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Published paper trail leads us nowhere
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A university lecturer’s stinging criticism of society’s obsession with publishing academic papers has earned him considerable sympathy online.
On December 22, Zhou Ding, a lecturer from Sichuan University who teaches Chinese culture, expressed his disappointment and disgust at the widespread emphasis on the publication of papers in colleges, to the neglect of teaching.
“Why does the quality of university teaching decline steadily? Because a teacher’s title is only related to his research,” he wrote.
Succumbing to the demand of “publish or perish,” Zhou declared in a statement online that he would give up teaching courses.
This is said to have left Zhou’s students disappointed, for his lectures used to be so oversubscribed that it crashed the university’s online course enrollment system.
Zhou expressed his bitterness in observing that while all college deans insist on the importance of teaching, they usually articulate this aspiration while checking up on the number of papers published by the school.
As a matter of fact, college teaching is not the only place where the emphasis on publishing is so damaging. Doctors, journalists, middle school or even kindergarten teachers aspiring for senior titles are all busy churning out papers.
Obsession with papers
These pompous titles can dictate their salary, pension and a host of entitlements.
Recently, I received a phone call from my niece who has been a nurse for some years at a hospital in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province. She had only so vague an understanding of this mysterious process of producing papers that she asked if I, as someone who earns his living writing, could help put together a learned article for her, and have it published in a learned journal.
I explained that from what I heard, such papers are generally published in learned journals only after payment of an amount of publishing fees.
My wife faces a similar plight these days. She has been working as a surgeon with a local hospital for 15 years, and has proved herself a fast learner and a capable, conscientious and accomplished surgeon. But the mere bachelor’s degree she has makes it impossible for her to get senior titles.
So she and some of her colleagues spent nearly 3 years completing a master’s program at a medical school.
But to get the degree she must also complete a paper based on independent studies, and given her clinical experience and her professional commitments, she obviously lacks the resources to carry on.
One of her colleagues had completed all the required MA courses, but then decided to give up the degree for she despaired of ever finishing her paper.
Naturally, this unnatural requirement on producing papers has led to widespread fraud and irregularities.
‘Topics for sale’
A recent article in Scientific American investigating such practices (“For Sale: ‘Your Name Here’ in a Prestigious Science Journal — An Investigation into some Scientific Papers Finds Worrying Irregularities” by Charles Seife) concluded that, “In the past few years signs of foul play in peer-reviewed literature have cropped up across the scientific publishing world.” According to the article, in November the journal asked a Chinese-speaking reporter to contact MedChina, which offers dozens of scientific “topics for sale” and scientific journal “article transfer” agreements.
The price is decided by the impact factor of the journal and whether the paper is experimental or meta-analytic. The Impact factor reflects the quality of the paper by measuring the average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal.
In a deal negotiated between an agent and the reporter posing as a buyer, an article with an impact factor of 3.353 is priced at 93,000 yuan (US$15,000).
The article concluded that many of the suspect papers are funded ultimately by the government.
Obviously, this thriving “topics for sale” business is driven by superstitious faith in the value of learned articles.
As Nobel Prize winning scientist Randy Schekman wrote in December 2013 in an article in The Guardian (“How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science”), scientific research is disfigured by inappropriate incentives.
“The prevailing structures of personal reputation and career advancement mean the biggest rewards often follow the flashiest work, not the best,” Schekman wrote.
Since these journals are supposed to be the epitome of quality, authorship can lead to grants and professorships.
It also leads to systemic frauds and cheating.
It is high time for the government to end these misleading incentives.
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