Does 80 technical papers in 2.5 years seem kind of off to anyone else? That’s more than a paper every 2 weeks. Is there really time for meaningful research if you’re publishing that often? Is he advising a lot of students? If that’s the case, is he providing the attention generally needed for each one? Is his field just super different than mine?
In acamedia you usually get your name on most papers where you help a bit. And if you’re the boss, you get your name on papers without even helping but perhaps supplying space, material, budget.
I’ve been in academia. My field required a “significant intellectual contribution” to the research and the writing, so no putting your name on papers if you just supplied space/material/budget. You can get an acknowledgement for that, not an authorship credit.
And which reviewer or publishers verifies how “significant” a contribution is beyond seeing some initials matched with tags like “visualization” or “experimental design”? That’s right, nobody. It’s not even remotely traceable who did what if you’re a reviewer.
Academia is full of fraud and people trying to secure their share of credit because in academia it’s all about names, as the twitter exchange above illustrates so profoundly. And the other driver for the sad state of academia is of course having the quantity of published papers as the most important criterion for academic success. The more papers, the more citations, the bigger your name will become. It determines your chances of getting funding and therefore your career. If you want to make a career in science you have little options but to comply with this system.
There are some people in this world who are smarter and more motivated than we are.
And then there are people who get a head start when their rich daddy gives 'em a bunch of money and they get lucky with how they invest that money but pretend to be a genius anyway.
Does 80 technical papers in 2.5 years seem kind of off to anyone else? That’s more than a paper every 2 weeks. Is there really time for meaningful research if you’re publishing that often? Is he advising a lot of students? If that’s the case, is he providing the attention generally needed for each one? Is his field just super different than mine?
In acamedia you usually get your name on most papers where you help a bit. And if you’re the boss, you get your name on papers without even helping but perhaps supplying space, material, budget.
I’ve been in academia. My field required a “significant intellectual contribution” to the research and the writing, so no putting your name on papers if you just supplied space/material/budget. You can get an acknowledgement for that, not an authorship credit.
And which reviewer or publishers verifies how “significant” a contribution is beyond seeing some initials matched with tags like “visualization” or “experimental design”? That’s right, nobody. It’s not even remotely traceable who did what if you’re a reviewer.
Academia is full of fraud and people trying to secure their share of credit because in academia it’s all about names, as the twitter exchange above illustrates so profoundly. And the other driver for the sad state of academia is of course having the quantity of published papers as the most important criterion for academic success. The more papers, the more citations, the bigger your name will become. It determines your chances of getting funding and therefore your career. If you want to make a career in science you have little options but to comply with this system.
That’s kind of the point I was making.
Sorry, my irony detector must be malfunctioning.
Everything, everywhere is corrupt.
Everything Everywhere All Corrupt
This definitely varies by field, lab, university.
There are some people in this world who are smarter and more motivated than we are.
And then there are people who get a head start when their rich daddy gives 'em a bunch of money and they get lucky with how they invest that money but pretend to be a genius anyway.
Stephen King claims he writes 2000 words a day.
R. L. Stein supposedly wrote a new (admittedly short) novel every two weeks.
This Spanish romance novelist apparently wrote over 4000 novels in her lifetime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corín_Tellado
So sure, why not 80 technical papers in 2.5 years?