Researchers' Individual Publication Rate Has Not Increased in a Century

被引:112
作者
Fanelli, Daniele [1 ]
Lariviere, Vincent [2 ,3 ]
机构
[1] Stanford Univ, Meta Res Innovat Ctr Stanford METRICS, 1070 Arastradero Rd, Palo Alto, CA 94304 USA
[2] Univ Montreal, Ecole Bibliothecon & Sci Informat, CP 6128,Succ Ctr Ville, Montreal, PQ H3C 3J7, Canada
[3] Univ Quebec, OST CIRST, CP 8888,Succ Ctr Ville, Montreal, PQ H3C 3P8, Canada
来源
PLOS ONE | 2016年 / 11卷 / 03期
关键词
ACADEMIC LIFE; PUBLISH; CONSEQUENCES; METRICS; PERISH;
D O I
10.1371/journal.pone.0149504
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Debates over the pros and cons of a "publish or perish" philosophy have inflamed academia for at least half a century. Growing concerns, in particular, are expressed for policies that reward "quantity" at the expense of "quality," because these might prompt scientists to unduly multiply their publications by fractioning ("salami slicing"), duplicating, rushing, simplifying, or even fabricating their results. To assess the reasonableness of these concerns, we analyzed publication patterns of over 40,000 researchers that, between the years 1900 and 2013, have published two or more papers within 15 years, in any of the disciplines covered by the Web of Science. The total number of papers published by researchers during their early career period (first fifteen years) has increased in recent decades, but so has their average number of co-authors. If we take the latter factor into account, by measuring productivity fractionally or by only counting papers published as first author, we observe no increase in productivity throughout the century. Even after the 1980s, adjusted productivity has not increased for most disciplines and countries. These results are robust to methodological choices and are actually conservative with respect to the hypothesis that publication rates are growing. Therefore, the widespread belief that pressures to publish are causing the scientific literature to be flooded with salami-sliced, trivial, incomplete, duplicated, plagiarized and false results is likely to be incorrect or at least exaggerated.
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页数:12
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