[Todos] On how to fake a paper

[fvicent en dm.uba.ar]

A la comunidad de Exactas:
La siguiente carta es la respuesta de un colega a mi consulta "on how to
fake a paper" que figura al pie de la presente.
======================

Dear Fabio

>From what you have said, any advice from Moshe and myself may be a few
months too late.  Why?  Because there is a crucial difference between
keeping your post and being re-employed.  To keep your job, you need a
steady N(>=2) papers per solar year.  To be re-employed, you will be in
competition with others who have achieved more than that.  It is like
friction: it takes more effort to start an object sliding than to keep it
moving ... maybe you can write a paper about that similarity?

Unfortunately my paper about extracting sunbeams from cucumbers was not
accepted by an OR journal as it had insufficient reference to OR
techniques;  it was published by a friend who edits a journal "Annals of
the Solar-Cucumber Interface" (volume 42, issue 1, pages 21-34)  I wish
you had told me as I could have added you to the seventeen other
co-authors who wanted to increase their publication count.  I am currently
researching for a paper which has the working title: "Variable Scaling of
Constraints: The case of Gulliver in Lilliput"

Over the years, I have observed several techniques for increasing
publication counts, not all of them entirely moral.

(1) Among some science researchers there is a measure referred to as
"Minimum New material needed to ensure publication" and can be seen in
some physics and chemistry journals.  Paper 1: "Experiments with adding
water at 81 deg C to a teabag";  Paper 2: "Experiments with adding water
at 82 deg C to a teabag" and so on: .  Paper 11 "Experiments with teabags
with water in the range 81-90 deg C: A summary"

(2) Find a journal whose editor is short of material;  there are some, but
they do not advertise as such.  You need to look at the time between
acceptance and publication.  Anything under 6 months is a sign of shortage

(3) Find a journal whose publisher wants to break into the academic world,
big time.  Again, you won't find this sort of thing in a Google search,
but there is one publisher in the UK  in this category and another in
India.

(4) Find a journal which has a high proportion of contributions from East
and Central Asia.  There are a lot of Chinese, Taiwanese and Iranians who
want to break into the international academic world and there are journals
which publish their rubbish/////// material.  Your academic assessors will
not know what you know, because these journals have impressive titles "The
Great Big Journal of Inventory Control", "The Intergalactic Annals of
Integer Programming" and so on

(5) Find a niche topic and read every paper that tackles it and find
errors in one line which affect one part of the conclusions.  Then write a
short paper about it.  There is an author whose record shows over 200
papers in inventory control, many of which are based on this process.  To
improve your coverage, get PhD students to do the reading and writing.  A
similar technique, but less reliable, is to find papers which describe an
application in country X and discuss it in country Y (or industries X and
Y)  Thus: "An OR model of fertilizer application on cucumbers in Laputa"
can be followed by "Modifying the Laputan fertilizer model for Lilliput"
and "A generalized fertilizer model for Gulliver's Cucumbers"  This then
can be followed by studies of zucchini, strawberries and so on.

And as a final aside, in my hobby as a philatelist, I have genuinely
published an article "How not to fake an item of postal history" in a
philatelic journal, based on something which I bought from a criminal on
eBay a few years ago.

Have a good day ... why not write a paper about the optimal route for
walking the dog?

David
---
Dr David K Smith, Mathematical Sciences in SECaM, University of Exeter,
Exeter, Devon, UK
email:D.K.Smith en exeter.ac.uk
http://www.secamlocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/DKSmith/Are you using IAOR
Online yet?
Try it at: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/iaor "The mind is like an
umbrella -- it functions best when open" (Walter Gropius)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Fabio Vicentini [mailto:fvicent en arnet.com.ar]
Sent: 29 October 2009 04:31
To: Smith, David
Cc: Moshe Sniedovich
Subject: On how to fake a paper

Dear David,

Subject: The arts wherein the professors employ themselves.

Last time I sent you a letter you were very busily engaged upon a project
for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers. By now I hope you are done with
the matter and have submitted a paper on the results of your research to
the ORS Journal.

As you remember I was a faculty member of the Academy of Lagado at the
Kingdom of Laputa on an island in the air about two miles high. I am sorry
to inform you that I was given the sack the 11th of April, 2009. Let me
describe the cause having produced my demise and the desolate conditions
that followed whereupon.

At Lagado a professor is expected to publish two papers per solar year,
exception being made if it is his sabbatical year. I had never had a
problem satisfying  this rule of action. To be frank, a chum of mine Moshe
Sniedovich is editor in Chief of a little known journal of the Aussy OR
Society, and he accepts a paper of mine in exchange of a paper of his
being accepted by the Laputian OR magazine.

Unfortunately Moshe was killed last December while visiting some friends
in Israel when a firecracker sent by Hamas landed on his head just when I
was about to send him my paper. Thus I failed to fill my 2-paper quota for
2008 and the board of trustees breached my contract.

Now I am out of work and feeling depressed. I am sick of watching tv
movies, of reading newspapers, and of rambling with my dog. Out of boredom
I had a silly idea: I will write a paper on how to fake a paper! I was
surprised in the past by some of my colleagues who were able to output 5
or even a dozen papers in a single year. I wonder how did they manage to
perform this deed …or should I say this trick? Let us see,

1) Having a setup with a friendly editor like I had with Moshe.

2) Searching an old paper in my field and concocting a new one by making
some parameter changes.

3) To join a clique with the common purpose of fabricating coauthored papers.

4) ???

 I wonder whether you can help me to extend and/or enhance my list. I am
sure Moshe will be sending you his blessing by the CBS (Celestial Bell
System)

Cheers,

Fabio