[Todos] Upturning point

[fvicent en dm.uba.ar]

Dubuc:
Adjunto respuesta del Dr Smith sobre la cuestion del aumento del numero de
papers que me habias consultado.

----- Original Message -----
From: Smith, David
To: Fabio Vicentini ; Moshe Sniedovich
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 7:35 AM
Subject: RE: Upturning point

Dear Fabio
Yes, in the UK, a similar phenomenon has occurred.  Our government, in the
belief that everything worthwhile ought to be measured and compared(*),
started what is known as the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in which
every university has to report every few years about the published
research of academics, and their success in obtaining research grants. 
Panels have been set up to read through and quantify the quality of these
demonstrations of research output, and at the end of it, a research unit
is awarded a grade.  There have been several results of this, not always
beneficial.  My own research unit failed to get the top grade, so the
university decided to close it, which is why I took early retirement.  The
entire Chemistry Department at this university was closed.  The RAE
encouraged researchers to do work for which they could get grants from
Government bodies  and to write papers which did not need a long time for
study and data collection.  Also, papers should be published in the
gold-star journals, those with high citation rankings.  But, if you write
in O.R.., you may produce excellent work but it will be the end of that
particular story and nobody will cite it immediately.  (As I wrote
earlier, if you want good citations, make a mistake in the mathematics of
your paper, so lots of people will write about it to correct it.)  The RAE
affects recruitment as well.  There is a second function, E(t) which is
the minimum number of published papers to Ensure that you are shortlisted
at time t for a post.  One of my friends became a professor and was
allowed to appoint two lecturers to work with him.  He told me that if his
original application to teach in university (20 years earlier) had been
among those  for these two posts, he would not have been shortlisted.

The RAE has many aspects like the US tenure system, but many faults as well.

Best
David
(*) and that raises all sorts of questions as well.
---
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: 07 November 2009 14:28
To: Smith, David; Moshe Sniedovich
Subject: Upturning point
Dear David and Moshe:
Subject: Dubuc's upturning point

After I got my Masters in 1963 I worked as an operations research
practitioner for 30 years in industrial concerns, mainly chemical and
steel-making factories. In the nineties, winds from the north brought upon
my country an economical malady known as the  NEOLIB2, a strong strain of 
a virus  cultivated by the Chicago Boys. Hundreds of thousands were laid
off from industry and commerce. This upheaval forced me to reenter in my
alma mater the well known Academy of Lagado in the Kingdom of Laputa.
Therein I lectured on Combinatorial Optimization, Graph Theory and the
like.

But something mysterious has happened in the academy in the intervening 50
years since I had gotten my diploma. We are further off upon the clouds,
terra firma cannot be seen clearly anymore. My colleagues are writting
papers at a fantastic speed. Just to give you an idea, a baby professor
just out of his mother's womb would publish as many papers in a single
year as my late thesis advisor Dr Strangelove in his whole life.  Let us
consider this problem scientifically and define

f(t) = number of papers per capita of our faculty in solar year t

If you would consider the graph of function f(t) in the interval 1963 < t
< 2009 you would observe that f is a constant up to 1994 and then jumps
crazily until it gets to a new constant value wherein it remains up to the
present. What the heck has happened in the neighborhood of 1994? For
further reference let me call this phenomenon "Dubuc's upturning point".

Mind you, the form of f(t) as well  Dubuc's point is a conjecture. A
colleague of mine Eduardo Dubuc posited the conjecture, and he would like
me to gather the data to confirm his suspicion. I am willing to do the job
but I would like first to consult both of you on this matter. Do you feel
that something like this has happened in England or Australia?

Best wishes,

Fabio