[inimino]

There have always been weaker scientists, but there hasn't always been the economic incentive to publish in order to maintain a teaching position. This is a relatively recent (few decades) thing and is due to structural factors in academia and society. If you require proof, I'm not really sure what to say to you, as evidence is not hard to find, but if you don't already see it, I'm unlikely to change your mind.

[irq11]

If you want to claim that “publish or perish” (which, btw, has been a part of academic life essentially forever) is somehow recently affecting the volume of papers being produced, you should be able to provide evidence of that in a straightforward manner. One obvious test: is the per-capita rate of publication increasing? (my experience says “no”, but I’m open to contrary evidence.)

You have a hypothesis of what’s going on, but you’ve provided no evidence for that hypothesis, and when challenged to provide some, you tell other people it’s their job to do it for you.

It’s not my job to prove your extraordinary claims.

[inimino]

The number of publications per year per academic seems to me to have increased over the last 50 years. I don't have a citation.

Regardless, my original claim was that the absolute number of papers is growing, and most of them are trash. I think the sheer volume of trash has consequences that were not so serious 100 years ago, even if the percentage of trash was the same. I strongly suspect the percentage of trash has been going up, as well.

My argument is that "publish or perish" makes less and less sense the more active scientists and researchers there are, even if the average quality and the rate of publication per academic were constant, because the appetite and rate at which research can be assimilated by society is limited, and does not scale with population, while the number of scientists does.

I don't think these claims are extraordinary, and if you do, I'm not going to go looking for extraordinary evidence to try to convince you. I don't think I'm the only that sees these effects, however.

[irq11]

”The number of publications per year per academic seems to me to have increased over the last 50 years. I don't have a citation.”

Yeah, that’s not evidence.

The absolute number of papers is growing - along with the number of working scientists. There’s been huge growth in academic science since the 1970s.

[cgiles]

> One obvious test: is the per-capita rate of publication increasing?

It definitely is, in biology at least. My graduate mentor was really interested in publication metrics (as in, he published studies on them). The main driver is not necessarily crappy journals though, it is the increasing number of authors per paper.

I have no idea how you would evaluate something like "the average quality of papers is decreasing". I actually agree with GP that it is, but that's just, like, my opinion, man.

[irq11]

Author lists may (again: evidence required) be growing, but that’s not at all the same thing as per-capita publication rate, and doesn’t support the GP claim.

A priori, long author lists indicate collaboration, which is generally a good thing.