Institutions around the world offer publishing incentives to researchers

Chinese institutions have been known to offer incentives to faculty upon successful publication in reputed, peer-reviewed, high-impact-factor journals. It has recently come to light that, researchers from several other countries are enjoying similar benefits too. An article published last week in Science magazine brings to light the fact that the practice of awarding researchers for getting published in top journals is widespread. 

It was found that China is at the top of the list of countries incentivizing publishing with the highest prize being $165,000. Universities in China offer first authors of papers published in highly valued journals, such as Nature, a prize of around $43,000. Closely following China are two Middle East countries - Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Institutions of these countries offer prizes of up to $13,700 that are divided among authors with the lead author getting the largest share. Authors even get paid around $820 if they get published in journals with an impact factor below one. Developing countries such as India and Pakistan as well as universities in developed countries such as the U.K. and the U.S. were found to incentivize publishing.

This widespread practice highlights the undue importance placed on citation data and impact factor. “People respond to incentives, and institutions are terribly driven by bibliometric measures right now,” says Paula Stephan, an economist at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Practices such as these create severe competition among researchers and the focus shifts to quantity rather than quality of important scientific discoveries.

Another offshoot of this practice is the increased volume of submission to the top journals adds to the workload of the editors. Stephan states, “When you get an enormous cash incentive for a very small subset of journals, it’s inefficient for the system.” However, pointing out the silver lining, Stephen says that the incentives encourage researchers to reach out to peers and collaborate.   

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