The Price of Academic Publishing
In academic publishing, it is widely believed that only publishing houses see any monetary benefit. As a researcher, you work in pursuit of citations, and the subsequent prestige that comes with success. After all, scientific publication is immensely important to the scientific endeavour. There is, however, concern that rewarding scientists chiefly on publication creates a perverse incentive, paving the way for fraud and sub-par publications to thrive, exacerbated by the attitude of top-tier journals towards novel, positive findings (that make them look good) rather than investigations confirming hypotheses (Sarawitz 2016).
Researchers are under immense pressure to continuously publish, with career advancement dependent upon them- in a field where securing funding in the first place is rare, and publishing in a top journal even more so. And yet, publications are increasing exponentially- and while no one knows how many scientific journals there are, but several estimates point to around 30,000, with close to two million articles published each year (Altbach and De Wit 2018).
There seems to be an apparent isomorphism — the sociological idea that most academic institutions want to resemble the topmost academic institutions — and thus seek to become research-intensive.This causes too many publications because the academic system encourages it unnecessarily— and drastic cutbacks are needed in order for good research to not be lost in a sea of information. This is also largely due to the emergence of publishers and journals with highly questionable marketing and peer review practices. Related is the According to The Guardian, there have been instances where Imperial College’s medicine department were told that their “productivity” target for publications was to “publish three papers per annum including one in a prestigious journal with an impact factor of at least five.″ There is also a growing trend in doctoral education where traditional PhD dissertations are not required if the doctoral students have published enough articles based on their research in academic journals, in effect moving responsibility for evaluating doctoral research from university committees to journal editors and reviewers.
The effect of the ‘publish or perish’ mentality means that any paper, however bad, can now be printed in a journal that claims to be peer-reviewed. The effect of instructions like that is to reduce the quality of science and to demoralise the victims of this sort of mismanagement. A study of National Institute of Health (NIH)-funded early and mid-career scientists (n=3247) found that within the previous 3 years, 0.3% admitted to falsification of data, 6% to a failure to present conflicting evidence and a worrying 15.5% to changing of study design, methodology or results in response to funder pressure (Grimes et al 2018).
What needs to be done
Current trajectories threaten science with drowning in the noise of its own immense productivity. Ultimately, a much more selective approach to publication is required, an approach that does not just focus on limiting the overall production of papers (which are just one of the many return vehicles of research). This requires reputable journal rankings, and a better method for reviewing publications- through a rise in funding that increases research income, and the market for research labour which would see both researchers and the quality of information would benefit immensely. According to John Gibson writing for University World News ‘Einstein would never have won tenure — or even survived the brutality of the post-doc period today.’
Bibliography
Altbach, P and De Wit, H. (2018) Too much academic research is being published [Online] Available at: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20180905095203579 [Accessed 15 February 2020]
Colquhoun, D. (2011) Publish-or-perish: Peer review and the corruption of science. [Online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/sep/05/publish-perish-peer-review-science [Accessed 15 February 2020]
Grimes, D. Bauch, C and Ioannides J (2018). Modelling science trustworthiness under publish or perish pressure. [Online] Available at: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.171511 [Accessed 15 February 2020]
Sarawitz, D. (2016) The pressure to publish pushes down quality. [Online] Available at: https://www.nature.com/news/the-pressure-to-publish-pushes-down-quality-1.19887 [Accessed 15 February 2020]
Shen, Cenyu. (2015) ‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. [Online] Available at: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2 [Accessed 15 February 2020]
