Re: “I Hate Your Paper,” 1 the real problem is that publications have lost their purpose. The point of publication is to inform the scientific community of really important findings and to contribute to the growth of knowledge. When I hear—as I typically do when a speaker is being introduced—that some very senior scientist has hundreds of publications, I always wonder: do any of them matter? We have become obsessed with publication for publication’s sake. There are now more journals than ever and still the “top-tiered” journals reject enough papers to fill a library. Here’s a proposal: each scientist has a maximum of 25 papers he or she can publish during a career lifetime. I bet science would not suffer one bit—and all these issues would go away.
Susan Fitzpatrick
James S. McDonnell Foundation
St. Louis, Mo.
susan@jsmf.org
In my opinion, peer review not only works, it is essential. I ...
