, then read, criticised and changed into something better. )
I'm sure it's quite that desperate Anders, yet!
It's true that up until a little while ago to publish in a high quality refereed journal was both exciting and the Holy Grail. International reputations were established. Great kudos were given where deserved. But some of the stuff published that way was still crap!
In fact, in my own life, publishing in quality refereed journals did me little good in terms of an academic career. So little that I gave it up (the publishing) for a decade. When I returned to it, I published where and when I could in books and journals overseen by "Scientific Committees" in France. A different process entirely, but some of that work was at least as good as the earlier stuff! And more enjoyable to produce.
When I was looking for work, I found universities looked at quantity not quality. I often wondered why. I concluded that, by and large, they couldn't judge quality. They never read the stuff submitted, because they had no one to judge it properly! So they counted it instead...!!! Indeed, they rarely wanted the "best" candidate with the best publications. Too embarrassing for the lesser lights they had previously hired en masse. Or am I being unkind? Probably not....
So not all is lost if only because things were never that good for all!
NOCK
i would eliminate public funding, public institutions, and peer-(p)review process. i would let anybody to publish anything. i don't care whether or not this can be achieved on the planetary scale. It can be achieved by myself for myself: by refusing public funding for my research.
I sort of agree with the view of Nock. I feel that though some very good works are also coming up they are too few in comparison to the crap. The reason are many including garbage journals, incompetent reviewers and one more fact is perhaps the complacency of the editorial members in many cases.
Yes, I agree with you dear anders that too much academic research is being published today. Big Percentage of it is not good or without new idea.
https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ihe/article/view/10767/9258
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Papers