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True value of a Ph.D? (and Publish or Perish)

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    #32
    SaturnV
    Registered Users Posts: 59 ✭✭SaturnV


    robp wrote: »
    I don't know how you can say most have little impact in reality when they are being cited more on average then specialist journal equivalents.

    That's precisely the problem. You can't look at the papers "on average", because "average", which is what impact factor is based on, is fundamentally the wrong number to use to describe the population of paper citations.
    robp wrote: »
    Duds do occur but how many are there really?

    Depends on your definition of "dud" I guess. In Nature, 25% of papers account for 89% of the impact factor. Which means the majority of papers are not cited any where near to the rate suggested by the impact factor of the journal they are published in.

    Interestingly, this problem seems to be more pronounced in the likes of Nature. This shows some very interesting comparisons between Nature and more specialist journals.

    They also note that around half of Nature papers are never cited. So I guess then answer is that around half of the papers are "duds".
    robp wrote: »
    A 'publish now, review later' approach removes quality control and will facilitate poorer standards.

    Will it though? You need empirical data to back up this assertion, and this will take time. Nobody can honestly answer this question yet.
    robp wrote: »
    The shortage of replication is the not the fault of impact factor.

    This is true. It is a much more complex problem that is not easy to solve unfortunately.
    robp wrote: »
    It tells you info about the field and the audience of the journal.

    I don't know what you mean here.


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