Report: Researchers Are Becoming Too Obsessed with Chasing Pageviews

Report: Researchers Are Becoming Too Obsessed with Chasing Pageviews

JASON KOEBLER

@jason_koeblerjasontpkoebler@gmail.com

March 21, 2014 // 04:10 PM EST

An urge to publish in one of several high profile academic journals is causing a “mania” that has caused scientists to focus on publishing newsworthy studiesinstead of focusing on doing good science, according to a new paper.

The trend is called “Impact Factor Mania,” and it’s based on the idea that, bypublishing in one of the top scientific journals, namely Science, Nature, and Cell,researchers can make a name for themselves that will lead to more grant money, better job opportunities, and more citations in other journals.

“Science and scientists are currently afflicted by an epidemic of mania manifested by associating the value of research with the journal where the work is published rather than the content of the work itself,” Arturo Casadevall, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, writes in a new study published in mBio (itself a very respected journal). “The mania is causing profound distortions in the way science is done that are deleterious to the overall scientific enterprise.”

It makes sense: Papers published in one of those three journals (and several other “important” ones such as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and the Lancet), tend to make news—they’re written about more often by people like me, which makes whoever wrote it get noticed by their universities and colleagues.

But Casadevall argues that it has led to an epidemic where scientists design experiments specifically to get as many eyeballs as possible. (If this sounds familiar, it’s similar to criticism that online media is only concerned with traffic.)

“Evidence of a craze is perhaps more elusive, but after considering that the definition of ‘craze’ is ‘to cause to become mentally deranged or obsessed; make insane,’ we note some trends consistent with the definition,” the paper reads. “Although the term ‘mentally deranged’ is more applicable to individuals than to a field, some manifestations of field behavior are consistent with insanity.”

Impact factor is often one of the only measures that university faculty look at when considering the quality of a researcher’s work.

Impact factor is a really simple measure to determine roughly how important a journal is. It’s calculated by taking the number of times a journal was cited by other journals in a two year period and dividing it by the total number of articles. When it comes to impact factor, Nature, Cell, and Science account for a quarter of the top 2,100 most-cited articles in all of science.

Impact factor is often one of the only measures that university faculty look at when considering the quality of a researcher’s work—an overly simple measure that means it matters more about where you publish rather than what you publish. The trend toward specialization in science, which makes it difficult to assess quality outside of one’s expertise, makes impact factor an easy, if not ideal, way to do it.

“Relying on publication in highly selective journals as a surrogate measure of quality provides a convenient, if intellectually lazy, alternative to attempting to read and understand a paper outside one’s specialty,” Casadevall wrote.

The same thing happens in journalism. Everyone wants their stories or research to be read and considered important, and that’s more likely to happen at a place like the New York Times than it is at a small local paper, regardless of how good the article is. That doesn’t mean that incredible work doesn’t happen at a small paper, and it doesn’t mean that every article at the New York Times is worthy of a Pulitzer. But solid work is much more likely to get noticed at a big place—the Natures of the world—than it is at smaller journals.

A good article at a big publication is more likely to go viral than a good article at a small publication, and it’s the same thing at science journals. Research suggests that the impact factors at Nature and other big journals are mostly based on several hugely important pieces of research that are cited everywhere. The “filler” of the journal may or may not be of high quality, but they’re often no more likely to be highly shared.

“The impact factor of the journal where work is published is often used a surrogate marker of excellence, despite the fact that citation frequency for the journal does not predict the citation frequency for individual papers,” he wrote.

And, like in journalism, just because something is often cited or viewed doesn’t mean it’s any good. When it comes to recognition and revenue, eyeballs are more important than quality. It’s the reason highly shareable articles on social-driven sites appear to be the future of journalism, even if their quality can leave a lot to be desired. When it comes to getting money in science, it’s the same deal—a well-known scientist is more likely to get the grant, make the TV appearances, and continue to be published in the big journals.

It’s not the best system, but for better or worse, it’s what we’re stuck with at the moment.

“This encourages the branding of science and scientists with journals in which work is published. The likelihood of obtaining funding, academic promotion, selection for awards, and election to honorific societies becomes dependent, at least in part, on publication venue,” Casadevall argued.

“Ultimately, the only cure for impact factor mania must come from scientists themselves. If scientists fail to curb their current impact factor mania, they will pass onto their trainees a distorted value system that rewards the acquisition of publications in exclusive journals rather than the acquisition of knowledge and one that promotes an obsession with individual career success over service to society,” he said.