Analyzing the Publish-or-Perish Paradigm with Game Theory: The Prisoner’s Dilemma and a Possible Escape
The publish-or-perish paradigm is a prevailing facet of science. We apply game theory to show that, under rather weak assumptions, this publication scenario takes the form of a prisoner’s dilemma, which constitutes a substantial obstacle to beneficial delayed publication of more complete results. On...
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Published in | Science and engineering ethics Vol. 22; no. 5; pp. 1431 - 1446 |
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Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Dordrecht
Springer Netherlands
01.10.2016
Springer Nature B.V |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The publish-or-perish paradigm is a prevailing facet of science. We apply game theory to show that, under rather weak assumptions, this publication scenario takes the form of a prisoner’s dilemma, which constitutes a substantial obstacle to beneficial delayed publication of more complete results. One way of avoiding this obstacle while allowing researchers to establish priority of discoveries would be an updated “pli cacheté”, a sealed envelope concept from the 1700s. We describe institutional rules that could additionally favour high-quality work and publications and provide examples of such policies that are already in place. Our analysis should be extended to other publication scenarios and the role of other stakeholders such as scientific journals or sponsors. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 1353-3452 1471-5546 |
DOI: | 10.1007/s11948-015-9701-x |