<story><title>Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06185-8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throw_pm23</author><text>As an academic (CS), I&amp;#x27;m able to write one or two decent papers a year, in a very good year, three.&lt;p&gt;Looking at colleagues who write ten a year I already get existential angst, and have to actively tell myself that life is not a competition and some things are more important.&lt;p&gt;Writing fifty (while also teaching, writing grants, mentoring students, etc.) seems mind-numbing, even just in terms of the relatively routine tasks of formatting or proofreading papers, aligning figures, corresponding with reviewers, editors, co-authors, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bachmeier</author><text>Michael Stonebraker referred to this as &amp;quot;Diarrhea of papers&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.idug.org&amp;#x2F;browse&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;blogviewer?blogkey=a7b6fe8a-a792-4752-8794-6589aa32d2a4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.idug.org&amp;#x2F;browse&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;blogviewer?blogkey=a7b6fe8...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;And he more or less says the focus on quantity has made the academic field (databases) irrelevant, because individual papers don&amp;#x27;t tell you anything useful. (Disclaimer: My interpretation of his talk, and I don&amp;#x27;t work in that field.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06185-8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throw_pm23</author><text>As an academic (CS), I&amp;#x27;m able to write one or two decent papers a year, in a very good year, three.&lt;p&gt;Looking at colleagues who write ten a year I already get existential angst, and have to actively tell myself that life is not a competition and some things are more important.&lt;p&gt;Writing fifty (while also teaching, writing grants, mentoring students, etc.) seems mind-numbing, even just in terms of the relatively routine tasks of formatting or proofreading papers, aligning figures, corresponding with reviewers, editors, co-authors, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>make3</author><text>they don&amp;#x27;t do any of those tasks though, people who do 50 papers a year are in very senior roles &amp;amp; only mentor, attend a few meetings, read the paper once or twice at best and propose modifications maybe. the question of what constitutes authorship is really more the question here</text></comment>