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Nature 441, 792 (15 June 2006) | doi:10.1038/441792b; Published online 14
June 2006

Cash for papers: putting a premium on publication
Ichiko Fuyuno and David Cyranoski, Tokyo

Top of pageAbstractTrend for financial incentives spreads in Asia.

Financial rewards for publishing high-profile papers are spreading. Starting
later this month, South Korean researchers will receive US$3,000 from the
government when they publish in elite journals. And that's a pittance
compared with China, where some scientists can rake in more than ten times
that amount.

As institutions and countries strive for international recognition, some are
hoping that publication bonuses will help. But critics fear that this
strategy could lead to a dangerous fixation on a few indicators of scientific
success.

The Korean initiative, funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, will
award 3 million won (US$3,000) to the first and the corresponding author on
papers in key journals. "The plan is part of efforts to raise the morale of
scientists who boost development in the country's science and technology
sector," says Young Nam Lim, deputy director at the ministry's department of
basic science policy. A ten-member committee composed of ministry officials
and researchers will choose the relevant journals. They are likely to include
Nature, Science and Cell among others, Lim says.

Similar practices are already in place elsewhere. In Pakistan, under a system
introduced by the science ministry in 2002, researchers can receive $1,000 to
$20,000, based mainly on the cumulative one-year impact factor of their
publications. Half is given as a research grant and the rest for personal use.

In China, bonuses are left up to the individual institution. China
Agricultural University in Beijing, for example, will pay up to $50,000 for
high-impact papers, says its president Zhang-liang Chen. "This is not a big
deal for great papers," he says.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Biophysics in Beijing has a
scale tuned to impact factors. Authors published in journals with an impact
factor between 3 and 5 receive 2,000 yuan ($250) per point, while a factor
over 10 earns 7,000 yuan ($875) per point. A paper in Nature, Science or Cell
earns 250,000 yuan ($31,000). The institute has had several such papers
published over the past few years.

Advocates of the bonus schemes say that the incentives compensate for the low
academic wages in the countries concerned. A bonus of $1,000, for instance,
could be three times the monthly salary of a Pakistani university lecturer.
Thanks partly to the incentives, the output of papers has increased
dramatically, says Atta-ur-Rahman, chairman of the Pakistan government's
higher education commission, who helped introduce the reward system.

But critics charge that more papers aren't necessarily better. "The bonus
plan has had a devastating effect," says Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist at
Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. "University researchers are rushing to
publish by hook or by crook, and scientific and academic ethics are ignored
in this haste." He suspects that many papers with little significance are
churned out, and says that bonuses could be adding to the problems of
plagiarism and faked data that he has seen and heard.

Others feel that the bonus system belittles their work. "Good papers are the
product of sweat, joy and sorrow," says Sunyoung Kim, a biologist at South
Korea's Seoul National University. "If this is calculated to be 3 million
won, I feel insulted."

Yuan Tseh Lee, a Nobel prize-winning chemist, agrees. "There is too much
pressure on scientists to get recognition in China," says Lee, who is
president of Taiwan's Academia Sinica. "If you just aim for fame and money,
you will make yourself and your students miserable."

Partly because of such concerns, the Shanghai Institute of Biological
Sciences cancelled its bonus program in 2003. But Chen argues that at the
moment bonuses are necessary, especially in China where a socialist system
has made it difficult to reward hard work. "It's a necessary stage," he says.
"In ten years I'm sure the situation will be different."

Peter Cotgreave, director of the London-based lobby group the Campaign for
Science and Engineering in the UK, says reward systems have some merit, in
part because the people effectively judging the award — anonymous peer
reviewers — are independent of the award. Deserving researchers might miss
out, he says, when, for example, high-quality papers are rejected by top
journals. But he doubts that poor work would be rewarded, as researchers
"only win if they are good enough to get into Nature or Science".


【 在 TPCB (云腾致雨 露结为霜) 的大作中提到: 】
: Nature 441, 785-786 (15 June 2006) | doi:10.1038/441786a; Published online
: 14
: June 2006
: Cash-per-publication...
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