Why are more researchers now screened out of citations leaders' list? A highly cited Alliance scientist's view
The Alliance's Christophe Béné warns a ‘tsunami’ of dubious science potentially imperils a high-citation ranking system – particularly for young researchers. The organizers of the citation scorecard are similarly concerned.
image: Alliance scientist Christophe Béné at the organization's Colombia campus.
Credit: Alliance Bioversity CIAT
The Web of Science and Clarivate named Alliance researcher Christophe Béné one of the world’s top-cited researchers for the fourth consecutive year in the field of multi-disciplinary sciences.
The analysis of this year’s ranking system, however, made repeated warnings about the rapidly shifting scientific publishing landscape that underpins citations leadership.
“Trust in research is increasingly at risk, creating additional challenges for the research community,” Clarivate wrote. “[W]e continue to refine our evaluation and selection policies … to address the challenges of an increasingly complex and polluted scholarly record.”
This year’s list excluded a record 2,400 researchers, a remarkable increase from the 500 excluded in 2022. While it mentioned “concerns around research integrity,” it did not assert any misconduct. It noted atypical publication patterns that warranted exclusion.
A tsunami of bad papers
Between the lines, Béné said the Clarivate analysis points to the exponential swell of scientific publications and journals. Today, there are at least 20,000 academic journals publishing more than 3.4 million articles per year (though some estimates range as high as 50,000 and 5 million, respectively.)
“This has a lot to do with the for-profit business model of the science publishing industry, which isn’t motivated by publishing quality papers,” Béné said, adding that this “tsunami” of publications is particularly detrimental to young researchers.
“You may have some very talented young researchers starting their careers but they struggle for recognition,” said Béné. “Even if their paper is fantastic, it’s not being picked up because it’s in the middle of the sea of papers published every week.”
Additionally, “You have an increasing number of papers of bad quality, being published” Béné said, since many journals now publish for profit instead of for quality.
“We’ve gone from a system where we had gatekeepers who were very proud to ensure that only the best papers were going to go through, to a system where now professional editors (who are not scientists) are in charge of the editorial process and are paid to ensure a smooth and fast publication of a maximum number of papers,” Béné said.
Future citings
It’s not easy to predict what the current publication system augurs for the quality of newcomers to the ranks of high citations, except that a disproportionate number of papers never get cited – an issue Béné said is at least a decade old.
Artificial Intelligence may be of use sorting quality publications from poor ones.
Clarivate, for its part, appears committed to innovating to address the ranking system’s challenges.
“As the need for high-quality data from rigorously selected sources is becoming ever more important, we have adapted and responded to technological advances and shifts in the publishing landscape … we continue to refine our evaluation and selection policies for our annual Highly Cited Researchers program to address the challenges of an increasingly complex and polluted scholarly record,” said David Pendlebury, the Head of Research Analysis at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate.