Sabine Hossenfelder has been on about this topic in the field of physics publishing for quite some time now.
It really is a terrible thing, though I can understand how some researchers feel trapped in a system that gives them little if any alternative if they wish to be employed the next year. Not just one thing needs to be changed to fix it.
kaladin-jasnah · 34m ago
Things like citation brokers (paid to cite papers), abuse of power, paper mills, and blackmail (pg. 10) is appalling to me. I have to question how we ended up here. Academia seems very focused on results and output, and this is used as a metric to measure a researcher's worth or value.
Has this always been an issue in academia, or is this an increasing or new phenomenon? It seems as if there is a widespread need to take shortcuts and boost your h-index. Is there a better way to determine the impact of research and to encourage researchers to not feel so pressed to output and boost their citations? Why is it like this today?
Academic mathematics, from what I've seen, seems incredibly competitive and stressful (to be fair, so does competition math from a young age), perhaps because the only career for many mathematicians (outside a topics with applications such as but not limited to number theory, probability, and combinatorics) is academia. Does this play into what this article talks about?
non_aligned · 13m ago
I've seen similar stuff in a couple of other places, including IT back in the 1990s (back when it wasn't nearly as glamorous as it is today).
I think some of this has to do with... resentment? You're this incredibly smart person, you worked really hard, and no one values you. No one wants to pay you big bucks, no one outside a tiny group knows your name even if you make important contributions to the field. Meanwhile, all the dumb people are getting ahead. It's easy to get depressed, and equally easy to decide that if life is unfair, it's OK to cheat to win.
Add to this the academic culture where, frankly, there are fewer incentives to address misbehavior and where many jobs are for life... and you have an explosive mix.
_alternator_ · 7m ago
TLDR: The publication culture of mathematics (with relatively few papers per researcher, few authors per paper, and few citations per paper) makes abuse of bibliometrics easier. The evidence suggests widespread abuse.
My take: I’ve published in well-regarded mathematical journals and the culture is definitely hard to explain to people outside of math. For example, it took more than two years to get my key graduate paper published in Foundations of Computational Mathematics, a highly regarded journal. The paper currently has over 100 citations, which (last I checked) is a couple times higher than the average citation count for the journal. In short, it’s a great, impactful work for a graduate student. But in a field like cell biology, this would be considered a pretty weak showing.
Given the long timelines and low citation counts, it’s not surprising that it’s so easy to manipulate the numbers. It is kinda ironic that mathematicians have this issue with numbers though.
mathattack · 50m ago
Easy to see how social sciences can be games. Much sadder to see Mathematics get gamed too. It provides ammo to folks looking to defund the topics.
aleatorianator · 21m ago
Mathematics did invent game theory, so in that way it simply takes more math to do math which isn't good
It really is a terrible thing, though I can understand how some researchers feel trapped in a system that gives them little if any alternative if they wish to be employed the next year. Not just one thing needs to be changed to fix it.
Has this always been an issue in academia, or is this an increasing or new phenomenon? It seems as if there is a widespread need to take shortcuts and boost your h-index. Is there a better way to determine the impact of research and to encourage researchers to not feel so pressed to output and boost their citations? Why is it like this today?
Academic mathematics, from what I've seen, seems incredibly competitive and stressful (to be fair, so does competition math from a young age), perhaps because the only career for many mathematicians (outside a topics with applications such as but not limited to number theory, probability, and combinatorics) is academia. Does this play into what this article talks about?
I think some of this has to do with... resentment? You're this incredibly smart person, you worked really hard, and no one values you. No one wants to pay you big bucks, no one outside a tiny group knows your name even if you make important contributions to the field. Meanwhile, all the dumb people are getting ahead. It's easy to get depressed, and equally easy to decide that if life is unfair, it's OK to cheat to win.
Add to this the academic culture where, frankly, there are fewer incentives to address misbehavior and where many jobs are for life... and you have an explosive mix.
My take: I’ve published in well-regarded mathematical journals and the culture is definitely hard to explain to people outside of math. For example, it took more than two years to get my key graduate paper published in Foundations of Computational Mathematics, a highly regarded journal. The paper currently has over 100 citations, which (last I checked) is a couple times higher than the average citation count for the journal. In short, it’s a great, impactful work for a graduate student. But in a field like cell biology, this would be considered a pretty weak showing.
Given the long timelines and low citation counts, it’s not surprising that it’s so easy to manipulate the numbers. It is kinda ironic that mathematicians have this issue with numbers though.