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The science that’s never been cited

nature.com

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Re: The science that’s never been cited

#31

Post by albutr »

olympus wrote: post #9

10% of papers being completely uncited is a little misleading. There is a long tail of papers with 1 or 2 citations that were hardly read beyond the abstract and only cited to up a paper's number of references and had a few good keywords. That research is effectively uncited. The reason for this isn't really surprising: Most research isn't that groundbreaking. Most research is done because if you don't produce a pape…

True, especially when you consider self-citations or citations that are basically a political back-scratch between collaborators.

Re: The science that’s never been cited

#32

Post by credit_guy »

contact_fusion wrote: post #19
olympus wrote: post #9

10% of papers being completely uncited is a little misleading. There is a long tail of papers with 1 or 2 citations that were hardly read beyond the abstract and only cited to up a paper's number of references and had a few good keywords. That research is effectively uncited. The reason for this isn't really surprising: Most research isn't that groundbreaking. Most research is done because if you don't produce a pape…

While I sympathize with your sentiment - indeed much research is done that is incremental, not groundbreaking - your comment does not accurately describe academic research. Full-time scientist positions, whether in academia or elsewhere, are competitive in the extreme. Even with tenure protections, if your hypothetical researcher does not generate impactful research, he or she could expect to be out of a job in relat…

For some who may be less familiar, PI = Principal Investigator. This is how a receiver of a grant is referred to.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_investigator

Re: The science that’s never been cited

#33

Post by yesenadam »

Cyph0n wrote: post #27
yesenadam wrote: post #3

I was looking into a CS academic who claimed to be widely cited. Mostly it was self-citation, in his own papers. He seemed to be the editor of a journal which published a lot of his own papers citing himself. I couldn't help thinking of that looking at the graph of decreasing uncited papers.

If he actually has a journal and does that, he's nothing more than a con artist.

Hehe yes, that's the general conclusion. I'm not sure if I should name names. (Ah well) The guy I'm talking about is Azlan Iqbal, a Malaysian CS professor. I know him as the writer of numerous wacky articles on ChessBase (leading chess news site) about his chess+computer studies. People criticize his shoddy work in the comments, and he says, nay, jeers they're not qualified to judge because they didn't read his uni thesis, dont know CS, dont understand his algorithm, etc. Kind of amazing. I guess he can't be an impostor in CS, but most of his published articles are about computers + chess, with the Dunning-Kruger effect in full flight. I guess you have to know a bit about chess to fully realize how inept his stuff is. But just the embarrassing way he attacks all critics in the comments is remarkable. Although the CB readers largely ignore him now. See the stories with most comments to see what I mean. [0]

Are there a lot of people like this? Or worse?

[0] https://en.chessbase.com/author/azlan-iqbal

Re: The science that’s never been cited

#34

Post by jiggunjer »

greeneggs wrote: post #6
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

I wonder if part of the reason for uncited papers being so low is that authors cite their own papers in subsequent papers. For example, an author is studying field X, and publishes papers. No one cites the first paper. The author then writes a new paper on X, but cites the first paper. Thus, although no one but the author cited the papers that the author wrote, all but the last one have citations in other papers. Ano…

In the methods section, they do say that "first author self-citations were excluded." One of the figures in the Nature article also pulls out self-citations. https://arxiv.org/abs/0809.5250

So if a pair of researchers work on a set of papers, all they have to do is alternate the first author position? Then they never self-cite even if they cite their own work 10 times in a row.

Re: The science that’s never been cited

#35

Post by Cyph0n »

yesenadam wrote: post #33
Cyph0n wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he actually has a journal and does that, he's nothing more than a con artist.

Hehe yes, that's the general conclusion. I'm not sure if I should name names. (Ah well) The guy I'm talking about is Azlan Iqbal, a Malaysian CS professor. I know him as the writer of numerous wacky articles on ChessBase (leading chess news site) about his chess+computer studies. People criticize his shoddy work in the comments, and he says, nay, jeers they're not qualified to judge because they didn't read his uni t…

> Are there a lot of people like this? Or worse?

This guy is something else... I have honestly never seen anything like this before.

Most of his journal papers [1] are not even close to standard journal paper quality. His latest one, titled "A Simple Encryption Method for FTP Passwords", is a two-page document showing how to use a substitution cipher to encrypt FTP passwords... That wouldn't even pass off as a project for an undergrad CS course!

The second journal paper seems acceptable, but I am also not familiar with chess algorithms, so I cannot provide a definite opinion.

Some amazing quotes from [2]:

"Let me begin by saying that the aesthetics model in chess that I developed for my Ph.D. is considered a seminal piece of work in then uncharted waters."

"While I have written many papers, to the extent memory serves, I do not self-publish at all even though admittedly, some of my publications are certainly better or more prestigious than others (like any academic)." (note: you should never self-publish, so there really is no need to "consult" your memory)

"In fact, I am quite confident I could last at least 20 moves even against Magnus Carlsen under tournament conditions."

"[...] I simply do not need to be a chess master as there are many official chess masters only too happy to assist and work with me on projects. I am frankly quite amazed at how open-minded and forward-thinking some of them are."

[1] http://metalab.uniten.edu.my/%7Eazlan/

[2]: https://en.chessbase.com/post/women-and-beautiful-chess-a-re...

Re: The science that’s never been cited

#36

Post by smelendez »

jiggunjer wrote: post #34
greeneggs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the methods section, they do say that "first author self-citations were excluded." One of the figures in the Nature article also pulls out self-citations. https://arxiv.org/abs/0809.5250

So if a pair of researchers work on a set of papers, all they have to do is alternate the first author position? Then they never self-cite even if they cite their own work 10 times in a row.

Yes, but for hiring or tenure the researchers are always being evaluated by others in the field, so there would be a human sanity check.

Plus in practice as others have alluded to it's usually Prof. Alice's lab, where grad students Bob, Cindy, Dave and Evelyn each pursue their own corner of the research, and they're all on each paper with the first author designated appropriately.

Re: The science that’s never been cited

#37

Post by Keysh »

azag0 wrote: post #23
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do note however that many times the first author is not the principal investigator (ie the person that has the funding for the study and is often tenure track faculty) but is often a graduate student or a post-doc. The principal investigator may be in the middle or even at the end of the author list. Thus just excluding first author self-citations is probably inadequate. The chances are high that a grad student or po…

The rule to read the author list, simplified: first author did the work. Last author funded the research. Everyone else contributed somewhat.

That’s only true in some areas (e.g. some biological fields). In other areas (e.g astronomy or much of physics), it’s decreasing order of contribution. In mathematics, the author list is usually alphabetical.

Re: The science that’s never been cited

#38

Post by yesenadam »

Cyph0n wrote: post #35
yesenadam wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hehe yes, that's the general conclusion. I'm not sure if I should name names. (Ah well) The guy I'm talking about is Azlan Iqbal, a Malaysian CS professor. I know him as the writer of numerous wacky articles on ChessBase (leading chess news site) about his chess+computer studies. People criticize his shoddy work in the comments, and he says, nay, jeers they're not qualified to judge because they didn't read his uni t…

> Are there a lot of people like this? Or worse? This guy is something else... I have honestly never seen anything like this before. Most of his journal papers [1] are not even close to standard journal paper quality. His latest one, titled "A Simple Encryption Method for FTP Passwords", is a two-page document showing how to use a substitution cipher to encrypt FTP passwords... That wouldn't even pass off as a projec…

Hehe OK I'm glad you 'enjoyed' that, glad I mentioned it. Yeah, the non-stop bragging and credentials-showing hehe. Oh you didn't get onto the 'good' parts of the women and chess one. Not sure which was 'best', the cringeingly sexist language or the incredibly inept experiment design...

Well, people in the comments (CB comments have never been half so impressive) accurately ripped his work to shreds, not much for me to add. OK, maybe he's somewhat a CS impostor too. :-) It's Dunning-Kruger it its most virulent. Well, it's CB's fault for publishing him there too; people beg them not to, each time they do. I guess no other academics send their stuff there.

Re: The science that’s never been cited

#39

Post by kazagistar »

olympus wrote: post #9

10% of papers being completely uncited is a little misleading. There is a long tail of papers with 1 or 2 citations that were hardly read beyond the abstract and only cited to up a paper's number of references and had a few good keywords. That research is effectively uncited. The reason for this isn't really surprising: Most research isn't that groundbreaking. Most research is done because if you don't produce a pape…

Agreed. The value of seminal papers is in the research they enable... the obscure, uncited branches are the payoff.

Re: The science that’s never been cited

#40

Post by Parcissons »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #24
ISL wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The squirrel cares.

The squirrel is pretty unlikely to care about the relative warmth of its tail vs other tails. I tried to ask my mother once what women typically considered to be the dimensions of female attractiveness (e.g. breast size is something people commonly care about, while toe length isn't). Instead I got an answer consisting of a list of things a woman trying to be attractive would do before appearing in a public place. I…

And that was the groundbreaking moment my hair extensions buisness moved into the park.
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