Publication counts demonstrate massive inequality in science

An analysis of 8.2 million scientists’ digital records has revealed high levels of inequality, where a small group enjoys most of the academic output.

The German and Canadian researchers found that this stratification appears around the world and in every major scientific field.

The study is published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.

“Everyone knows that science is concentrated,” the authors tell Cosmos in an email. “There is a hierarchical structure in scientific production. Everyone also knows about the hierarchical structure in scientific impact and citations.

“Our findings show that it is even more hierarchical, and across multiple dimensions, which was surprising.”

The researchers drew on the Scopus database of peer-reviewed publications for their analysis. They collected data on 28.5 million papers published between 1996 and 2021 listed on the database.

They used these publications to examine 12 different measures of academic performance for the 8.2 million authors in their dataset. These measures included things like number of citations, number of co-authors, and number of first-author publications.

Many of these numbers are used by institutions and policymakers to judge scientific merit. Higher citation or publication counts can make a scientist more hireable or promotable, and increase the likelihood of funding flowing to an institution.

The researchers found that there was a small “top class” of authors, who were responsible for a disproportionately large share of academic outputs.

This pattern appeared as strongly as the pattern generated by academic age (time since an author’s first publication).

The top class succeeds by collaborating with authors from the middle and lower classes, as well as younger authors, but enjoys a bigger benefit from these collaborations than the other classes.

In their paper, the researchers say that this finding “debunk[s] the widely-spread myths about increased productivity, collaboration, internationalisation, mobility, and impact among scientists.”

The researchers tell Cosmos that publication and citation counts shouldn’t be considered “objective” indicators of quality.

“Despite being numbers, those give a rather impressionistic view of scholarly impact, and say little to nothing about societal impact,” the researchers say.

“Academics are social beings and doing science, as sociology of science studies show often, is a social interaction and, similar to other facets of life, it is affected by a multitude of factors.

“It is necessary to look at publication and citation indicators as ‘indicators’ that could be affected by a multitude of factors. We cannot and should not take them at a face value and as completely objective measures.”

The researchers say that this inequality in science can be addressed by collaborating with, and resourcing, the Global South.

“Better and more equal allocation of resources and funding for research is necessary,” the researchers tell Cosmos.

“The resources allocated to science are concentrated mostly in Western countries and mostly in the Global North, leading to these contexts being studied to a much higher degree in collaboration with others from Western contexts.”