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[转载]高被引的文章并不代表是好文章（科技英语，英汉对照）

已有 732 次阅读 2024-2-10 12:47 |个人分类:科技英语|系统分类:科普集锦|文章来源:转载

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/715021

2021-rubin.pdf

Systematic Bias in the Progress of Research

研究进程中的策略性偏好

Journal of Political Economy ( IF 9.637 ) Pub Date : 2021-07-12 , DOI: 10.1086/715021

Amir Rubin , Eran Rubin

Abstract

We analyze the extent to which citing practices may be driven by strategic considerations. The discontinuation of the Journal of Business (JB) in 2006 for extraneous reasons serves as an exogenous shock for analyzing strategic citing behavior. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that articles published in JB before 2006 experienced a relative reduction in citations of approximately 20% after 2006. Since the discontinuation of JB is unrelated to the scientific contributions of its articles, the results imply that the referencing of articles is systematically affected by strategic considerations, which hinders scientific progress.

摘要

文章引用文献的策略是受战略考虑的驱动。目前主流学者的引用的策略是：在权威刊物的近期文章和在低挡刊物上的真正有水平的早期文章之间，引用前者。这这种策略阻碍了科学进步。

2006 年，Journal of Business (JB) 因外部原因停。2006 年之发表在 JB 的文章用量相对减少了大约 20%。由于 JB 的停刊与其发表的文章的科学贡献无关，结果表明主流学者的引用的策略存在严重学术道德问题。

Introduction

Review processes are not perfect; significant contributions may sometimes be misjudged by top experts while being correctly appraised by those with less impressive reputations. The novels Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, Animal Farm, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and The Da Vinci Code are all examples of this phenomenon. They were repeatedly rejected by top publishers but were successfully published by small-scale unknown publishers and eventually became world renowned. The academic-publishing process is also known to make mistakes, and good articles sometimes get rejected by top-tier outlets (Kuhn 1962; Gans and Shepherd 1994). One would think that academic research would follow patterns similar to the novel-publishing process, where, once published, the research makes an impact according to its contribution.

前言

同行评审并不完美;重大贡献经常被顶级科学家误判，但是被没有声望的审稿人正确评估。小说《哈利·波特》、《纳尼亚传奇》、《动物农场》、《心灵鸡汤》和《达芬奇密码》都是这种现象的例子。这些小说一再被顶级出版商拒稿，但被小而不知名出版商出版，并最终成为世界名著。学术出版也会出同样的错误，好的文章时常被顶级期刊拒稿。学术研究与小说出类似，一旦发表，其影响力取决于研究论文本身的贡献。

Ideally, an article’s outlet should not affect its impact or possible influence on the trajectory of science, and important contributions, regardless of where they are eventually published, should be referenced in subsequent work. However, unlike the novel-publishing process, in the field of finance, there is a notable dearth of influential scientific contributions that were not published in top-tier journals. Rarely would one praise an article published in a second- or third-tier journal, and highly cited papers seem to almost always be published in top-tier journals. This is not only true in finance; for example, Kim, Morse, and Zingales (2006) show that out of the top 41 economics journals, more than half the influential papers appear in three journals (Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, and American Economic Review). Indeed,somewhat like novel publications, in academic publications, the outlet’s reputation embeds information about the potential quality of an article, which may explain the phenomenon. This motivates the following question: Is the situation in which all significant academic contributions in finance seem to appear in a few top-tier journals an outcome of a very efficient review process, or are authors fixated on referencing articles published in the highest-tier outlets, which creates a significant systematic bias in citing practices?

按理文章发表在什么刊物不应影响文章的影响力和文章对科学的贡献，并且重要的贡献，无论它们最终发表在何处，都应该被随后的工作引用。然而，与小说出版不同的是，在金融领域，没有发表在顶级期刊上的文章的价值被明显低估。很少有人会称赞发表在二线或三线期刊上的文章，而有高引用率的几乎总是发表在顶级期刊上的文章。这种情况不仅是在金融领域;例如，在排名前41的经济学期刊中，超过一半的有影响力的论文出现在三本期刊（《计量经济学》、《政治经济学杂志》和《美国经济评论》）上。在学术出版物中，刊物的等级为文章质量背书。这引发了以下问题：金融领域所有重要的学术贡献的文章都发表在少数顶级期刊上是因为这些刊物非常有效的同行评审机制，还是引用歧视造成过度专注于引用在顶级刊物上发表的文章？

Understanding why certain contributions make an impact is of utmost importance. The practice of referencing previous relevant research allows readers to better assess the incremental contributions of new research and acknowledge the prior contributions on which that research is based (Merton 1968). The importance of adequate referencing practices is exemplified by the fact that article citation counts have become the primary measure for quantifying an article’s scientific contribution; moreover, journals are segmented into different quality tiers based on the average citation counts of their articles (Gross and Gross 1927; Coats 1971; White and White 1977; Liebowitz and Palmer 1984). The segmentation into tiers has considerable ramifications. It appears that any association with a top tier journal automatically serves as a quality signal. Thus, the scientific community may, to an extent, be attached to the top-tier journal rather than the contents of its articles. For example, in business and economics schools, the number of top-tier journal publications has become the core determinant of faculty career opportunities and pay (Gomez-Mejia and Balkin 1992; Heckman and Moktan 2020). Being an editor or a referee of a top-tier journal is a considerable quality signal for the merits of a researcher. Similarly, many would agree that when a top-tier journal article is cited as a relevant reference, it helps signal the quality of the citing article and its authors. Under these conditions, one must ask whether top-tier journals would have been similarly referenced had they not become a core tool for signaling quality.

了解为什么某些文章会产生人为虚假影响力对科学传播至关重要。引用以前的相关研究的做法使读者能够更好地评估新研究的增量贡献，也是对先前工作的承认。正确的文献引用实践的重要性在于文章引用次数已成为对文章的科学价值衡量的主要标准;此外，根据其文章的平均引用次数而将期刊分为不同的质量等级。将期刊划分为不同级别是将期刊进行分类。在顶级期刊发表的文章就自动贴上高质量的标签。因此科学界更可能依赖于期刊的等级、而不是文章的内容评判文章的价值。例如，在商学院和经济学学院，在顶级期刊发表文章的数量已成为教师职业晋升和薪酬的定条件。成为顶级期刊的编辑或审稿人，已经成为研究人员水平的标志。同样，许多人以为引用顶级期刊文章，就是自己文章的质量的证明、是自己水平的标志。在这种情况下，人们必须问，如果顶级期刊没有这种质量评价标签，它们的文章是否会被类似地引用。

In broad terms, rather than just serving their intended objective of referencing relevant work, citations of articles published in top-tier journals may be driven by agency considerations because authors focus on achieving professional goals with respect to these journals. These personal goals include, most obviously, the desire to obtain publications in top-tier journals but can also include the desire to get invited to a conference sponsored by such journals, become a referee in those journals, or receive reference letters from scholars associated with the journals. To facilitate this, authors may cite top-tier journals as a way to enhance their relationships with those journals. They may further consider the preferences of top-tier journals’ referees for such citations. Typically, these referees serve more than one top-tier journal, which they potentially even more appreciate as quality signals and whose top-tier status they wish to preserve by receiving citations. Consequently, authors may consider the expected positive impact of top-tier journal citations in satisfying referees. Overall, the agency considerations that emerged from the certification of quality by top-tier journals may have inflated the number of their citations out of proportion. It is possible that had some of the noted professional externalities, for both authors and referees, been eliminated, citations of top-tier journal articles may have been reduced. Our goal is to analyze whether systematic strategic citing of top journals exists and whether it is partially responsible for their high impact.

另外，引用顶级期刊上文章可能不仅仅单纯是为了参考相关工作，而是借顶刊的名誉为自己捞取资本，或者通过引用顶刊文作者最终也能在这些期刊上发表文章，希望被邀请参加由这些期刊赞助的会议，成为这些期刊的审稿人，或搞到顶刊圈内学者的推荐信。为了促进这些，引用顶级期刊文章以加强作者与这些期刊的联系。顶级期刊的审稿人喜欢此类引用。通常，这些审稿人为多个顶级期刊审稿。这些审稿人会将引用顶刊文章作为衡量稿件质量的一个标准。这些审稿人也希望有这种引用以保持这些顶级地位。因此引顶级期刊文章在满足审稿人者方面的要求有预期的积极作用。这些因素使顶级期刊文章的引用数量与其质量不成比例地膨胀。如果消除这些外在的因素，顶级期刊文章的引用数可能会减少。本工作的目标是分析这些因素对顶级期刊高引用的

…

IX. Concluding Remarks

…

The process by which journals accept articles is commonly known to have errors. For example, the following quotation is attributed to the well-known macroeconomist Gregory Mankiw: “The editorial process is highly imperfect. The bad news is that some of your best articles may end up getting rejected from the top journals. The good news is that you may get lucky, and some of your so-so articles may end up published in top journals simply because they hit the editor’s desk when he is in a good mood.”

众所周知，期刊在接受文章的过程存在问题。“编辑部初审过程非常糟糕。你的最好的文章最终可能会被顶级期刊拒稿。你可能会很幸运，你的很一般的文章最终可能会发表在顶级期刊上，仅仅是因为它们在编辑心情好的时候送到了编辑的办公桌上。

While this variation in acceptance may balance out for an author, the evidence presented in this research shows that the scientific implications are different. Academic scholars not only strive to publish in the top journals but also are fixated on referring to articles that appear in those journals, often neglecting an article’s true relevance. The results of the current paper show that, in essence, the exact same article with the exact same accreditation by reviewers is considered significantly more valuable when the outlet is in the “most-desired journals to publish in” list compared to the period in which that is no longer the case. Evidently, the important process of unbiased and neutral referencing of relevant work is lacking.

这里指出的问题对作者关系不大，因为好结果和坏结果被平均掉了。但是这些问题事关阻碍还是促进科学的进步。学者不仅努力地要在顶级期刊上发表文章，而且还专注于引用出现在这些期刊上的文章，而往往忽略了文章的真正价值。这篇论文的结果表明，同一篇文章，当它出现在顶刊的目录中，与他发表的期刊已经不在顶刊的目录中，具有完全不同的价值。当该媒体在“最希望发表的期刊”名单中时，具有完全相同的审稿人认证的完全相同的文章被认为更有价值。完全没有正确的引用观。

Novels would probably not lose popularity if their publication company ceased to exist; the social impact of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was not reduced when the American Publishing Company was closed. However, in academia, the situation is different and has a potentially significant effect on the progress of research. This state of affairs should alarm editors and researchers who have a sincere desire to advance scientific progress. This research shows that the high impact of top journals is, to a significant degree, due to authors’ fixation on journals and not necessarily due to the articles’ quality. To paraphrase the quote above, “The bad news is that some of the best articles will not make an impact, but the good news is that some of the so-so articles may end up making an impact.”

如果小说的出版公司不复存在，小说可能不会失去人气;马克吐温的《汤姆索亚历险记》的社会影响并没有随着美国出版公司关闭而减少。然而，在学术界，情况有所不同，对科学进步有潜在的重大威胁。这种状况应该警示那些真诚希望推动科学进步的编辑和研究人。这项研究表明，顶级期刊的高影响力在很大程度上是由于研究人员对顶级期刊的执着，而不由于文章的质量。套用上面的一句话，“坏消息是作者最好的文章因为被顶刊拒稿而被垃圾文章淹没，但好消息是，作者一一般的文章因为发在顶刊而产生轰动效果。”

扩展阅读

https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1700189668654210350&wfr=spider&for=pc

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