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Publish Or Perish
"Publish or perish" is an aphorism describing the pressure to publish academic work in order to succeed in an academic career. Such institutional pressure is generally strongest at research universities. Some researchers have identified the publish or perish environment as a contributing factor to the replication crisis. Successful publications bring attention to scholars and their sponsoring institutions, which can help continued funding and their careers. In popular academic perception, scholars who publish infrequently, or who focus on activities that do not result in publications, such as instructing undergraduates, may lose ground in competition for available tenure-track positions. The pressure to publish has been cited as a cause of poor work being submitted to academic journals. The value of published work is often determined by the prestige of the academic journal it is published in. Journals can be measured by their impact factor (IF), which is the average number of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aphorism
An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by tradition from generation to generation. The concept is generally distinct from those of an adage, brocard, chiasmus, epigram, maxim (legal or philosophical), principle, proverb, and saying; although some of these concepts may be construed as types of aphorism. Often, aphorisms are distinguished from other short sayings by the need for interpretation to make sense of them. In ''A Theory of the Aphorism'', Andrew Hui defined an aphorism as "a short saying that requires interpretation." History The word was first used in the '' Aphorisms'' of Hippocrates, a long series of propositions concerning the symptoms and diagnosis of disease and the art of healing and medicine. The often cited first sentence of this work is: "" - "life is shor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from technology, media, science, art, and design. , Media Lab's research groups include neurobiology, biologically inspired fabrication, socially engaging robots, emotive computing, bionics, and hyperinstruments. The Media Lab was founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte and former MIT President Jerome Wiesner, and is housed in the Wiesner Building (designed by I. M. Pei), also known as Building E15. The Lab has been written about in the popular press since 1988, when Stewart Brand published ''The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T.'', and its work was a regular feature of technology journals in the 1990s. In 2009, it expanded into a second building. The Media Lab came under scrutiny in 2019 due to its acceptance of donations from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
G-index
The ''g''-index is an author-level metric suggested in 2006 by Leo Egghe. The index is calculated based on the distribution of citations received by a given researcher's publications, such that given a set of articles ranked in decreasing order of the number of citations that they received, the ''g''-index is the unique largest number such that the top ''g'' articles received together at least ''g''2 citations. Hence, a ''g''-index of 10 indicates that the top 10 publications of an author have been cited at least 100 times (102), a ''g''-index of 20 indicates that the top 20 publications of an author have been cited 400 times (202). It can be equivalently defined as the largest number ''n'' of highly cited articles for which the average number of citations is at least ''n''. This is in fact a rewriting of the definition :g^2 \le \sum_c_ as :g \le \frac1g \sum_c_ The ''g''-index is an alternative for the older ''h''-index. The ''h''-index does not average the number of citat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
H-index
The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winning the Nobel Prize, being accepted for research fellowships and holding positions at top universities. The index is based on the set of the scientist's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications. The index has more recently been applied to the productivity and impact of a scholarly journal as well as a group of scientists, such as a department or university or country. The index was suggested in 2005 by Jorge E. Hirsch, a physicist at UC San Diego, as a tool for determining theoretical physicists' relative quality and is sometimes called the Hirsch index or Hirsch number. Definition and purpose The ''h''-index is defined as the maximum value of ''h'' such that the given author/journa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Author-level Metrics
Author-level metrics are citation metrics that measure the bibliometrics, bibliometric impact of individual authors, researchers, academics, and scholars. Many metrics have been developed that take into account varying numbers of factors (from only considering the total number of citations, to looking at their distribution across papers or Academic journal, journals using statistical or Graph theory, graph-theoretic principles). The main motivation for these quantitative comparisons between researchers is to allocate resources (e.g. funding, academic appointments). However, there remains controversy in the academic community as to how well author-level metrics achieve this goal. Author-level metrics differ from journal-level metrics which attempt to measure the bibliometric impact of academic journals rather than individuals. However, metrics originally developed for academic journals can be reported at researcher level, such as the author-level eigenfactor and the author impact f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Up Or Out
Up or out, also known as a tenure or partnership system, is the requirement for members of a hierarchical organization to achieve a certain rank within a certain period of time. If they fail to do so, they must leave the organization. Examples Private sector "Up or out" is practiced throughout the accounting industry in North America, most notably at the Big Four accounting firms, which also practice this policy in their branches in other countries. Up or out is also practiced in the investment banking industry, where third year analysts and third year associates who will not be promoted are asked to leave the bank. The management consulting industry also practices up or out, where it is commonly regarded as a sign of the industry's "hard-nosed approach to doing business" with Bain & Co and McKinsey & Company being the two consultancies most closely associated with the approach. According to Leslie Perlow, up or out is also employed at Boston Consulting Group. Among many othe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slow Science
Slow science is part of the broader slow movement. It is based on the belief that science should be a slow, steady, methodical process, and that scientists should not be expected to provide "quick fixes" to society's problems. Slow science supports curiosity-driven scientific research and opposes performance targets. Slow science is a continually developing school of thought in the scientific community. Followers of slow science practices are generally opposed to the current model of research which is seen as constrained by the need for continued funding. The slow science perspective attributes the overinflation of scientific publishing, and rise in fraudulent publishing with the requirement for researchers and institutions to create a justification for continued funding. The term slow science was first popularised in “Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science” by researcher Isabelle Stengers in 2018. The idea of “publish or perish”, which too links lim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientometrics
Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing scholarly literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of informetrics. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academic journals, the understanding of scientific citations, and the use of such measurements in policy and management contexts. Leydesdorff, L. and Milojevic, S., "ScientometricsarXiv:1208.4566(2013), forthcoming in: Lynch, M. (editor), ''International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences'' subsection 85030. (2015) In practice there is a significant overlap between scientometrics and other scientific fields such as information systems, information science, science of science policy, sociology of science, and metascience. Critics have argued that over-reliance on scientometrics has created a system of perverse incentives, producing a publish or perish environment that leads to low-quality research. Historical development Modern scie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salami Slicing
Salami slicing tactics, also known as salami slicing, salami tactics, the salami-slice strategy, or salami attacks, is the practice of using a series of many small actions to produce a much larger action or result that would be difficult or unlawful to perform all at once. Politically, the term is used to describe a divide and conquer process of threats and alliances used to overcome opposition. With it, an aggressor can influence and eventually dominate a landscape, typically political, in piecemeal fashion. Opposition is eliminated "slice by slice" until its members realize, usually too late, that it has been virtually neutralized in its entirety. In some cases, the tactics include the creation of several factions within an opposing political party, followed by its dismantling from the inside, without giving the affected parties the opportunity to protest or react. Salami tactics are most likely to succeed when its perpetrators keep their true long-term motives hidden and main ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Least Publishable Unit
In academic publishing, the least publishable unit (LPU), also smallest publishable unit (SPU), minimum publishable unit (MPU), loot, or publon, is the smallest measurable quantum of publication, the minimum amount of information that can be used to generate a publication in a peer-reviewed venue, such as a journal or a conference. (Maximum publishable unit and optimum publishable unit are also used.) The term is often used as a joking, ironic, or derogatory reference to the strategy of artificially inflating quantity of publications. Publication of the results of research is an essential part of science. The number of publications is often used to assess the work of a scientist and as a basis for distributing research funds. In order to achieve a high rank in such an assessment, there is a trend to split up research results into smaller parts that are published separately, thus inflating the number of publications. This process has been described as splitting the results into th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forced Ranking
A vitality curve is a performance management practice that calls for individuals to be ranked or rated against their coworkers. It is also called stack ranking, forced ranking, and rank and yank. Pioneered by GE's Jack Welch in the 1980s, it has remained controversial. Numerous companies practice it, but mostly covertly to avoid direct criticism. Overview The vitality model of former General Electric chairman and CEO Jack Welch has been described as a "20-70-10" system. The "top 20" percent of the workforce is most productive, and 70% (the "vital 70") work adequately. The other 10% ("bottom 10") are nonproducers and should be fired. The often cited "80-20 rule", also known as the " Pareto principle" or the "Law of the Vital Few", whereby 80% of crimes are committed by 20% of criminals, or 80% of useful research results are produced by 20% of the academics, is an example of such rankings observable in social behavior. In some cases such "80-20" tendencies do emerge, and a Pare ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academic Careerism
Academic careerism is the tendency of academics (professors specifically and intellectuals generally) to pursue their own enrichment and self-advancement at the expense of honest inquiry, unbiased research and dissemination of truth to their students and society. Such careerism has been criticized by thinkers from Socrates in ancient Athens to Russell Jacoby in the present. Socrates' criticism of the Sophists In Xenophon's ''Memorabilia'', Socrates draws a comparison between the proper and honorable way to bestow beauty and the proper and honorable way to bestow wisdom. Those who offer beauty for sale on the market are called prostitutes, and are held in disrepute by the Athenians. Those who offer wisdom for sale, on the other hand, are highly respected. Socrates believes this is an error. The Sophists should be seen for what they are, prostitutors of wisdom. In Plato's '' Protagoras'', Socrates draws an analogy between peddlers of unhealthy food and peddlers of false and d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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