The cycle
Is it just me or does everyone see a self-fulfilling prophecy here?
For a long time, and assisted ably by the ‘publish or perish’ paradigm, researchers sought to have their papers published in high-impact-factor journals – a.k.a. prestige journals – like Nature.
Such journals in turn, assisted ably by parasitic strategies, made these papers highly visible to other researchers around the world and, by virtue of being high-IF journals, tainted the results in the papers with a measure of prestige, ergo importance.
Evaluations and awards committees in turn were highly aware of these papers over others and picked their authors for rewards over others, further amplifying their work, increasing the opportunity cost incurred by the researchers who lose out, and increasing the prestige attached to the high-IF journals.
Run this cycle a few million times and you end up with the impression that there’s something journals like Nature get right – when in fact it’s just mostly a bunch of business practices to ensure they remain profitable.
