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Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

nature.com

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Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#161

Post by EGreg »

ccalf wrote: post #137
n1231231231234 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when self-citation is OK and when it is not OK should be part of one's academic training/phd training. PLOS gives reasonable citation guidelines, and in this context their Rule 5 is particular relevant: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo...

I find this approach strangely condescending. For example the author says: > Understanding the value attributed to X, Y, and Z in that particular text requires assessment of the rhetorical strategies of the author(s). They could've just said, if you want to know why the author thinks XYZ are important, you need to look at what they are saying about it. I'm a hardcore postmodern leftist, but I don't see how writing in…

What is a hardcore postmodern leftist? You don’t believe in objective truth but make claims as if it exists?

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#162

Post by PeterStuer »

What surprises me is how naive the scientific community publicly pretends to be on these matters.

We 'marketed' science as due to our socioeconomic dogmas vaguely based on completely misunderstood caricatured Darwin ion theory there can be no alternative. We turn science into a quantative metrics game, and by golly, act all surprised that scientists do game the system?

How useful do you think Google Search would be if they just stopped after Pagerank v0.1 and called it a day, then let all the websites 'vote with their links'?

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#163

Post by abdullahkhalids »

hannob wrote: post #21

The core problem here is that universities think that citation statistics are a useful metric to evaluate the quality of the work of a scientist. There's plenty of evidence that this is not the case or that even the reverse may be the case [1], but this idea refuses to die. [1]

What about the metric: count citations from all papers on which you were not a co-author.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#165

Post by ramblerman »

hannob wrote: post #21

The core problem here is that universities think that citation statistics are a useful metric to evaluate the quality of the work of a scientist. There's plenty of evidence that this is not the case or that even the reverse may be the case [1], but this idea refuses to die. [1]

The flip side of that is in the soft sciences. There are so many PHDs walking around in gender studies, sociology that have published papers that were never cited once!

We do need a metric imo, but I agree we don't have a perfect one yet.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#166

Post by maaaats »

einpoklum wrote: post #53

I'm not Italian... and am not meeting any productivity threshold. But my work is incremental, and I obviously don't want to repeat what I said in a different paper, so I cite earlier work in later work. TBH, I don't think it's possible to avoid self-citation unless: 1. Your research is so popular that by the time you need to cite it, it's been surveyed, or improved upon, or otherwise adapted. 2. You switch research s…

It doesn't say that self-citation is wrong per se, but that some people use it to game their citation count to the extreme.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#167

Post by __lm__ »

lonelappde wrote: post #38
melling wrote: post #6

"In 2017, a study showed that scientists in Italy began citing themselves more heavily after a controversial 2010 policy was introduced that required academics to meet productivity thresholds to be eligible for promotion" Cobra Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

Is being cited a productivity metric?

In Italy it is one of the three metrics used. The others are the number of published papers and the h-index.

This is the table of thresholds for associate professorship ("II Fascia") and full professorship ("I Fascia"): http://abilitazione.miur.it/public/documenti/2018/Tabelle_Va... "Numero articoli" is "number of papers", "Numero citazioni" is "number of citations", and "Indice H" is "h-index". The thresholds are different for each research area (e.g., "INFORMATICA" is "computer science").

The topic is actually a little bit more complex, since looking at the metrics is only one step of the process.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#168

Post by o09rdk »

cbanek wrote: post #56

As someone who now works in astronomy, I'm not at all surprised at the high self-citation rate for the field. It is true that a lot of papers are published by large consortiums. For example, at LSST (where I work), if you have been working on the project for 2 years, you are considered a "builder" and added as an author to all major project wide papers. Those papers, which tend to be long and full of great stuff, are…

This probably varies by field, but the "large project" thing can be gamed too.

So, for example, in biomedicine you often have lots of people on a paper who might only read a draft, make some trivial suggestions, and then be added as an author.

As a result, there's this pressure for large groups to form, where everyone is added and everyone can cite each other.

This doesn't mean the projects are bad, but it does lead to individuals with large citation counts primarily because they find ways to add themselves to everything, regardless of their level of effort. People should get credit where it's due, and large projects involve lots of people. But what defines a "project" has become very vague.

I've become extraordinarily disillusioned with academics. Science gets done but the rewards seem to filter preferentially to those who are able to game the system, and the system exists out of a need to make one's self look as productive as possible, in areas where contributions are generally necessarily tiny or nonexistent, even among very competent people, because the problems are hard and because so many people see the same things at the same time.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#169

Post by pupe »

EGreg wrote: post #161
ccalf wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this approach strangely condescending. For example the author says: > Understanding the value attributed to X, Y, and Z in that particular text requires assessment of the rhetorical strategies of the author(s). They could've just said, if you want to know why the author thinks XYZ are important, you need to look at what they are saying about it. I'm a hardcore postmodern leftist, but I don't see how writing in…

What is a hardcore postmodern leftist? You don’t believe in objective truth but make claims as if it exists?

Well you clearly don’t actually know what postmodernism is, so mind your criticism until you read a book.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#170

Post by cbanek »

o09rdk wrote: post #168
cbanek wrote: post #56

As someone who now works in astronomy, I'm not at all surprised at the high self-citation rate for the field. It is true that a lot of papers are published by large consortiums. For example, at LSST (where I work), if you have been working on the project for 2 years, you are considered a "builder" and added as an author to all major project wide papers. Those papers, which tend to be long and full of great stuff, are…

This probably varies by field, but the "large project" thing can be gamed too. So, for example, in biomedicine you often have lots of people on a paper who might only read a draft, make some trivial suggestions, and then be added as an author. As a result, there's this pressure for large groups to form, where everyone is added and everyone can cite each other. This doesn't mean the projects are bad, but it does lead…

I don't disagree with what your saying, but I think LSST's builder concept is actually quite amazing and the opposite side of that coin.

For people building the telescope (think hardware, software, logistics, everything before the science can be done), many of whom are not academics, and don't typically get authorship or write papers, it's great to get credit for working on the project in a formal, public way. You don't even have to edit or provide some kind of task directly related to the paper either, which I agree can get somewhat clique-ish.

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