Saturday, August 06, 2022

Brief items - talks, CHIPS, and a little reading

An administrative role I've taken on for the last month that will run through September has been eating quite a bit of my time, but I wanted to point out some interesting items:

3 comments:

  1. It seems that everyone knows for-profit publishing is screwed up, but the fundamental systemic problems in the nature of scientific careers result in high inertia to change. As long as hiring, tenure and promotion are based on publishing in these journals, they will not go away or improve.

    As department chair, do you have any ideas or experience with strategies for mitigating this problem? How big a role does publication in these journals play in hiring and promotion at your department in Rice? What are the major obstacles to reducing their influence?

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  2. PPP, my term as chair wrapped up on June 30, but I can still give the perspective. It's an unfortunate fact that publication in prestige glossy journals is viewed with too much influence, either at the hiring or promotion stages. I think true impact is also greatly appreciated (a first-author PRB that got 400 citations in two years would definitely be taken very positively even though that's not a glossy journal). I think that the most practical way to reduce their influence over time is to raise the issue, repeatedly, that these are not automatically a proxy for quality, and esp at the hiring stage have a great deal to do with the advisor as well as the lead author. I know that is weak sauce, and it feels like trying to hold back the ocean with a teacup sometimes. The fact that funding agencies really love these journals is also hard to fight. I'd appreciate advice from others on this.

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  3. Anonymous5:32 AM

    How about starting a public boycott of publishing in for-profit journals (Nature etc)? If there's anything the Internet is good at, it's getting everyone behind cancelling something outrageous. No one in a position of power seems to be willing to take the bite though.

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