<div dir="ltr"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">fabio vicentini</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:fmvicent@gmail.com">fmvicent@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 6:55 AM<br>Subject: Informe sobre la corrupción en Exactas - Parte 26<br>To: "<a href="mailto:presidencia@conicet.gov.ar">presidencia@conicet.gov.ar</a>" <<a href="mailto:presidencia@conicet.gov.ar">presidencia@conicet.gov.ar</a>>, <a href="mailto:FulbrightNEXUS@iie.org">FulbrightNEXUS@iie.org</a>, <a href="mailto:info@fundacionsadosky.org.ar">info@fundacionsadosky.org.ar</a>, <a href="mailto:info@mincyt.gob.ar">info@mincyt.gob.ar</a>, <a href="mailto:prensa@mincyt.gov.ar">prensa@mincyt.gov.ar</a>, <a href="mailto:prensa@me.gov.ar">prensa@me.gov.ar</a><br>
<br><br><div dir="ltr">
<p class="MsoNormal">Esta serie dedicada a la corrupción académica hace hincapié
en la mediocridad de lo que se publica debido a la doctrina de <i>publish or perish</i>. Nadie ha respondido a
ninguno de mis artículos. Quizas se deba a que soy un demenciado como afirma
el decano. Pero quiero mostrar que no soy el único loco en este mundo preocupado
por el <i>bullshitting</i> académico. El
siguiente es un resumen del articulo de un físico.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">PUBLISH OR
PERISH – AN AILING ENTERPRISE? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Mohamed
Gad-el-Hak </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Three
recent events, taking place in rapid succession, incited me to write this
Opinion. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The first
was an annual report from a major school of engineering whose dean proudly
listed 52 papers that he wrote in the course of the previous year. Such an
output is, on average, one idea conceived, executed, written, and published
every week. That is an amazing feat for a busy administrator, or anybody else
for that matter. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The second
was a physics professor who was introduced at a meeting as the author of 80
books. This man was not the superhumanly prolific Isaac Asimov, but a professor
with a publication rate, over a 20-year career, of one technical book every
three months. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The third
was a book on flow control I was asked to review for a journal. The 200-page,
camera-ready manuscript was clearly never seen by a copyeditor and was mostly a
shoddy cut-and-paste job from the author's doctoral dissertation--and worse,
from the publications of others. The book offered little of value, yet it was
priced at 50 cents per page. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The three
events are a syndrome of what is ailing academic publishing today. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span lang="EN-US">Academic
institutions in the US have made it imperative for faculty members to publish
in order to survive and prosper</span></u><span lang="EN-US">. There is nothing wrong with that principle if it emphasizes quality
rather than quantity. For the most part, that emphasis on publishing has worked
for many decades. The number of publications was reasonable, and tenure and
promotion decisions in research universities were largely based on the impact
of a candidate's scholarly work, as measured by the number of citations and,
less quantitatively, by expert opinions. The number of journals and
consequently the number of requests for refereeing were both manageable.
Overall, technical books were published when a senior researcher with years of
experience had something significant to write about. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Unfortunately,
today we witness a different environment from that of a generation ago. The
publish-or-perish emphasis for some, but not all, <u>institutions has
deteriorated into</u> <u>bean counting</u>, and the race is on to publish en
masse. Demand spurs supply. Mostly-for-profit <u>publishers of books and
journals have mushroomed</u>, and mediocrity has crept into both places. <u>Journal
pages have to be filled</u>, and library shelves have to be stacked with books.
<u>The number of periodicals worldwide currently stands at 169 000</u> and the
number of books published in the US alone in 2001 is 56 364. Of course, not all
of these are academic publications, but the sheer numbers are frightening
enough. Currently, more journals in a particular research field are published
than anyone can reasonably keep up with. <u>The publishing craze has now
extended to all-electronic journals</u>. Many articles, both print and
electronic, remain without a single citation five or more years after
publication. Although more difficult to measure, <u>I presume even more papers
remain unread by anyone other than their authors</u></span>.<span> <span lang="EN-US">The way some papers list
their authors today, some articles may not even be read by all their respective
coauthors. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">One measure
of journal quality is the <u>impact factor</u>, which is defined, for a
specific year, as the total number of citations made in that year for articles
published in the two preceding years divided by the number of citable articles
published in those years (see the article by Henry H. Barschall, "The
Cost-Effectiveness of Physics Journals," Physics Today, July 1988, page
56).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The peer
review system, although criticized by some as somewhat biased against
unorthodox ideas, is essential to weed out the charlatans, the misguided, and
the fools. Peer review must be preserved if not strengthened. However, more
papers published means that, on average, each researcher receives more requests
for refereeing. <u>The good referees are inundated with more papers to review
than they can possibly handle</u>. <u>Other types of referees typically do not
do a thorough job, and mediocre papers make it through the system</u>. Of
course, shoddy work always existed and competed with good work for journal
space. <u>But with the deluge of new journals, enough shoddy work is now being
done to fill whole journals</u>. <u>Hopping from one journal to another until
something is eventually accepted for publication is fast becoming a pastime for
some</u> researchers. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span lang="EN-US">When did
the bug strike?</span></u><span lang="EN-US">
Although our malaise was slow in the beginning, it accelerated in a classic
chain-reaction fashion. About 15 years ago, the problem became perceptible
(see, for example, two great Reference Frame columns by David Mermin,
"What's Wrong With This Library?" Physics Today, August 1988, page 9,
and "Publishing in Computopia," Physics Today, May 1991, page 9),
about the same time that grade inflation took hold (although some trace the
roots of this to the Vietnam era); instant gratification became a birthright;
and, in the film "Wall Street," Gordon Gecko declared that greed is
good. I make no claim of causality. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In an ideal
world, <u>counting the publications of individuals should not be used to
evaluate them.</u> Instead, the impact of the individual's publications should
be what is important. But measuring impact is neither easy nor straightforward,
despite the availability of the Science Citation Index and similar measuring
tools. For example, particularly for young reseachers, the number of citations
per publication is a fairer index of competence than the total number of
citations. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Some time
during the last 15 years, <u>bean counting became acceptable to some
universities.</u> As researchers found they were not getting sufficient credit
for producing high-impact publications, they decided to publish more papers. <u>A
tendency developed to</u> <u>add undeserving coauthors</u>. <u>The cut-and-paste
button on the computer facilitated the exponential growth of papers</u></span>.
<u><span lang="EN-US">More and more journals
entered the marketplace</span></u><span lang="EN-US"> to absorb the additional demand for pages <u>and accelerated the need
for editors and referees</u>. <u>The competency of both suffered</u>. Of course,
many journals kept or even elevated their already high standards. <u>Journals
quickly stratified into elite and second- and third-tier publications. </u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">----------------------- </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> Mohamed
Gad-el-Hak is the Inez Caudill Eminent Professor of Biomedical Engineering and
chair of mechanical engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
</div>
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