in the latter both the wide differential in manuscript rejection rates and the high correlation between refereerecommendations and editorial decisions suggests that reviewers and editors agree more on acceptance than on rejection.

In the former there is also much more agreement on rejectionthan acceptance

excellencetorecognizeexcellence

. I consider that my job, as a philosopher, is to activate the possible, and not to describe the probable, that is, to think situations with and through their unknowns when I can feel them

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Several possible problems have been hypothesised, including: undue proliferation ofpublications and atomization of results (Gad-el-Hak2004; Statzner and Resh2010);impoverishment of research creativity, favouring ‘‘normal’’ science and predictable out-comes at the expense of pioneering, high-risk studies (De Rond and Miller2005); growingjournal rejection rates and bias against negative and non-significant results (because theyattract fewer readers and citations) (Statzner and Resh2010; Lortie1999); sensationalism,inflation and over-interpretation of results (Lortie1999; Atkin2002; Ioannidis2008b);increased prevalence of research bias and misconduct (Qiu2010). Indirect empiricalevidence supports at least some of these concerns. The per-capita paper output of scientistshas increased, whilst their career duration has decreased over the last 35 years in thephysical sciences (Fronczak et al.2007). Rejection rates of papers have increased in thehigh-tier journals (Larsen and von Ins2010; Lawrence2003). Negative sentences such as‘‘non-significant difference’’ have decreased in frequency in papers’ abstracts, while catchyexpressions such as ‘‘paradigm shift’’ have increased in the titles (Pautasso2010; Atkin2002). No study, however, has yet verified directly whether the scientific literature isenduring actual changes in conten

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To publish. And sometimes publish in the right journals.... In my discipline ...there’s just a few journals, and if you’re not in that journal, then yourpublication doesn’t really count

In addition to that, the other thing that they focus on is science as celebrity.... Sothe standards are, ‘‘How much did it cost, and is it in the news?’’ And if it didn’tcost much and if it is not in the news, but it got a lot of behind-the-scenes talkwithin your discipline, they don’t know that, nor do they care

You’ve got to have a billionpublications in my field. That is the bottom line. That’s the only thing that counts.You can fail to do everything else as long as you have lots and lots of papers

The winner-take-all aspect of the priority rule has its drawbacks, however. It can encourage secrecy, sloppy practices, dishonesty and an excessive emphasis on surrogate measures of scientific quality, such as publication in high-impact journals. The editors of the journal Nature have recently exhorted scientists to take greater care in their work, citing poor reproducibility of published findings, errors in figures, improper controls, incomplete descriptions of methods and unsuitable statistical analyses as evidence of increasing sloppiness. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)As competition over reduced funding has increased markedly, these disadvantages of the priority rule may have begun to outweigh its benefits. Success rates for scientists applying for National Institutes of Health funding have recently reached an all-time low. As a result, we have seen a steep rise in unhealthy competition among scientists, accompanied by a dramatic proliferation in the number of scientific publications retracted because of fraud or error. Recent scandals in science are reminiscent of the doping problems in sports, in which disproportionately rich rewards going to winners has fostered cheating.

The role of external influences on the scientific enterprise must not be ignored. With funding success rates at historically low levels, scientists are under enormous pressure to produce high-impact publications and obtain research grants. The importance of these influences is reflected in the burgeoning literature on research misconduct, including surveys that suggest that approximately 2% of scientists admit to having fabricated, falsified, or inappropriately modified results at least once (24). A substantial proportion of instances of faculty misconduct involve misrepresentation of data in publications (61%) and grant applications (72%); only 3% of faculty misconduct involved neither publications nor grant applications.

The predominant economic system in science is “winner-take-all” (17, 18). Such a reward system has the benefit of promoting competition and the open communication of new discoveries but has many perverse effects on the scientific enterprise (19). The scientific misconduct among both male and female scientists observed in this study may well reflect a darker side of competition in science. That said, the preponderance of males committing research misconduct raises a number of interesting questions. The overrepresentation of males among scientists committing misconduct is evident, even against the backdrop of male overrepresentation among scientists, a disparity more pronounced at the highest academic ranks, a parallel with the so-called “leaky pipeline.” There are multiple factors contributing to the latter, and considerable attention has been paid to factors such as the unique challenges facing young female scientists balancing personal and career interests (20), as well as bias in hiring decisions by senior scientists, who are mostly male (21). It is quite possible that, in at least some cases, misconduct at high levels may contribute to attrition of woman from the senior ranks of academic researchers.

Editors, Publishers, Impact Factors, and Reprint Income