PUBLISH OR PERISH: The machinery of U.S. scientific publishing: 29 percent less efficient than in 1990.
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Science in the 1990s and into the early 21st century continued to advance the frontiers of knowledge—but less efficiently than it did earlier in the 20th century, according to a new study commissioned by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The report examines scientific publication trends in the top 200 U.S. academic research and development institutions from 1988 to 2001. Whereas funding and other research inputs rose dramatically, the yield of published research papers fell. Quantifying this decline [graph], the report concludes: "It can be calculated that the same resources that produced 100 publications in 2001 would have produced 129 publications in 1990."
The report, "U.S. Academic Scientific Publishing," published November 19, follows a July 2007 NSF study which found that the absolute number of science and engineering (S&E) articles published by U.S.-based authors in the world's major peer-reviewed journals plateaued in the early 1990s even as funding and personnel increased. In response, a news analysis, "U.S. Output Flattens, and NSF Wonders Why," published in Science later in 2007 examined various hypotheses but failed to resolve the mystery.
The new NSF report confirms the 1990s inflection point: "[T]he evidence suggests that the growth trend either slowed or stopped altogether at that time." Significantly, the report cautions that the plateau "should not be confused with a decades-long and familiar decline in the U.S. share of the world's S&E articles." In other words, the waning productivity in the U.S. is not explained by the (inevitably) more rapid growth elsewhere in the world.
The new report advances some possible explanations: increased complexity of research, more comprehensive articles, greater expense for journal submission and research expenditures rising faster than inflation. Collaborations, measured by the number of institutions involved in producing a given paper, are up, and might be imposing higher costs from increased communication. Biomedical research productivity perhaps has fallen because after receiving a large infusion of federal funding in the past decade it may take time for new or expanded research efforts to become efficient.
But again, no smoking gun emerges. Factoring in differences in the degree of collaboration had little impact on the productivity results. And increased resources were not redirected into, for example, greater patenting activity. "There is no convincing evidence that patents are substituting for publications," according to the report.
Something important and less than ideal is happening, however. Even as other nations gain ground, the U.S. remains the world leader in science. Within the U.S. scientific community academic research is essential to the health of the nation's research system. The recent publication trends put its vitality in question with potentially historic implications. As the NSF report noted: "The trends are worthy of attention because they indicate a marked shift from a historical pattern."
Spokespersons for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, declined to comment on the report. The offices of U.S. Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D–Ill.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Research and Science Education, and Rep. Rush Holt (D–N.J.), a former physics professor, also turned down requests for comment. Calls to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee were not returned.
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24 Comments
Add CommentThere are abundant reasons for the downgrading of the US as the science center of the world including but not limited to: ridicule of science and engineering (nerd affect), loss of research funding, science is too "hard" with no financial return, get an MBA, let the Chinese and Indians do the hard work in school, dumbing down and political correctness in secondary education ....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen how do you explain the statistic that even with the funding granted, we are doing less with it. The same amount of funding isn't getting used as well as it has in the past. I agree with the fact that funding went down, but that isn't the point of this article, you just wanted to make it the point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a grad student myself who has published a couple of articles I have a slightly different take on this. I have noticed that different research groups and different institutions have different attitudes to publishing work. In some places it is the norm to publish practically everything you do. This can help the scientific process if the work is done correctly, even though it may not represent "significant" progress others may find the experimental details useful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, the quantity of this "mediocre" work is not the correct way to measure scientific output.
I also agree with an earlier comment, it is important to develop a culture where scientists and the scientific method is really valued.
My thoughts exactly Hax. As a graduate student myself, I have witnessed this same phenomenon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWas there any analysis of the "quality" of articles? It seems plausible that there was an increase in the work put into articles, which would cause each paper to cost more. That seems like a focus on quality over quantity- a good thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn recent years some scientists are not working seriously, many are fooling around, telling lies and do research on nonsense. Engineers, on the contrary, produce good fundamental results and devices which are really working. They can be sold easily.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example, at CERN in Geneva, physicists are looking for crazy particles like Higgs bosons also called God's particles. Research there is based on wrong theories such as the relativity theories. Better supervisors are needed.
1. In science, the number of papers published in a determined period does not reflect "productivity." "Productivity" should be determined by the general epistemological impact of the results published in each paper. Probably, to gauge this is next to impossible and should be evaluated historically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2. What is a "scientific" paper? Mostly they are lumped with "technological" ones. If there is a decreased in the latter, there will be a decrease in total output but not of "scientific" papers.
3. Anyway, if the decrease in scientific output is "real", it should surprise nobody. To start with, technology, though not manufacturing, is at an historical zenith as it can eventually provide, as does entrepreneurship, instant success and wealth. Also, science is under attack in the USA. For example, the stridency of the native yahoos railing against evolution and global warming does not fall in deaf ears. Or Senators laughing in public forums at submitted research proposals, after they decontextualized content from meaning and implications.
What is a smart kid to do today if he dreams to become a social agent a la Gates, Jobs or Zuckerberg? Go for a PhD in Physics, in Biology, in Linguistics, in...? Please!
Speaking both as an engineer who makes "useful devices that sell", and also as a published author, I can assure you that the "wrong theory of relativity" is based on the same principles as the rest of science. If the theory of relativity is wrong (as opposed to being only inexact in extreme cases), then pretty much all of science and engineering is worthless.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile not dismissing the theory of relativity, there have been thousands of scientific papers published in the past couple of decades concerning dark matter and dark energy. Now there's a 'dark flow'...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo summarize most succinctly, the requirement for additional galactic mass was based on the observation that the rotational velocities of stars in spiral galaxies, whose mass is highly distributed, violated the established laws of _Planetary_Motion_ derived from observation of our extremely centralized mass Solar system, in which 99.8% of total system mass is contained within the Sun. That galaxies might simply not qualify as planetary systems _obviously_ was not properly considered.
By the way, the ill-founded 'wrong theory' of dark matter has persisted for about forty years now, so far. Not to reject properly conducted science, but it is rather difficult to disprove the existence of an undetectable form of matter. Besides, that makes it such lucrative field of research for publications.
Do you actually know any scientists or do you get all your scientific information from comic books and the Internet?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI work in a major research university and get to rub shoulders with some of the best scientists in the world, including at least three Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry or Medicine, and I can tell you first hand that your view of science and scientists it so wrong as to be laughable.
Yes, scientists occasionally go chasing the wrong theory but that's part of science: you develop a hypothesis, test it, keep the good ones, and discard the bad ones. Even a negative result is a result and part of the process.
Interesting that no one has questioned the quality of the study. FYI the report was produced by a part of NSF that's severely deficient in employing sound methodology and producing high-quality analysis. Very smart of the various officials not to comment. I'd ignore it if I were them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne potential source of inefficiency is the great deal of money, time, talent, and--why not--lives wasted and even destroyed by the ever-growing viciousness and underhandedness of politics in research academia. It appears to me that the dominant culture of research academia has become driven by unethical and unprofessional conduct and is laden with erroneous assumptions about what constitutes qaulity research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA blatant example is in Space Travel. Although Rocket research has reached a dead end for Deep Space Travel many people in the Government have money coming in from it somehow. So the horse may be dead but money is spent on buying hay as they have stock in the hay company.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen the technology of the Flying Saucer was messed up in an experiment by incompetent Propulsion Engineers and then rejected, all the hay investors were jubilant.
While I hardly have the statistical evidence to back this up, I suspect that one of the factors leading to a decline in the absolute number of publications produced by the USA is the growing bureaucracy associated with academic funding. In order to conduct research in modern science, large amounts of typically state-provided funds must be acquired. In order to attain such funding, it is often necessary that researchers spend an inordinate amount of time justifying their future research by producing grant applications which are often redundant and time consuming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat said, I agree that this study provides little evidence that absolute scientific "productivity" has decreased over the past 20 years. Scientific research has been growing in complexity for centuries. Many people marvel at the diverse accomplishments of Galileo and Newton, noting that no such great talents exist today... And yet such an analysis is superficial. The growth of scientific knowledge has necessitated increased effort and time to produce meaningful publications in any area.
While I am glad to see that the body of this article at least considers such explanations, I am as always dismayed at the highly inaccurate title of this piece. It shouldn't have taken much effort to consider that the raw number of publications produced is only a correlate of scientific productivity. And, further, that the growing number of publications produced by other nations likely reflects the increased research spending output by the international community. Based upon these arguments, there is little evidence to suggest that "U.S. Science Productivity Continues to Drop"--at least, not based upon this article. And here I always believe that a title was meant to reflect the principle finding of an article, not just some catchy, glib phrase intended to attract readers.
Did the report try to determine the amount of money that actually went to the researcher - excluding the money that is siphoned off by the university for overhead?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps what is really happening is that the institutions are taking a larger portion of the grant.
Obsession with religion in America discourages inquisitive scientific pursuit. Enlightenment is detrimental to belief in myth. In the light of scientific fact one cannot justify the dogma perpetrated by religion. An enlightened people are difficult to subjugate. Religion has been a tool for thousands of years to rule the mind of the masses with fear and intimidation and continues to be the source of mischief and mayhem, wars and atrocities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is somewhat misrepresented by both the article and the report's executive summary. If you divide publications they count by workforce, things are nearly flat. It is the cost per worker that is going up, it would seem. For most of my research grants, a huge part of the cost is paying tuition for students, and tuition at public universities has skyrocketed. (Overhead rates have, by and large, stayed about constant here). So simple inflation corrections are inadequate. As the report explicitly is focused on the top 200 research universities (many if not most of which are public), this is an important cost factor. The second obvious factor is cost of research equipment (not to mention the desire of many universities to have their own special piece of equipment).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you dig into this report, you can see that the change in article productivity per PhD varies strongly by field. Physical sciences+engineering+math are near-constant or increasing, computer sciences bounce around a lot and it is the biological and medical sciences that are pulling this down. Is this a surprise given the way health care costs are rising? If it costs more to see your doctor and get a lab test, it probably costs more for that doctor (if he is also a researcher) to conduct research that might require the same tests. We can hope that the decreased "productivity" of the medical (and maybe biological) community reflects a more cautious approach than the publish-every-nuance that has been plugging up the literature and producing the repeatedly contradicted results that cause patients to yo-yo on what they should do. (Check out <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269> to see this problem described).
So, overall, maybe this piece is really not alarming in the context of how American science is working.
Hello Thim,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany people who are interested in Science believe that the work at CERN is of great value.
Perhaps the understanding of how things like energy and matter were created is not important to you.
I am a Computer Science professor, and by skimming through the original NSF report, I found a couple of interesting things:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- Conference proceedings are excluded. CS is one of the only fields where conferences, not journals, are the primary means of publishing results. Important data is missing for our field.
- Nobody really stands out. Apart from Harvard, all institutions are roughly equally good at papers per dollar AND citations per dollar. From the data you cannot conclude things like "Ivy League is more productive" or "Ivy League papers have more citations".
- Collaboration is an aggravating factor. Am I the only one surprised by the blaming of "increased collaborations" to explain the productivity drop? This while your work is frowned upon by the same funding agencies when you tend to work alone.
More in my blog post: http://www.leduotang.com/sylvain/node/141
As a faculty member in agriculture, I find the comments of zstansfi and mihondo to be very accurate. We spend a lot of time chasing money and reporting "progress." There are so many obligations to report "input, outcome, outputs, etc" that we spend a lot of effort running around making sure we have the right paperwork submitted, or overseeing budgets, or writing more grant proposals that support administrative functions as a result of declining public support of our universities. As a scientist, there is little time to reflect on scientific results. Instead we rush from deadline to deadline. I am sure this results in less actual productivity when measured by quantity of refereed publications.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been to all the specialist here inFresno California. I have been to stanford university for many of test. The California ear institute Stanford sent me there for testing. I have seen neuro physical therapist and I'm on my way to UCLA for more testing. I would like if you would look into it. I will release all of my medical records from birth to present always had health insurance. By the way my name is Ryan Matthew Nale I live in Fresno California.
P.S.
I also let you know if anything else come to my mind.
ThankYou for reading this
RYAN MATTHEW NALE
The HIDTA located across the US there are 28 programs. They target
Large scale drug manafactioning they have the ability to mark a person with a device and have control over the humans mind.they are to listen to a persons inner thoughts,stimulate the central nervous
System. They are able to conflict life like feelings
Pain,they are able to send sounds into the persons mind. But there are three teams who work under them the one I'm talking about is the national methamaphetamines and pharamaciudical located here in Fresno ,CA.They torture mid level to street drug users into a violent state of mind.they torture them with sleep depression and mind games making the person fear for there life. They spend anywhere for two months to five months torturing the person to they break along this the person may be arrested for aggregating assault and destructive behavior after a few run INS with the law they use mainly sheriff cause they cover a whole county and stop them for drug trafficking and maybe a weapon on the person cause the torture,and mind control.
The CVHIDTA have three co parteners that deal with all other drugs on a smaller scale. They go after the mid level to the street person on drugs
There involvement uses mind control make the drug user show himself threw the fears and emotional distress form the teams that I talk about they use local law enforcement to recognize these characters to find the subject they mainly sheriffs cause of there wide area that they can cover a whole county. http://t.co/aE7qF2b click on this
Link to see the patterns of the mind control. Investigate people who have been arrested for meth or other drugs that are a felony. Talk to people around them (family,friends,love ones)
You will see or since the patterns of mind control. You might also what to investigate the the fiscal year budget for this central valley HIDTA . Figure out the tax dollar they receive for a fiscal year
How many personal operate under the CVHITDA program
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been to all the specialist here inFresno California. I have been to stanford university for many of test. The California ear institute Stanford sent me there for testing. I have seen neuro physical therapist and I'm on my way to UCLA for more testing. I would like if you would look into it. I will release all of my medical records from birth to present always had health insurance. By the way my name is Ryan Matthew Nale I live in Fresno California.
P.S.
I also let you know if anything else come to my mind.
ThankYou for reading this
RYAN MATTHEW NALE
The HIDTA located across the US there are 28 programs. They target
Large scale drug manafactioning they have the ability to mark a person with a device and have control over the humans mind.they are to listen to a persons inner thoughts,stimulate the central nervous
System. They are able to conflict life like feelings
Pain,they are able to send sounds into the persons mind. But there are three teams who work under them the one I'm talking about is the national methamaphetamines and pharamaciudical located here in Fresno ,CA.They torture mid level to street drug users into a violent state of mind.they torture them with sleep depression and mind games making the person fear for there life. They spend anywhere for two months to five months torturing the person to they break along this the person may be arrested for aggregating assault and destructive behavior after a few run INS with the law they use mainly sheriff cause they cover a whole county and stop them for drug trafficking and maybe a weapon on the person cause the torture,and mind control.
The CVHIDTA have three co parteners that deal with all other drugs on a smaller scale. They go after the mid level to the street person on drugs
There involvement uses mind control make the drug user show himself threw the fears and emotional distress form the teams that I talk about they use local law enforcement to recognize these characters to find the subject they mainly sheriffs cause of there wide area that they can cover a whole county. http://t.co/aE7qF2b click on this
Link to see the patterns of the mind control. Investigate people who have been arrested for meth or other drugs that are a felony. Talk to people around them (family,friends,love ones)
You will see or since the patterns of mind control. You might also what to investigate the the fiscal year budget for this central valley HIDTA . Figure out the tax dollar they receive for a fiscal year and the amount of drugs seized threw there CVHIDTA program.
How many personal operate under the CVHITDA?
RyanWhere does all the tax dollars that is received by CVHIDTA go
? How do they get info on the people who they investigate? What reports to federal government that benefit tax dollars to the CVHIDTA? Notice the one of the main way for them to arrest small time drug users is threw a traffic stop. But prior to this look for the patterns of mind control to this person
They use to make him noticeable for law enforcement to recognize the drug characters of the drug in use. The local law enforcement doesn't know how the info is received on the mind control but it's 100% accurate to law enforcement.Rynale@hotmail.com I'm on twitter @nale112 on Facebook. Everyone needs to speak out and let the people of the USA hear your voice.
Talk to friends and who ever you want to tell that's freedom of speech. This needs to be recognize they don't always use mind control they can just listen to your inner thoughts or listen to
What ever you can hear.
Continue.....
Ryanhttp://t.co/aE7qF2b (MIND CONTROL)
Ryan
Begin forwarded message:
From: ryan <rynale@hotmail.com>
Date: November 12, 2010 1:46:47 AM PST
To: "MEbell@FreedomAction.org" <MEbell@FreedomAction.org>
Subject: Civil rights,torture
The national Methamphetamine and pharmaceutical teams that work under the central valley HIDTA. Have a device to use to collect info on a person. They are able to mark a person with a device and then they are able to listen to that person inner thoughts. They use this device to torture the person to comment violent crimes. They are able to stimulate the central nervous system causing extreme pain anywhere in the body they choose to torture. They also can send sounds into the brain they use a high pitch sound 18000 hrz. They target mid level to street level drug users. They have been doing this for
over a decade. This is a serous issue that needs to be tackled. They do this to uptain money for the epidemic of drug relative problemshere in the central valley.
Ryan
CVHIDTA use mainly the Fresno meth task force and the sister team witch use the the same concepts but target mid level and common drug user they use mainly sheriff like MAJEC for Fresno county and so on for each county they have a sheriff from every county from kern to sacromento and each county has a special task force like magec
The CVHIDTA mark drug users with a device and they are able to listen to a persons inner thoughts they also can stimulate the central nervous system causing ( real life like humans feelings from twitching , extreme pain , numbness in any part of the body)they also can send sounds into the mind.they torment the drug users (mainly first time offenders ) and scare the drug users to fear for there life resulting pulled over by sheriffs carry weapons with drugs in the car making a more punishable crime.making it look like a regular traffic stop.the physical mind games to the torchering threw nervous system.my name is Ryan Matthew Nale they have had a team on me since 2006 to now 24/7torchering me they also have plain clothes personal who help interact with these tactics and I can describe some of them
I have sent this to the FBI, the Whitehouse,the US Supreme courts,US district attorney and there are program that uses the same concept for mid level common street people using drugs
My name is Ryan Matthew Nale I know
This because they have had a team of roughly 20 people on me 24/7 since 2006. I'm sending you this letter because this is a major problem it come down to the suppervision who allow this to take place. I have contacted the FBI and many other top government agency informing them how I know how they operate and I have seen some of there personal
These are some of my thought on how they operate because I deal with them on a 24/7level since 2006
Ryan
As several others have indicated, number of papers is an outdated measure of quality, now, usign easily available citation data, there are easier ways of tracking impact of individual papers or authors, departments, or any other meaningful group. Impact per dollar is a better measure of effective use of grant money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://cs-test.ias.ac.in/cs/Downloads/article_46072.pdf
http://cs-test.ias.ac.in/cs/Downloads/article_46072.pdf
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