Related papers: Publication Design with Incentives in Mind
Interdisciplinary research is fundamental when it comes to tackling complex problems in our highly interlinked world, and is on the rise globally. Yet, it is unclear why--in an increasingly competitive academic environment--one should…
In this paper, we propose a measure to assess scientific impact that discounts self-citations and does not require any prior knowledge on the their distribution among publications. This index can be applied to both researchers and journals.…
Questionable publications have been accused of "greedy" practices; however, their influence on academia has not been gauged. Here, we probe the impact of questionable publications through a systematic and comprehensive analysis with various…
Iterative machine learning algorithms used to power recommender systems often change people's preferences by trying to learn them. Further a recommender can better predict what a user will do by making its users more predictable. Some…
Since the publication of Robert K. Merton's theory of cumulative advantage in science (Matthew Effect), several empirical studies have tried to measure its presence at the level of papers, individual researchers, institutions or countries.…
Recommender systems are highly prevalent in the modern world due to their value to both users and platforms and services that employ them. Generally, they can improve the user experience and help to increase satisfaction, but they do not…
Incentives are more likely to elicit desired outcomes when they are designed based on accurate models of agents' strategic behavior. A growing literature, however, suggests that people do not quite behave like standard economic agents in a…
When consequential decisions are informed by algorithmic input, individuals may feel compelled to alter their behavior in order to gain a system's approval. Models of agent responsiveness, termed "strategic manipulation," analyze the…
Humans have developed considerable machinery used at scale to create policies and to distribute incentives, yet we are forever seeking ways in which to improve upon these, our institutions. Especially when funding is limited, it is…
Problems for evaluation and impact of published scientific works and their authors are discussed. The role of citations in this process is pointed out. Different bibliometric indicators are reviewed in this connection and ways for…
Scientific research requires taking risks, as the most cautious approaches are unlikely to lead to the most rapid progress. Yet much funded scientific research plays it safe and funding agencies bemoan the difficulty of attracting…
Faced with data-driven policies, individuals will manipulate their features to obtain favorable decisions. While earlier works cast these manipulations as undesirable gaming, recent works have adopted a more nuanced causal framing in which…
Imitation is a key component of human social behavior, and is widely used by both children and adults as a way to navigate uncertain or unfamiliar situations. But in an environment populated by multiple heterogeneous agents pursuing…
Decision-making methods very often use the technique of comparing alternatives in pairs. In this approach, experts are asked to compare different options, and then a quantitative ranking is created from the results obtained. It is commonly…
The editorial handling of papers in scientific journals as a human activity process is considered. Using recently proposed approaches of human dynamics theory we examine the probability distributions of random variables reflecting the…
When funding public goods, resources are often allocated via mechanisms that resemble contests, especially in the case of research grants. A common critique of these contests is that they induce ``too much'' effort from participants. This…
What is the optimal order in which a researcher should submit their papers to journals of differing quality? I analyze a sequential search model without recall where the researcher's expected value from journal submission depends on the…
The field of bibliometrics, studying citations and behavior, is critical to the discussion of reproducibility. Citations are one of the primary incentive and reward systems for academic work, and so we desire to know if this incentive…
In this article we wish to provide a common set of best practice approaches that should be considered for all effective research grant proposal reviews. The federal government performs a critical role in American competitiveness and…
Recommender systems are expected to be assistants that help human users find relevant information automatically without explicit queries. As recommender systems evolve, increasingly sophisticated learning techniques are applied and have…