The UK Research Assessment Exercises and the projected Australian Research Quality Framework have given impetus to the existing "publish or perish" syndrome by researchers. An analysis of the increasing trend to measure research effectiveness also could lead to a situation where "publish and perish" may prevail....
Eugene Garfield, the creator of the Science Citation Index, now part of Thomson Scientific, notes: "Like nuclear energy, the [journal publication] impact factor is a mixed blessing. I expected it to be used constructively while recognising that in the wrong hands it might be abused."...
The selectivity of journals by Thomson is also a problem in that it has a distinct bias towards northern hemisphere and English language journals. Thompson covers fewer than half of the roughly 22,000 peer-reviewed journals currently published. Australian coverage is limited outside the science area. Where you publish is now almost as, if not more, important than what you publish. The assessment process has arguably distorted an original purpose, namely the effective dissemination of researcher output. Analysis of library data globally tends to show that a significant amount of purchased material is little used. Thomson statistics also show that 80 per cent of citations come from 20 per cent of articles. Nature revealed that 89 per cent of its citations in 2004 were generated from just 25 per cent of the papers....
Mike Sargent, chairman of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme, stated to the 2005 National Scholarly Communication Forum that "the Government regards publicly funded research as a public good" and that "as a general statement of principle, researchers ought to be able to find out what research is going on and gain access to that research. Use of open access regimes and institutional repositories will be critical to both the development of the AF [Accessibility Framework] and the RQF."
Ultimately, it must be remembered that what's important is to disseminate research knowledge as effectively and openly as possible, rather than for that knowledge simply to be seen as a static and dormant symbol of research ranking, both individually and collectively.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/06/2006 01:25:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
