A simple step to improve modern academia
People involved in modern academia are well aware of its problems. If you are new to academia or unaware of these problems, there are places to start before reading this article (Link).
Regardless of awareness, though, there is little to no action taken. The reasons why are well known — even if rarely outspoken — and listing them exceeds the scope of this article.
In the paragraphs that follow I will focus on scientific publications (i.e. peer-reviewed journal publications), which play a key-role in most stages of career development in modern academia. This role can be summed-up to three “axioms”:
- The more in number, the better.
- The higher the journal impact, the better.
- The higher the citation count, the better.
In theory this should work. Right?
Yet, it doesn’t. At least not today, in the overpopulated, highly-competitive, “perform-according-to-some-standard”-or-perish environment of academia.
Again, I will spare you the details about the reasons why and the ways how many people “hack the system” and exploit it for personal gain. Instead, I will go straight to the simple step I promised in my title.
A percentage-based author-contribution system in scientific publishing.
In an attempt to avoid overpopulated authors’ lists and to promote integrity, many journals nowadays require that the authors add to the end of their manuscript a declaration of authors’ contributions.
This is a good idea but doesn’t solve the problem, as: (a) only a few people actually read and/or are interested in this declaration; and (b) this declaration does not actually affect the added value each author gets from the published article.
The new system proposed here is based on the same rationale, but with one very important modification: co-authors will have to declare (and thus agree to) a percentage-based author-contribution list, totaling to 100% (since the article represents a unit itself).
Following this, all research output by an author and future evaluations should be judged accordingly.
Need an example?
Let us consider two research groups: Group A, consisting of 2 researchers and Group B, consisting of 5 researchers. In the hypothetical scenario where Groups A and B publish concurrently (in parallel universes probably) the exact same paper in the same journal, and they do so having all of their members contribute equally to the scientific output, Group A researchers will be each attributed with 50% of their contribution to the field, while Group B researchers will be each attributed with 20% of their contribution to the field.
The term in bold is a key-aspect in this concept, as this contribution can be associated with whichever metric (journal impact, citations, etc) and thereafter used for comparative evaluations.
Taking our example one step further, we now have a scenario in which a committee needs to blindly evaluate for a position two candidates based on their contribution to their field: one researcher from Group A and one from Group B. If their previously defined “identical” article is their sole research output, isn’t it clear who should get the position? And this, regardless of the metric attached to their contribution. Should this be journal impact, number of citations, combination of the two, or any other devised criterion, 50% will always beat 20%. Does the approach sound unfair to you? I hope not.
Based on the above, it is easily deduced how this approach could be expanded to all other aspects of author-related metrics and how seamlessly this could be done. Its implications for comparative evaluations and the bad practices it will harm are easily deduced as well.
When theorising about the implementation of this approach, I have carefully considered a handful of issues one might raise against it; and have come to address them all to a more than adequate extent, as well. I see no need to tire you with lengthy arguments at this stage (the numerical examples of Tables 1, 2 and 3 could provide some insights); I would urge you, though, to answer to three simple questions:
- Do you disagree with the informed use of quantitative metrics in research/academia?
- Does the presented approach alter the value of each scientific publication as a single, unique contribution to its field?
- Does this approach favour the people exploiting inadequacies of the present system?
If your answers to all three questions are “No”, then we’re on the same page.
It sounds only reasonable to push for this simple step.
