Albert Cardona<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@brembs" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>brembs</span></a></span> When I say this, a question I get often is, how can you tell a paper is good, generically speaking?</p><p>A good paper comes in many forms. Some well-known forms are, based on attention:</p><p>1. A report on findings or tools that other labs are already relying on even before it's even published.</p><p>2. A report that has been ignored for some time, and suddenly starts being referred to, surfacing as late citations. A "sleeper" paper, one that was ahead of its time.</p><p>No. 1 are favourites of journals fishing for citations to boost their impact factor, since they are guaranteed to get many in the first years. But No. 2 signals exceptional, visionary work.</p><p>Some other, overlapping forms of papers, based on how foundational the findings are:</p><p>3. A report whose findings often change the way other labs will from then on approach a particular field or a paradigm within that field.</p><p>4. A report that is referred to from an undergraduate textbook.</p><p>Most of these, except No. 1, share the same "problem": takes years for the field to appreciate them. The impact factor only considers 2 years and it's journal-wise, not paper-wise: there's a lot of noise. But paper-wise, article-level citations take time anyway to build up, and are very field-dependent, so isn't reliable either.</p><p>Truly there are no shortcuts to the evaluation of scientific research. A sensible strategy is hedging one's bets, because the chase for short-term clout can drastically cut out those sweet long-term rewards, and both matter. What also matters a lot is being a scientist yourself, in addition to an administrator, so as to be able to even approach the evaluation problem.</p><p><a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/academia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>academia</span></a> <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/ScientificPublishing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ScientificPublishing</span></a></p>