Garbage papers are produced not by bad scientists. It's the metrics-focused evaluation that creates them. Can you imagine 400,000 fake research papers? - 70,000 of them was published last year. This is 2% of ALL papers in 2023. - Paper mills produce huge number of papers at speed and have special templates for that. - For most journals, 2% come from paper mills. But for some, it is a whooping 40%. And this is the lower boundary, according to Adam Day (director of scholarly data-services company Clear Skies). His software only sees paper mills that have a known template. ▫️ Paper mills feed on the existing reward system in academia. When everyone looks at citations and number of papers, some people turn to paper mills to become ‘successful’. ▫️ I see many scientists who: - produce meaningless research. - boast about the NUMBER of papers they publish per year - and feel anxiety when they produce fewer papers/year than before ▫️ What can we do? - Stop using the number of papers to measure success (it is used in many countries, including the EU) - Stop giving grants based on the number of citations, awards and invited talks - Include new criteria such as community service/contribution, publishing of codes, participation in committees, etc. Give them a big share of the total score. - Include the “depth of research” as a crucial factor (reviewers should provide a thorough feedback on this). ▫️ #AcademicTwitter #AcademicChatter #researchpaper