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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3196

Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

The world's most-cited researchers, according to newly released data, are a curiously eclectic bunch. Nobel laureates and eminent polymaths rub shoulders with less familiar names, such as Sundarapandian Vaidyanathan from Chennai in India. What leaps out about Vaidyanathan and hundreds of other researchers is that many of the citations to their work come from their own papers, or from those of their co-authors.

Vaidyanathan, a computer scientist at the Vel Tech R&D Institute of Technology, a privately run institute, is an extreme example: he has received 94% of his citations from himself or his co-authors up to 2017, according to a study in PLoS Biology this month. He is not alone. The data set, which lists around 100,000 researchers, shows that at least 250 scientists have amassed more than 50% of their citations from themselves or their co-authors, while the median self-citation rate is 12.7%.

The study could help to flag potential extreme self-promoters, and possibly 'citation farms', in which clusters of scientists massively cite each other, say the researchers. "I think that self-citation farms are far more common than we believe," says John Ioannidis, a physician at Stanford University in California who specializes in meta-science — the study of how science is done — and who led the work. "Those with greater than 25% self-citation are not necessarily engaging in unethical behaviour, but closer scrutiny may be needed," he says.


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  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday August 22 2019, @09:41PM

    by RamiK (1813) on Thursday August 22 2019, @09:41PM (#883790)

    sometimes require a lot of words...people with editing power

    This isn't Wikipedia we're talking about here. It's not anonymous. It's not entirely open for public editing. The researchers gets full editorial right and subjects under ambiguity must be hyperlinked with the different opinions via policy. Researchers get to set their own contribution policy between only letting verified contributors (Academics) have a right to make suggestions and even letting the general public make edits. Verification and peer-review is done by fellows suggesting edits / leaving comments / leaving links to their own rebuttals (which would be required via policy to incorporate as a disambiguation foot-note linking to the review / contradicting paper). It's all backed with source management regardless so you know who gets credit and who doesn't AND researchers can link specific entries at specific document dates in their CV profile for when their superiors call them up to talk seniority.

    The core issue is compensation and intellectual property rights. But if you actually look at the last 50 years of innovation and where the money is flowing, it will become clear it's just not compensating the people doing the work anyhow. So, really, just scrap it and move on. Once there's no IP to fight over, alternative compensation methods will present themselves. And if not, no harm done anyhow.

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