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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)

#51

Post by higeorge13 »

londons_explore wrote: post #19
stenl wrote: post #5

John PA Ioannidis, one of the authors of that paper (which is from 2018 btw) has published an average of 60 papers per year for the last decade, and more than 1100 in total ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Ioannidis+JPA&filter=d... ). I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even have time to read most of his own papers.

A paper is only a few pages long usually. A read of a paper takes perhaps half an hour. And in that time, you might even be able to check some references, make a few edits, or drop an email to someone to gather some more results for a figure or two. Doing this once a week seems very reasonable.

Proof reading and correcting typos shouldn’t be considered authoring, but it is what it is.

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

#52

Post by bell-cot »

throw_pm23 wrote: post #44
bell-cot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Oh, yes. The long and pompous drivel that scientific papers seem to be padded with these days makes me wonder if they're all busy gaming "paper length" metrics, playing to an imagined audience of clueless could-be-donor billionaires, or what.

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

#53

Post by sillysaurusx »

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?

Most research amounts to nothing. It’s why they call it research. But we can’t get the 1% of breakthroughs without the 4% of hits, 93% meh’s, and 2% frauds. Not to mention that much published research is mistaken.

Above all, it’s hard (at least in the sciences). So anyone willing to follow the scientific method and package their results into a whitepaper is doing good science. The scientific method is ultimately the only requirement.

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

#54

Post by hutzlibu »

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]

"and million of dollars of funding talks to your future wife, she will be in love with him and not you, so you lost the competition."

Or not, because while you were always working, working, working, you never had the chance to build up a real relationship and that golddigger who does one day agree to merry you, will exploit you and leave you broken and divorced in a ditch, with children in therapy, because you noticed too late, because you were occupied.

Life is also a competition, but not just that. Mainly it is about finding a healthy balance.

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

#56

Post by Maken »

jonp888 wrote: post #25
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

This is painfully accurate.

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

#57

Post by jononomo »

I was recently listening to a podcast in which a professor was introduced as being the author of over 250 articles. I immediately discounted the guy as likely an unserious thinker. (It was Tim Rasinski being interviewed on The Literacy View podcast). Sure enough, he didn't impress me at all as the interview progressed -- apparently he is just a guy who has learned how to play the academic game and can't think critically.

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

#58

Post by elashri »

> The vast majority of hyperprolific authors (7,888 author records, 86%) published in physics. In high-energy and particle physics, projects are done by large international teams that can have upwards of 1,000 members. All participants are listed as authors as a mark of membership of the team, not for writing or revising the papers. We therefore excluded authors in physics.

While this is true in general, I'm part of one of these Collaboration at LHC and I find that publishing a paper is taking a lot of effort and revision (not talking about actual research) and would involve a couple of hundred people between the review committee, physics group and the collaboration at large who post questions, comments and revise every bit of information. It is amazing to always see how to final product is almost very different from the first draft in each aspect. This process on average takes a couple of months. I will confess that I'm guilty of not participating into this duty for each paper but I'm always sure that there are many people who will do that.

Regarding authorship for papers I did not involve in writing directly, I'm fine with that norm in our field because that's fair. Most of the work needed to produce results is not doing the actual analysis for the data but operating this huge machine and the service work (software development, control room shifts, hardware R&D Data quality …etc) is most of the work.

People usually find this strange (more polite description of them saying it is absurd) but let's be real. The era of individual contribution (or small group) in experimental particle physics had almost ended by the cathode rays.

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

#59

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

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.

There is a big difference between articles in humanities that are published and those published from labs. Humanities papers are way less templated and usually aren't co-authored in the same way as lab papers are. Humanities papers also often lead the reader through the research and argument, while lab papers often simply state findings or report results. Humanities publishing has its own....idiosyncrasies though, like how certain journals become private fiefdoms for certain intellectual movements or approaches that never subject themselves to real scrutiny. The same citing hijinks also happen. It's a very "I'll pat you on the back if you'll pat mine" system.

There are also different expectations of style, for lack of a better word for it. Humanities papers are often held to certain aesthetic standards that are different than lab papers.

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

#60

Post by foobarian »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #38
foobarian wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Are those junior members learning to do Nobel-caliber work or are they learning to pad their CVs by publishing tons of low-impact papers?

Therein lies the rub. It depends a lot on the person. There are tons of tenured professors who kick back and don't do much, and then there are those who can't help but keep working hard. I think the hope is that you will luck into getting some of the latter in your group, so even if training the others might end up a waste, some will end up successful. Kind of like the VC model.
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