The academic publishing world is changing significantly, with ever-growing numbers of publications each year and shifting publishing patterns. However, the metrics used to measure academic success, such as the number of publications, citation number, and impact factor, have not changed for decades. Moreover, recent studies indicate that these metrics have become targets and follow Goodhart's Law, according to which "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." In this study, we analyzed over 120 million papers to examine how the academic publishing world has evolved over the last century. Our study shows that the validity of citation-based measures is being compromised and their usefulness is lessening. In particular, the number of publications has ceased to be a good metric as a result of longer author lists, shorter papers, and surging publication numbers. Citation-based metrics, such citation number and h-index, are likewise affected by the flood of papers, self-citations, and lengthy reference lists. Measures such as a journal's impact factor have also ceased to be good metrics due to the soaring numbers of papers that are published in top journals, particularly from the same pool of authors. Moreover, by analyzing properties of over 2600 research fields, we observed that citation-based metrics are not beneficial for comparing researchers in different fields, or even in the same department. Academic publishing has changed considerably; now we need to reconsider how we measure success.
Additionally, many studies have focused on how publication trends have changed over time, often focusing on specific geographical areas, various demographic characteristics, specific research domains, or specific journals. For example, G ' a @cite_51 utilized the Science Citation Index to understand publication patterns in the developing world. @cite_2 studied the gender gap in authorship of academic medical literature over 35 years. They discovered that the percentage of first and last authors who were women increased from 5.9 Our study is greatly influenced by a recent study by Edwards and Roy @cite_3 , who observed that academia has become a hypercompetitive environment that can lead to unethical behaviors. The driving force behind such behaviors is to manipulate the metrics that measure the research's impact solely to increase the quantitative measures (and hence the status) of the research.
@cite_51 @cite_3 @cite_2
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze author and methodological characteristics in top-tier publications in higher education. As the importance of research in the professoriate continues to grow and faculty face ratcheted-up expectations for prestige in their research, such data are important contextually and historically. Design methodology approach This descriptive study examines 587 articles within four top-tier higher education research journals from 2008 to 2012. Data were open coded and analyzed with a research team, resulting in an intercoder reliability of 0.96. Findings Results show most authors are assistant professors, overwhelmingly received PhD’s from very high research institutions (Carnegie classification), and currently work in similar institutions. Five degree-granting institutions accounted for 29.0 percent of publications in top-tier journals. Additionally, quantitative research accounted for 60.6 percent of published articles, with regression as the most commonly used analytic technique (34.7 percent). Research limitations implications This study examined only higher education faculty and institutions based in the USA as well as first authors. Practical implications These results are meant to provide baseline data for top-tier journals within higher education and might inform conversations about methodological acceptability, respectability of qualitative research, graduate education research requirements, journal editor trainings, and tenure and promotion criteria. Originality value This paper provides an update to previous studies that examined publications in higher education within the last three decades. In addition, this study examines author characteristics, which previous studies have mostly excluded. This study offers empirical data to inform conversations about the state of research in top-tier publications within higher education. Background Participation of women in the medical profession has increased during the past four decades, but issues of concern persist regarding disparities between the sexes in academic medicine. Advancement is largely driven by peer-reviewed original research, so we sought to determine the representation of female physician-investigators among the authors of selected publications during the past 35 years. Methods Original articles from six prominent medical journals — the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the Annals of Internal Medicine (Ann Intern Med), the Annals of Surgery (Ann Surg), Obstetrics & Gynecology (Obstet Gynecol), and the Journal of Pediatrics (J Pediatr) — were categorized according to the sex of both the first and the senior (last listed) author. Sex was also determined for the authors of guest editorials in NEJM and JAMA. Data were collected for the years 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2004. The analysis was restricted to author...