by Alla Ditta Raza Choudary
Speedy publication of relatively trivial, and often scarcely refereed research articles in mathematics (and probably in most other academic disciplines), in journals with so-called high-impact factor, has set a rather dangerous trend of research in most of the world’s developing nations.
These journals usually publish quite superficial research, sometimes for a not negligible article processing fee, the page-charge. They even ask the authors, directly or indirectly, to include extended bibliographies in their papers, obviously meant to boost the impact factor of the journal. This is a trend that may, in the long run, be a threat to the global research community, substituting “good research” with “popular research”. However this is not, at present, the most dangerous part of the system. The real threat is something more fundamental,associated with these kind of research publications.
Governments in numerous developing countries are now trying to encourage research in mathematics and other scientific disciplines. For this purpose, these governments give awards, prizes and various financial incentives to their researchers. But not knowing how to evaluate the quality of research, the government bodies in these developing countries have found a very easy way out. They just add up the impact factors of the publications of the researchers applying for some national award or prize. The persons with the highest sums of impact factors are declared to be the winners. This process provides strong encouragement for publishing a large number of trivial papers (there are examples of young researchers publishing 30 to 50 papers a year) in journals with positive impact factors. During the past decades the research performance in such countries has taken a very different meaning, a meaning that honors triviality, mediocrity and non-creativity.
