First published 13 August 2024
A QUT statistician has called for a novel way to shift the focus from where academic research is published to what the research has actually found.
In an op-ed titled, Why I’ve removed journal titles from the papers on my CV, for the widely read journal Nature, Professor Adrian Barnett from the Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation, suggested that changing how published papers were displayed could shift the focus from simple metrics to research quality.
“Can you name the journal where Alexander Fleming first reported on the antibacterial properties of penicillin? Or where John O’Sullivan and colleagues presented the image sharpening techniques that led to Wi-Fi,” Professor Barnett wrote.
“Most of you can easily name the benefits of these breakthroughs, but I expect only a few would know where they were published.
“Unfortunately, in modern scientific culture there is too much focus on the journal and not enough on the science itself.
“Researchers strive to publish in journals with high-impact factors, which can lead to personal benefits such as job opportunities and funding.
“But the obsession with where to publish is shaping what we publish.”
Professor Barnett has long had a focus on the way academic research is funded.
His main interest is in how to increase the value of health and medical research.
Professor Barnett said he had removed all journal titles from his curriculum vitae and publication list to focus on “what” he had published instead of “where”.”
Professor Barnett noted in the op-ed that anyone who really wanted to judge him by where he has published would simply be able to Google it.
“But removing the (journal) names discourages simplistic scans, such as counting papers in particular journals,” he said.
Professor Barnett is the past president of the Statistical Society of Australia and the current president of the Association for Interdisciplinary Meta-Research and Open Science (AIMOS).
Read the Nature op-ed here
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