Contributing to the public goods game…

A recent preprint captured my attention, and very likely this is due to the fact that it confirms and provides a systematic quantitative support to a personal notion. I directly use author’s words without filters:

“Total articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science have grown exponentially in recent years; in 2022 the article total was 47% higher than in 2016, which has outpaced the limited growth, if any, in the number of practising scientists. Thus, publication workload per scientist (writing, reviewing, editing) has increased dramatically. We define this problem as the strain on scientific publishing.” - The strain on scientific publishing. Mark A. Hanson, Pablo Gómez Barreiro, Paolo Crosetto, Dan Brockington

My point of view is that we are in the middle of a systemic crisis of the research system, in which sometimes we label as quality something that is quantity at best. But that is not the point of this post. The point is that, even in a less toxic system but still employing peer review as a mechanism for selection of articles worth publication, the research system needs a very high number of reviews.

Every person that worked in the academia for at least a few years has experienced the situation in which she submitted a paper to a conference/journal and she ends up awaiting for an evaluation. Not all of them, however, have experienced the other side of the situation: being a programme chair or editor in charge of selecting, and inviting reviewers, assuring that they do provide a reasonable report in a timely fashion. Reviewers work voluntarily (at least as of this moment), typically being coopted to support the overall process, sometimes with the only incentive of formal inclusion in a programme committee, list of recognized reviewers, or some sort of system for tracking this kind of contribution (such as one offered by ISI that took over the older Publons - here’s my profile, by the way) to the collective scientific process. While reviewer 2 has become a sort of mythological figure, the overall system is an example of what in experimental economics is called a public goods game. In a nutshell, the players benefit from a system that is based on individual contributions; however, the contribution does not yield a direct payoff, and (as long as other players do contribute) one might simply avoid contributing and just enjoy the public good. This strategy is often called free riding. Blood donation, workplace safety (at least in Italy), to some extent tax compliance, are all situations that can be framed as this kind of problem.

If I had any smart idea to improve the present situation I’d find ways to simulate it and write a paper on this topic, ironically contributing to the problem (remember: you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic)… well, I have an idea, but I don’t think many would call it smart (basically it boils down to writing fewer papers, overhauling the scientific research evaluation process and implied incentives: Don Quixote hold my beer). Any individual level action, from my perspective, does not represent a solution. Nonetheless, every individual in this system should really understand that if you want your work to be evaluated fairly and eventually be published for its merits we need generally the work of two/three reviewers. So I suggest contributing to the public good by accepting to be a reviewer, doing it with professionalism and honesty. Seeking some guidance from supervising figure or reputed colleagues. Try to come of with some sort of ratio between the number of papers you publish every year and the number of papers you accept to review. Try to come up with a personal compass guiding your choices on what to review. Set limits. But, please, avoid free riding.

Of course, the Internet is a public good. There are also numerous other ways to contribute to it, in some cases also titillating your vanity, like sharing photos, pictures, drawings maybe adopting a Creative Commons license or something similar (here is my Pixabay profile, for example), or you can contribute economically (donate) to Wikipedia or contribute to its growth and maintenance as an editor. Irrespectively of the fact that large language models or other generative AI tools might be using these contents, think about humans first. You probably have looked for pictures to put in a presentation or website: be the guy that shares a picture for someone else.

Just don’t take public goods for granted, please. And no, social media are not public goods.