Science philosopher David Deutsch has stated that the purpose of science is the discovery of explanatory knowledge about the world that is both true (i.e. replicable and universal) and “hard to vary” (i.e. producing non-arbitrary explanations that are empirically falsifiable and don’t rely on appeals to authority and doctrine) (1).We believe that the current paradigm of scientific production is at least partly misaligned with this purpose of science because of how the current system works and the incentives that it creates.
Scientific journals as ranking and curating devices
In the current system, scientists must constantly provide evidence of their “productivity” in order to advance their careers (i.e. get hired or promoted) and to obtain funding for their future research plans, because this is how they are evaluated by their employers and funding agencies.One obstacle in the scientific evaluation process is that evaluators hardly ever have the time to engage fully with the body of research each scientist has produced. Thoroughly studying all previous work of just one scientist could potentially require days, weeks, or even months. This is an unrealistic demand on evaluators, even the most diligent and well-intentioned ones. Their time constraints, therefore, force them to rely on heuristics that make it easier to assess a scientist’s body of work.
