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...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inScience and engineering ethics Vol. 22; no. 5; pp. 1431 - 1446
Main Authors Erren, T. C., Shaw, D. M., Morfeld, P.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.10.2016
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Bioethics
Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering
Education
Engineering
Ethics
Game Theory
Medicine/Public Health
Original Paper
Philosophy
Philosophy of Science
Prisoner Dilemma
Publishing - ethics
Publishing - standards
Scholarly publishing
Publish-or perish
Pli cacheté
Prisoner’s dilemma
Game theory
Priority
Quality
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
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.
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