All of us have a different view of point when we prepare study on some topics. Some of us try to study only the depth results in the work, whereas other think it must to investigate all results that associated to the topic regardless its difficulty or ease. On the other hand, some scholars focus on both.
What is your opinion?
This is an important question. In addition to the excellent answer given by @ Md. Sarfaraz Alam , there is a bit more to add.
Quality is the most important feature of good papers. A paper with very high quality will stand the test of time and will be remembered long after it is written. By quality, I mean that precise definitions and detailed examples are given. Appropriate definitions lead to theorems. The need for the highest quality is needed in proofs of theorems. The quality of proofs of theorems is measured in terms of concise but accurate deductions from the definitions,
relations and other theorems that precede each proof.
Quantity is definitely not an appropriate goal in writing good papers. It is better to let the size of a paper be a function of the need for narrative and examples that illustrate abstract ideas in a paper.
Quality should be maintain for publishing any articles in a journal. Other hand quantity is not matter, One good article is 10 times better than bad article.
This is an important question. In addition to the excellent answer given by @ Md. Sarfaraz Alam , there is a bit more to add.
Quality is the most important feature of good papers. A paper with very high quality will stand the test of time and will be remembered long after it is written. By quality, I mean that precise definitions and detailed examples are given. Appropriate definitions lead to theorems. The need for the highest quality is needed in proofs of theorems. The quality of proofs of theorems is measured in terms of concise but accurate deductions from the definitions,
relations and other theorems that precede each proof.
Quantity is definitely not an appropriate goal in writing good papers. It is better to let the size of a paper be a function of the need for narrative and examples that illustrate abstract ideas in a paper.
When there is requirement of more number of publications (like by service seeking Ph D student, promotion seeking lecturer), most of us give more emphasis on quantity of publication. After attaining an age when those requirements are not felt, most of us try to concentrate more on quality.
Of course quality.Quantity didn, t represent any interesting matter for me.
ِAnswers by Dr.James F Peters, Md. Sarfaraz Alam and other colleagues are so excellent.
Both of them are of the same importance. It depends, I think, on the nature of the paper itself.
I think that the question should be more precise. What does mean "quantity"?
Prof James F Peters gave a good definition of "quality" and I totally agree with him.
In my opinion the following question would be discussed first: what are the criteria of a good "question of research" or even a "subject of research"?
Only quality will matter as it will stay longer and will make some impact in the particular field of research with which one is working.
Thank you for all of you.
According to the question, I think the good description of quality is given by @ James F Peters ' quality means that precise definitions and detailed examples are given..... '
Also, I can say that quality means make appropriate relationships among the parts of study and make the results obtained move in a great and exciting format.
I mean on quantity, not only the size, that studying more than one matters in the paper without make a complete or satisfied platform for the introduced concepts or notions.
To be more clear... I ask the following questions:
Is "quantity" the contrary of "quality"?
Does "publishing one paper per year (or years)" means "quality production"?!
Does "publishing a lot of paper per year" means "quantity without quality"?!
Dear Prof. Driss Bennis
This is an important inquiry.
Absolutely , "quantity" is not the contrary of "quality".
Quality of your study depends on your ability to choose an idea and then present the associated concepts and notions with it in appropriate way. Also, how can you make a good connections among the topics under your study and supply illustrative examples. Whereas quantity means, the researcher focus on giving concepts and ideas without concentrating with the relationships among them and leaving some of their important features without investigating.
Finally, according to the numbers of publishing papers per year, I think this another issue and it can not be considered as standard for quantity or quality.
Regards
Quality and elaboration of the research work in the presenting paper
@Fausto Galetto: UNFORTUNATELY in Universities, to get "professorship" I saw QUANTITY as more important.
The issues of time, maturity, capability, support and steadfastness enter into picture, when one considers the scope and quantity of research work. For a young researcher, productivity is a daunting issue. Here is how the issues affect the scope and quantity of one's research work.
Time: A beginning researcher with little experience doing research, short bursts in the form of short or medium length papers based on one's doctoral studies is the customary path are customary. Shorter papers not only take less time to write, such papers also give evidence of high productivity, provided the initial pace can be maintained. Some papers written early in a researcher's career have become landmark events. For example, early in his career, K. Borsuk wrote a short paper in 1931 in Fundamenta Mathematicae on retracts. For an overview of Borsuk's papers, see
http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~aar/papers/mardesic.pdf
Maturity: Rarely do young researchers write numerous long papers.
Capability: The old adage applies here: young plants have few leaves. So too with young researchers. For those judging the merits of a young researcher, steady output is more important than voluminous output.
Support: A strong research faculty provides the support that is needed for a beginning researcher. Remember what Isaac Newton once said. [Paraphrase:] My achievements are thanks to my riding on the shoulders of giants.
Steadfastness: Rather than be a paper factory, research with merit depends on following along approximately the same path that one started on, solving problems that belong to the same genre.
Scholarly researchers follow quality in their research paper publications and not a crazy drive for quantity of papers that are substandard and fail to untangled the disturbing knots in the society appropriately.
Both are crusisl, at the beginning of their career, most researchers focus on numbers which is obvious, after being mature the focus moves on quality.
Hence, early career reaserchers should not hesiate to disseminate their findings even if they are not of higher quality.
It is similar to 'growth' and 'development' time-to-time we need to do some adjustment.
I think every single researcher would point quality as their focus even if they focus on quantity--- unwittingly or wittingly.
Instead of answers like "I focus on quality because of reasons..." or "I focus on quantity because of reasons...", a broad debate might be more sufficient.
Apart from the fact that anxiety due to academic promotion criteria, additionally, the scientific community should also discuss these---
- Is quantity a measure of quality?
- Is h-index a sufficient criteria for quality? Is it possible to degrade the quality to one number?
- Does a larger ratio of papers per year imply that one is a high-quality researcher?
- How many papers can a researcher publish in a year? Which amount is possible in a natural flow of life? Are the academical institutions factories of academic papers?
- Is a most expensive experiment means that that experiment is the most quality experiment ever? Or the quality of work is a measure of quality? Of course budget is one of the important factor in order to conduct a research, it is proportional to accessing the necessary resources. The point of this question is on quality of research.
- Public popularity of a topic or the quality of work? Which one of these implies the quality of research?
In my perspective, an experiment in an undergraduate lab course and an experiment at CERN for example, are both academic studies and nothing can disvalue another if they performed seriously.
Both of them are required.
Some time you present the concepts and the other researchers study the interrelations of them in detail.
BUT quality move the community towards.
Dear Dr.Wael A. Al-Saban
To move society to a more advanced stage, it is better to present and study the concepts and their interrelations.
of coursce quality. But do more and more high quality work is the best.
As originally posted by Tareq, "...Some of us try to study only the depth results in the work, whereas other think it must to investigate all results that associated to the topic regardless its difficulty or ease.."
I think one should only include all experiments/discussions strongly supporting/explaining the main results of the study (or what is being claimed in the study).
Dear Nisar K S,
A general assumption would be wrong since I know some esteemed researchers, and quality is a keystone for them. Firstly, one should understand that a researcher neither honest nor not— professionally, academically, or personally. An honest researcher might admit that they do this job for promotion, money, retirement, everyday expenses, or for the scientific progress, simplifying the life, curiosity, solving the mysteries of the nature, etc. It is possible to observe the fact that sometimes researchers concede in order to be tenured.
Whilst the automatic response appears to be quality trumps quantity (and I use the term in the sense of playing bridge and not politics) the preferred goal should be a mixture of both. In essence we are thinking about the communication of ideas and whilst we might be able to do this in one marvellous outpouring of science, more often we produce a synthesis of ideas, collected and collated and on the basis of observations, refined, revisited and ultimately defined we produce a seminal work of which we can be proud. But to aim for that at the outset would be a mistake. And so you might well see a pattern in the individuals journey where apparent quantity is the goal but in fact it is a phase of discovery.
QUANTITY ! Of course !
How do you evaluate the quality of a paper ! -> the number of citation -> another QUANTITY !
Since, the quality cannot be measured easily.
Then try to focus on the QUANTITY !
For a PhD -> get as many papers as you can
if you don't sure that your paper can be a breakthrough .
more papers you have more opportunity for you to get a good job !
For higher academic career, more papers -> more citations -> better position -> better salary !
Forget the QUALITY, only the reviewers and journal editors need to care about it !
Misuse of impact factor, in medical science ,one journal impact factor 40(approx.) whereas about 3 in mathematics. is it correct?
How can we compare mathematics with other subjects as medical, pharmacy, computer science etc. In reference of impact factor.?
Thank you for sharing
Dr @ S. K. Chaubey
and Dr @ Md Mahmud Hasan Mamun
The answer should definitely be quality. However, I have noticed that with the increasing requirement to publish, many tend to submit low-quality papers also to journals. Many universities put requirements to number of journal publications as a condition for defending the PhD thesis. Many get stuck in the process of getting the requested papers published. Therefore many premature papers are submitted and sometimes the ethics behind can be questionable. Co-authors may have almost no contribution to the paper developed. However, it is no easy solution to this because quality is not easy to assess. Counting papers is easier. To publish is also the way to get feedback on the ideas and to improve.
Maybe a good starting point for assessing quality can be the SCI quartile ranking discussed in this question I posted on Research Gate some days ago:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_much_is_the_Science_Citation_Index_SCI_database_used_in_national_evaluation_of_research_proposals
The SCI quartile ranking method ( Q1 - Q4) tenevaluation of research proposals and for assessing quality of researchers for academic positions.
Thank you Dr. @ Murad A. A. Almekhlafi
and Dr.@ Olav Bjarte Fosso
for sharing question
Definitely quality and not quantity. However, universities encourage quantity and faculty are often compared with those who have the highest number of publications.
I agree with @ Amir W. Al-Khafaji and many other comments: definitely quality should be the only criterion.
There are many ways high Education institutions introduce to stimulate the highest number of publication, I'm afraid.
Thanks Dr.@ Amir W. Al-Khafaji
Dr.@ Joanna Gocłowska-Bolek
Dr.@ Ahmed Mahdi and
Dr.@ Arben J Salihu
Most of the answers emphasizes that we should to coordinate between quality and quantity.
When I conduct quantitative research, I always focus on its qualitative dimension as well. Both perspectives are complementary to each other. My PhD, among others, used both perspectives: Book Modele człowieka propagowane w wybranych czasopismach młodzi...
For me the quality of a paper is a function of several items associated with a paper being complete: The subject matter of the paper must be relevant, it must link to the past in a clear and constructive way, it should connect to other disciplines if and only if it is fruitful, it must be motivated - by a need for something - it must present the research question, the task, and the methodology utilized in a very clear way, the results need to be validated and analyzed, and there should be a generous discussion on future possibilities for continued research. All of this can be found in my co-authored paper here: Article “Subben׳s checklist” and the assessment of articles in mathe...
I think considering the quantity of the journals instead of quality is a poor thinking.
When I was a Master, I thought quantity is a very important thing to me. But now I concluded that the paper will increase your value that has read alot and has a high H-index and the only papers with these characteristics are those have high quality.
p.s. Sometime a researcher may write a paper and publish it in a publication, but after a certain time, she/he regrets to publish that work.
The quality is NOT necessarily related to size! Einsteins magnificent physics paper of 1906 (?) was only a few pages long! Those stating quality is a long paper have no idea. A long paper may be proven incorrect for instance or have no relevance to researchers in the future.
Trevor: 1905, to be exact. It does make sense that young scientists focus on the number of papers written; on the other hand, if the framework at the department is a good one, then there is no need to worry that you will not have fruitful scientific discussions that will be positive for your research. To be in a hurry to write a scientific paper and submit it to the quickest turn-around journal is the *most stupid* thing you can do. The best is rather to take the opportunity to present your work all over the place, in order to get feedback, and to READ a lot within your subject as well as in neighbouring ones. You will never again have the opportunity for the unlimited resources - tutoring, courses to take, courses to give, chatting with colleagues over coffee, seminars, ... - so you need to take advantage fully of this opportunity.
Good discussion
Thank you
Prof. @ Piotr T. Nowakowski
Prof.@ Michael Patriksson
Dr.@ Navid Razmjooy
Prof.@ Trevor John Hawkeswood
@Joel Ketha
Dr. Ammar Harmal
You mean that we need to do both.
As most of investigators commented, the job obligations sometimes make the researchers highlight to the two points together. However, I think the researcher should have its excellent achievements beside the other normal works.
Independent researchers can also publish papers and are not under the stress of "publishing and perishing"!
No-one here has actually qualified or determined what "quality" actually means and same for "quantity"! Research should provide original findings on a topic and add to our knowledge on that topic. Nothing to do with "quality" or "quantity".
Dear @ Trevor John Hawkeswood
At the first of this discussion, we pointed out the approximate meaning of "quality" and "quantity". Absolutely, it is not easy to determine the difference between them. However, we can say the qualitative study implies strong, novel and deep knowledge on the topic under study. In this type, the results can not be obtained easily and the flavor of creativity is evident.
Whereas the quantitative study suffices to generalizes other knowledge or to allocate them. In other words, possibilities of researcher does not appear.
If quality is determined by depth of work Ive published quite a few seminal papers in my field (and all at my own private cost I might add). Without my researchers the knowledge about the ecology and biology of Australian Buprestidae (and other areas on entomology) would be still in the dark ages. But many of those papers in which has never been repeated because of the rarity of organisms, would on your classification be classed as poor quality! See where Im coming from?
Trevor: "Research should provide original findings on a topic and add to our knowledge on that topic" - and just this, supplemented with soundness of argumentation and clarity of presentation, is "quality"!
Quality, to got acceptance articles to publishing in referee journals.
Of course quality.Quantity did not represent any interesting matter for me.
In a mature field (such as mathematics or physics) it is very difficult - if not impossible - to write a paper on any major, broad subject that is deep enough to stand the tests of time, without simultaneously tracing the development very clearly; hence, the paper needs to also have a thorough literature review! And we all know that a thorough literature review on a classical subject will have to be very thorough - deep as well as broad, hence long as heck. Ergo sum: high quality implies, entails, a long story told.
Tareq Al-shami, there are numerous factors to be considered when submitting your article to an academic journal including acceptance percentage, time for review, impact factor and more. You should read this article that spells out the relevant considerations in more detail: https://www.aclang.com/blog/right-academic-journal/
Anyone would want to state the meaningful impact of 'Quality' to the acceptance of a manuscript. However, the significance of 'Quantity' cannot be overlooked.
For instance, no matter the quality of information in a paper, if the presentation is seemingly vague, such brevity will affect the accessibility of the information.
Again, if the quantity is more pronounced; redundancy may set it thereby affecting the quality of the paper. It may also not be appealing to the targeted audience.
To this end, it is difficult to mention the most important between the two. But I will that the two should be paid attention to knowing fully well that the effect of one will be modified by the presence of the other.
Short quality papers have more readership since it can be read in a short time.
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