PS: We can all list some of the factors at work here, and we should. My start: Paying more attention to where a work is published, and the fact of publication itself, than to the quality of what is published.
@petersuber if this were a development team, i would treat the problem as the authors not being held responsible for their quality (or lack thereof). i’d make some policy changes that make the authors feel the impact more. but who knows, maybe research is different
another reaction is to sharpen reviews. the trouble is reviewers don’t have as much context, so they miss things that are more hidden. also, tackling it in review tends to slow down progress
@petersuber Peter, can you clarify what you are saying in your post script? I think you are saying we should pay less attention to where an article is published and more to the quality of the articles. And I think your implying that they (assessors) are doing the opposite. Is that right?
@timelfen
Yes, that's right. Sorry if it wasn't clear.
On we/they: Universities, funders, and researchers could all do better in paying more attention to the quality of research than where it's published.
The goals of research assessment create incentives to game the system. The goals should be high-quality research, not publication in high-prestige or high-impact journals, and not high scores on simplistic metrics, esp. journal-level metrics.
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