[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.