IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ico/wpaper/66.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Emergent phenomena in scientific publishing: A simulation exercise

Author

Listed:
  • Jakob Kapeller

    (Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria)

  • Stefan Steinerberger

    (Department of Mathematics, Yale University, US)

Abstract

We model the academic production process understood as the creation, submission, evaluation and publication of papers: scientists produce manuscripts to the best of their abilities and try to publish them in academic journals, which rely on referees to judge the submissions. The resulting model is able to reproduce several properties of the journal-landscape but also illustrates that even under unrealistically optimistic assumptions the process of scientific publishing will give rise to several universal emergent phenomena for purely mathematical reasons: the efficiency of scientific publishing is delicate and very unstable.

Suggested Citation

  • Jakob Kapeller & Stefan Steinerberger, 2017. "Emergent phenomena in scientific publishing: A simulation exercise," ICAE Working Papers 66, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    • Handle: RePEc:ico:wpaper:66
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jku.at/fileadmin/gruppen/108/ICAE_Working_Papers/wp66.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2017
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joshua S. Gans & George B. Shepherd, 1994. "How Are the Mighty Fallen: Rejected Classic Articles by Leading Economists," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 165-179, Winter.
    2. Macdonald, Stuart & Kam, Jacqueline, 2010. "Counting footnotes: Citability in management studies," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 189-203, June.
    3. Jakob Kapeller, 2010. "Citation Metrics: Serious Drawbacks, Perverse Incentives, and Strategic Options for Heterodox Economics," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(5), pages 1376-1408, November.
    4. Day, Theodore Eugene, 2015. "The big consequences of small biases: A simulation of peer review," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 1266-1270.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Claudius Gräbner, 2017. "The Complexity of Economies and Pluralism in Economics," Journal of Contextual Economics (JCE) – Schmollers Jahrbuch, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 137(3), pages 193-225.
    2. March, Raymond J. & Geloso, Vincent, 2020. "Gordon Tullock meets Phineas Gage: The political economy of lobotomies in the United States," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(1).
    3. Zeynep Didem Unutmaz Durmuşoğlu & Alptekin Durmuşoğlu, 2021. "A TOPSIS model for understanding the authors choice of journal selection," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(1), pages 521-543, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eliseo Reategui & Alause Pires & Michel Carniato & Sergio Roberto Kieling Franco, 2020. "Evaluation of Brazilian research output in education: confronting international and national contexts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 427-444, October.
    2. Osterloh, Margit & Frey, Bruno S., 2020. "How to avoid borrowed plumes in academia," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(1).
    3. Marion Gaspard & Antoine Missemer, 2019. "An inquiry into the Ramsey-Hotelling connection," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 352-379, March.
    4. Stephan Puehringer & Johanna Rath & Teresa Griesebner, 2021. "The political economy of academic publishing: On the commodification of a public good," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-21, June.
    5. Marco LiCalzi, 2022. "Bipartite choices," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 45(2), pages 551-568, December.
    6. Medoff, Marshall H., 2003. "Collaboration and the quality of economics research," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(5), pages 597-608, October.
    7. Rosser, J. Jr., 1996. "Development, geography, and economic theory : Paul Krugman (The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995) pp. iii + 117, index, $20.00," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 450-454, December.
    8. David B. Audretsch & Christina Guenther & Adam Lederer, 2022. "Publishing in Small Business Economics: An Entrepreneurship Journal," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 1-5, January.
    9. Brogaard, Jonathan & Engelberg, Joseph & Parsons, Christopher A., 2014. "Networks and productivity: Causal evidence from editor rotations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(1), pages 251-270.
    10. Hendrik P. van Dalen, 1999. "The Golden Age of Nobel Economists," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 43(2), pages 19-35, October.
    11. Hendrik P. van Dalen, 2003. "Pluralism in Economics: A Public Good or a Public Bad?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 03-034/1, Tinbergen Institute, revised 18 May 2004.
    12. Bruno Frey, 2005. "Problems with Publishing: Existing State and Solutions," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 173-190, April.
    13. Marco Cozzi, 2020. "Public Funding of Research and Grant Proposals in the Social Sciences: Empirical Evidence from Canada," Department Discussion Papers 1809, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    14. Dell'Anno, Roberto & Caferra, Rocco & Morone, Andrea, 2020. "A “Trojan Horse” in the peer-review process of fee-charging economic journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3).
    15. Daoud, Adel & Kohl, Sebastian, 2016. "How much do sociologists write about economic topics? Using big data to test some conventional views in economic sociology, 1890 to 2014," MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/7, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    16. David J. Pannell, 2002. "Prose, Psychopaths and Persistence: Personal Perspectives on Publishing," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 50(2), pages 101-115, July.
    17. Florentin Gloetzl & Ernest Aigner, 2015. "Pluralism in the Market of Science? A citation network analysis of economic research at universities in Vienna," Ecological Economics Papers ieep5, Institute of Ecological Economics.
    18. Ofer H. Azar, 2006. "The Academic Review Process: How Can We Make it More Efficient?," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 50(1), pages 37-50, March.
    19. Matthias Aistleitner & Jakob Kapeller & Stefan Steinerberger, 2018. "Citation Patterns in Economics and Beyond," Working Papers Series 85, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    20. Jerome K. Vanclay, 2012. "Impact factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 211-238, August.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ico:wpaper:66. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Teresa Griesebner (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/igjkuat.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.