Ring a ring o’ roses… This is actually the title of a fascinating article on how to play the game of getting published, getting cited, publishing in “quality” journals etc. It is enlightening how little the quality of an article actually matters, and how we prefer where an article has been published over what it actually contains.
As for journal rankings, it’s a vicious circle of them being based on “quality” people publishing in a journal who submit their paper to the journal only because its a “quality” journal. And another vicious circle of journal ranking being based on (self?)-citations and on the inclusion of both the cited and citing journal article in the SSCI (otherwise your citation is just not counted). Then there is also the self-fulfilling prophecy of higher journal rankings leading to more submissions leading to higher rejection rates and an even higher journal ranking…
Just when is this academic bubble going to burst? The authors (Stuart Macdonald and Jacqueline Kam) suggest a game of tinkerbell to deal with it… and have been quite successful in the gamesmanship they criticise – this very article got them high publication points.
Gyöngyi
Pingback: The Catch 22 of Academic Publishing « husdal.com
Pingback: The Catch 22 of Academic Publishing « husdal.com