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Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

arxiv.org

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Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#11

Post by cycomanic »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #3

Things like citation brokers (paid to cite papers), abuse of power, paper mills, and blackmail (pg. 10) is appalling to me. I have to question how we ended up here. Academia seems very focused on results and output, and this is used as a metric to measure a researcher's worth or value. Has this always been an issue in academia, or is this an increasing or new phenomenon? It seems as if there is a widespread need to t…

In my time in academia (~20 years) I have seen the demands and competition increase quite significantly, however talking to older researchers the this really started in the 90s the demands to demonstrate measurable outcomes increased dramatically and funding moved to be primarily through competitive grants (compared to significant base funding for researchers previously). The issue is that while previously it was common for academics to have funding for 1-2 PhD students to look into new research areas, now many researchers are required to bring in competitive grants for even covering part of their salary.

What that means is that researchers become much more risk averse, and and stay in their research area even if they believe it is not the most interesting/imapactfull. You just can't afford to not publish for several years, to e.g. investigate a novel research direction, because without the publications it becomes much much harder to secure funding in the future.

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#12

Post by SilverElfin »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #3

Things like citation brokers (paid to cite papers), abuse of power, paper mills, and blackmail (pg. 10) is appalling to me. I have to question how we ended up here. Academia seems very focused on results and output, and this is used as a metric to measure a researcher's worth or value. Has this always been an issue in academia, or is this an increasing or new phenomenon? It seems as if there is a widespread need to t…

Abuse of power is definitely not new. Professors have historically overworked their grad students and withheld support for their progress towards a PhD or a paper unless they get something out of it. For women it’s extra bad because they can use their power in other ways.

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#13

Post by aoki »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #3

Things like citation brokers (paid to cite papers), abuse of power, paper mills, and blackmail (pg. 10) is appalling to me. I have to question how we ended up here. Academia seems very focused on results and output, and this is used as a metric to measure a researcher's worth or value. Has this always been an issue in academia, or is this an increasing or new phenomenon? It seems as if there is a widespread need to t…

The issue in all fields became significantly worse as developing countries decided their universities needed to become world class and demanded more international publications for promotion. Look at the universities in the table in the paper and you can see which countries are clearly gaming the system. If your local bureaucrats can’t tell which journals are good and which are fake, the fake journals become the most efficient strategy. Even worse, publishers figured out that if you can attract a few high-citation papers, your impact factor will go way up (it’s an arithmetic mean) and your fake journal becomes “high quality” according to the published citation metrics!

Math is particularly susceptible to this because there are few legitimate publications and citation counts are low. If you are a medical researcher you can publish fake medical papers but more easily become “high impact” on leaderboards (scaled by subject) by adding math topics to your subjects/keywords.

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#14

Post by kaladin-jasnah »

cycomanic wrote: post #11
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #3

Things like citation brokers (paid to cite papers), abuse of power, paper mills, and blackmail (pg. 10) is appalling to me. I have to question how we ended up here. Academia seems very focused on results and output, and this is used as a metric to measure a researcher's worth or value. Has this always been an issue in academia, or is this an increasing or new phenomenon? It seems as if there is a widespread need to t…

In my time in academia (~20 years) I have seen the demands and competition increase quite significantly, however talking to older researchers the this really started in the 90s the demands to demonstrate measurable outcomes increased dramatically and funding moved to be primarily through competitive grants (compared to significant base funding for researchers previously). The issue is that while previously it was com…

This is interesting. Is there a reason why this started happening in the 90s?

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#15

Post by thallium205 »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #14
cycomanic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my time in academia (~20 years) I have seen the demands and competition increase quite significantly, however talking to older researchers the this really started in the 90s the demands to demonstrate measurable outcomes increased dramatically and funding moved to be primarily through competitive grants (compared to significant base funding for researchers previously). The issue is that while previously it was com…

This is interesting. Is there a reason why this started happening in the 90s?

Because the supply of academics have outpaced demand.

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#16

Post by moc_was_wronged »

non_aligned wrote: post #5
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #3

Things like citation brokers (paid to cite papers), abuse of power, paper mills, and blackmail (pg. 10) is appalling to me. I have to question how we ended up here. Academia seems very focused on results and output, and this is used as a metric to measure a researcher's worth or value. Has this always been an issue in academia, or is this an increasing or new phenomenon? It seems as if there is a widespread need to t…

I've seen similar stuff in a couple of other places, including IT back in the 1990s (back when it wasn't nearly as glamorous as it is today). I think some of this has to do with... resentment? You're this incredibly smart person, you worked really hard, and no one values you. No one wants to pay you big bucks, no one outside a tiny group knows your name even if you make important contributions to the field. Meanwhile…

[dead]

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#17

Post by aoki »

_alternator_ wrote: post #7

TLDR: The publication culture of mathematics (with relatively few papers per researcher, few authors per paper, and few citations per paper) makes abuse of bibliometrics easier. The evidence suggests widespread abuse. My take: I’ve published in well-regarded mathematical journals and the culture is definitely hard to explain to people outside of math. For example, it took more than two years to get my key graduate pa…

Pure math has a far greater vulnerability to this than applied math. Top journals have impact factors of around 5.0. Respectable but tiny specialist journals can have impact factors less than 1.0 (like, 0.4). Meanwhile, MDPI Mathematics is a Q1 journal with an impact factor over 2.0.

The now-standard bibliometrics were not designed by statisticians :-)

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#18

Post by mlpoknbji »

This article does not seem to quite convey the experience of a pure mathematician. Yes, citation fraud is happening on an apalling scale, but no it is not a serious issue for mathematicians.

The problem of AI generated papers is much more serious, although not happening on the same scale (yet!).

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#19

Post by mlpoknbji »

aoki wrote: post #17
_alternator_ wrote: post #7

TLDR: The publication culture of mathematics (with relatively few papers per researcher, few authors per paper, and few citations per paper) makes abuse of bibliometrics easier. The evidence suggests widespread abuse. My take: I’ve published in well-regarded mathematical journals and the culture is definitely hard to explain to people outside of math. For example, it took more than two years to get my key graduate pa…

Pure math has a far greater vulnerability to this than applied math. Top journals have impact factors of around 5.0. Respectable but tiny specialist journals can have impact factors less than 1.0 (like, 0.4). Meanwhile, MDPI Mathematics is a Q1 journal with an impact factor over 2.0. The now-standard bibliometrics were not designed by statisticians :-)

The key is that mathematicians in the US and most parts of Europe do not count citations. So this is not really an issue.

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#20

Post by jackyinger »

thallium205 wrote: post #15
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting. Is there a reason why this started happening in the 90s?

Because the supply of academics have outpaced demand.

I’d say that it is precisely because of superficial demand by bureaucracy that academic output has become superficial.

The demand for novel knowledge is always high. It is the supply that is short.

That’s why we hang around on HN hoping for something novel of true interest. You get a good find every once in a long while.

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