Re: How computer-generated fake papers are flooding academia..................

"
• Higgs would not have found his boson in today's publish-or-perish research culture
"

BORSCHT.

Pardon me while I inject a few facts into your rant.

1. The publish or perish culture was established a few hundred years before Peter Higgs was born. Higgs' work would have been impossible without it.

2. Kings College, his alma mater, was a full-fledged player in traditional scientific research and publishing 100 years before Higgs was born. So in every sense of the phrase, Higgs was a product of that system.

3. None of the things mentioned in the article count as true publications in the "publish or perish" world, because none of them are peer-reviewed journals. The peer-review process is brutal. It can afford to be because there are easily 100 articles submitted for every one that is published.

Everything you say about conferences and books is true because unlike real journals, those guys are dying for material, but none of that counts. And the real professionals know that. When it comes time for promotion and tenure, conference papers and book chapters mean almost nothing.

3. Peter Higgs did not find his boson.

ak