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Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

arxiv.org

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Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#21

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

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?

education funding cuts

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#22

Post by paulpauper »

Publishing math is one of the most time consuming things ever, between the submission, review/revising, and editing. I with there was a faster way of doing it outside of arXiv. Without having to review the paper closely, typically an experienced editor can tell at fist glace if it's correct or sound.

It is what we could call the “zone of occasional poor practice”. Included are actions like

I think this is more common in computer science papers. I see this all the time, where 5- 10 authors will collaborate on a short paper, then collaborate on each other's papers in such a way that the effort is minimized and publishing count and citation count is maximized. .

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#23

Post by mlpoknbji »

beezle wrote: post #6

Sabine Hossenfelder has been on about this topic in the field of physics publishing for quite some time now. It really is a terrible thing, though I can understand how some researchers feel trapped in a system that gives them little if any alternative if they wish to be employed the next year. Not just one thing needs to be changed to fix it.

Citation based metrics are much more prevalent in physics than in math (at least in the US and most countries in Europe). When compared with physics, my impression is that mathematics has the tradition "slow, long term" over "rapid, incremental." Of course, it's not perfect.

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#24

Post by pfdietz »

tho23i423423423 wrote: post #8

Are "publication metrics" also used heavily in China by the bureaucracy ? I know for a fact that the number of fake-journals exploded once the Govt. of India decided to use this for promotions. It's a bit sad really: in the classical world both these countries spent inordinate amount of time on the questions of epistemology (India esp.). Now reduced to mimicking some silly thing that vaguely tracks knowledge-producti…

What a wonderful illustration of Goodhart's Law.

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#25

Post by kaonwarb »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #21
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

education funding cuts

How does that square with the cost of education significantly outpacing inflation?

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#26

Post by bee_rider »

aleatorianator wrote: post #4
mathattack wrote: post #2

Easy to see how social sciences can be games. Much sadder to see Mathematics get gamed too. It provides ammo to folks looking to defund the topics.

Mathematics did invent game theory, so in that way it simply takes more math to do math which isn't good

Maybe the way forward is to break the impact factor game. Everybody in a field get together and publish a paper: literally every topologist could put their name on the paper “Generally we all agree that Topology is an interesting topic.”

Everybody in the field cite that paper going forward, giving it a massive impact factor, making impact factor useless. Do this occasionally, randomly, do it in niche sub fields, everybody who goes to a conference put their name on the paper “we had a nice time at this year.”

I mean, it is something everybody hates, right? There’s no point in preserving it.

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#29

Post by matusp »

Bibliometrics in science is just an unworkable approach in general, and IMO it causes more harms than not. Research is one of the least suitable human activities that you can possibly try to quantify, yet the entire scientific establishment runs on these metrics by now. I more or less believe that this strategy hinders scientific progress, as it pushes researchers into more and more risk-averse behaviors.

Re: Fraudulent Publishing in the Mathematical Sciences

#30

Post by chowells »

kaonwarb wrote: post #25
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

education funding cuts

How does that square with the cost of education significantly outpacing inflation?

Funding cuts. Like from the state and federal levels. This resulted in costs to students increasing while also forcing researchers to generate income. This is the natural result of treating college like a business. They raise costs on every side.
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