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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)

#41

Post by lostlogin »

foobarian wrote: post #27
throw_pm23 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> if even one of the primary authors ends up with Nobel-caliber work once in their career, was that worth it?

It would seem likely that the answer to that is yes, and that none got the prize and it wasn’t worth it.

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

#42

Post by canjobear »

graymatters wrote: post #31

It’s time to do something about that. Isn’t it time to have two categories of authorship on (scientific) papers - authors and enablers? The latter is for people who organized, supervised and otherwise enabled the work etc. Other suggestions how to address the problem are welcome.

In many fields there is an informal distinction based on author position. The first author(s) likely did most of the work and/or wrote the paper. The last author(s), usually called senior authors, are the ones who organized, supervised, etc.

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

#44

Post by throw_pm23 »

bell-cot wrote: post #35
make3 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Quite true. Though for Erdős, the huge number of coauthors was far more a side-effect of his, um, "extreme itinerant" professional lifestyle.

Also quite many of his papers are 1-2 pages long, without much of "motivation" or "context", in the form:

- Here is a problem that was posed by ... . Here is our solution to it. Here are some follow-up questions.

(Which is actually refreshing and nice, just different from a current typical paper.)

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

#45

Post by poulpy123 »

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 need the source of this copy/pasta

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

#46

Post by ZhangSWEFAANG »

throw_pm23 wrote: post #21
ZhangSWEFAANG wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

[flagged]

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

#47

Post by ZhangSWEFAANG »

isoprophlex wrote: post #29
ZhangSWEFAANG wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

[flagged]

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

#48

Post by ZhangSWEFAANG »

jccalhoun wrote: post #43

I got my phd in the humanities and from the outside the sciences have always looked like a pyramid scheme. I'm sure it isn't but it is hard to imagine actually collaborating with so many people on so many papers.

[flagged]

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

#49

Post by throw_pm23 »

ZhangSWEFAANG wrote: post #46
throw_pm23 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Aren't we all.

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

#50

Post by candu »

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]

For others replying here: looking through this user's comment history, pretty much all of their comments are equally snarky and troll-ish.

For the parent: this is very much not appreciated here on HN. Take it elsewhere.

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