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Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

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Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#21

Post by throw_pm23 »

ZhangSWEFAANG wrote: post #15
throw_pm23 wrote: post #3

As an academic (CS), I'm able to write one or two decent papers a year, in a very good year, three. Looking at colleagues who write ten a year I already get existential angst, and have to actively tell myself that life is not a competition and some things are more important. Writing fifty (while also teaching, writing grants, mentoring students, etc.) seems mind-numbing, even just in terms of the relatively routine t…

[flagged]

I used to think like that as a teenager, but honestly I think it is a self-limiting philosophy. Some may find extreme industriousness attractive though. In communist countries they used to give a "Stakhanov-prize" to people who produced the most items in a week or month.

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#23

Post by make3 »

throw_pm23 wrote: post #3

As an academic (CS), I'm able to write one or two decent papers a year, in a very good year, three. Looking at colleagues who write ten a year I already get existential angst, and have to actively tell myself that life is not a competition and some things are more important. Writing fifty (while also teaching, writing grants, mentoring students, etc.) seems mind-numbing, even just in terms of the relatively routine t…

they don't do any of those tasks though, people who do 50 papers a year are in very senior roles & only mentor, attend a few meetings, read the paper once or twice at best and propose modifications maybe. the question of what constitutes authorship is really more the question here

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#24

Post by cloogshicer »

ZhangSWEFAANG wrote: post #15
throw_pm23 wrote: post #3

As an academic (CS), I'm able to write one or two decent papers a year, in a very good year, three. Looking at colleagues who write ten a year I already get existential angst, and have to actively tell myself that life is not a competition and some things are more important. Writing fifty (while also teaching, writing grants, mentoring students, etc.) seems mind-numbing, even just in terms of the relatively routine t…

[flagged]

Can't tell if this is serious or satire. Well done.

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#25

Post by jonp888 »

snapcaster wrote: post #2

So what's going on here? It seems fraudulent but also "published paper" and "authorship" seems to be poorly defined terms with no clear consensus on what it means

Here's a quick guide: https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=562

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#26

Post by londons_explore »

GalenErso wrote: post #11

Related. The solutions to all our problems may be buried in PDFs that nobody reads: https://archive.vn/N6Gvy Does Anyone Ever Read PDFs? https://priceonomics.com/does-anyone-ever-read-pdfs/ "Nearly one-third of World Bank reports have never been downloaded, not even once.”" "Over 30% of the 1,611 policy reports published from 2008 to 2012 were never downloaded. As each report costs an average of $180,000 in terms of…

> Nearly one-third of World Bank reports have never been downloaded, not even once.

This surprises me... At the very least, most search engines download PDF's to index them. And the web archive crawler would probably be expected to visit something like the world bank too. And I would guess most governments around the world would have a team of economists which would be expected to have read reports by the world bank.

I can only suspect they were hidden away behind a login-wall or deliberately obscure because they contained information that officially had to be public, but someone wanted to not be revealed.

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#27

Post by foobarian »

throw_pm23 wrote: post #18
version_five wrote: post #9

I did my PhD in a group with ~20 students and postdocs including many co-supervised with some other department. The prof in charge of the group had his name on > 90% of the papers we published, I believe justifiably. He would have read all of them, and written sections where appropriate, and had a hand in directing and organizing the research as well as challenging the results and strengthening the presentation of th…

I was in a similar group a decade ago. At the time, I found it impressive and efficient, but looking back now, I find much of those papers not to amount to much. I wonder what your experience is: were those 30 papers per year good science overall?

Not OP but a thing to consider: the training the junior members gain from the process is valuable too. Those 30 papers may not amount to much, but if even one of the primary authors ends up with Nobel-caliber work once in their career, was that worth it?

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#28

Post by make3 »

bell-cot wrote: post #20

In Mathematics, there is Paul Erdős* - who published >1,500 papers, with 500+ co-authors, in a ~65-year professional career. Though he is recognized as being very, very unusual. And Mathematics has the huge advantage of not needing the labs, equipment, experiments, etc. that restrict pretty much any "science" to a far slower pace. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s#Erd%C5%91s_num...

that's another thing, some people become so famous that having a paper with them is a big mark of prestige (erdos number), and people start to try to add them to papers they only marginally looked in the general direction of at best

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#29

Post by isoprophlex »

ZhangSWEFAANG wrote: post #15
throw_pm23 wrote: post #3

As an academic (CS), I'm able to write one or two decent papers a year, in a very good year, three. Looking at colleagues who write ten a year I already get existential angst, and have to actively tell myself that life is not a competition and some things are more important. Writing fifty (while also teaching, writing grants, mentoring students, etc.) seems mind-numbing, even just in terms of the relatively routine t…

[flagged]

That's not a very kind comment. You can, and should, do better than that to improve the level of discourse on this site above cheap, snarky "cope harder" swipes at someone.

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#30

Post by macleginn »

That sweet bullet point from the Vancouver criteria: ‘Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.’

Seems to be nearly universally violated, no matter how many authors a paper has.

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