IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20050005.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is there such a Thing called Scientific Waste?

Author

Listed:
  • Hendrik P. van Dalen

    (Faculty of Economics, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam; NIDI, The Hague)

  • Arjo Klamer

    (Faculty of History and Arts, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam)

Abstract

Science is a winner-take-all profession in which only few contributions get excessive attention and the large majority of papers_new remains receives scant or no attention. This so-called ‘waste’ together with all the competitive strategies of scientists seeking attention is part and parcel of any creative profession and not a worrisome fact as the price society pays for human ingenuity is extremely small: 0.0006 percent of world income goes into the publication of scientific research. The more worrisome features of competition in academic economics reveal themselves not through ordinary citation or publication statistics or competitive attention seeking strategies. The badly designed use of market principles in which citations and publications have become the sole measuring rod of scientific ‘productivity’ deserve more attention instead of the excessive focus of attention on uncitedness as such.

Suggested Citation

  • Hendrik P. van Dalen & Arjo Klamer, 2005. "Is there such a Thing called Scientific Waste?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 05-005/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20050005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/05005.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hendrik P. van Dalen, 1999. "The Golden Age of Nobel Economists," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 43(2), pages 19-35, October.
    2. Arjo Klamer & Hendrik van Dalen, 2001. "Attention and the art of scientific publishing," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(3), pages 289-315.
    3. Frey, Bruno S, 2003. "Publishing as Prostitution?--Choosing between One's Own Ideas and Academic Success," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 116(1-2), pages 205-223, July.
    4. List, John A, et al, 2001. "Academic Economists Behaving Badly? A Survey on Three Areas of Unethical Behavior," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(1), pages 162-170, January.
    5. van Ours, J. C. & Ridder, G., 2003. "Fast track or failure: a study of the graduation and dropout rates of Ph D students in economics," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 157-166, April.
    6. Buchmueller, Thomas C. & Dominitz, Jeff & Lee Hansen, W., 1999. "Graduate training and the early career productivity of Ph.D. economists," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 65-77, February.
    7. Hendrik P. van Dalen & K?ne Henkens, 2005. "Signals in science - On the importance of signaling in gaining attention in science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 64(2), pages 209-233, August.
    8. van Ours, J.C. & Ridder, G., 1999. "Fast track or Failure : A Study of the Completion Rates of Graduate Students in Economics," Other publications TiSEM 153c8198-e2e7-49b5-8a80-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Scherer, F. M. & Harhoff, Dietmar, 2000. "Technology policy for a world of skew-distributed outcomes," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(4-5), pages 559-566, April.
    10. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 1992. "The Young Economist's Guide to Professional Etiquette," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 169-179, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. S. Stremersch & I. Verniers & C. Verhoef, 2006. "The Quest for Citations: Drivers of Article Impact," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 06/422, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael J. Hilmer & Christiana E. Hilmer, 2009. "Fishes, Ponds, And Productivity: Student‐Advisor Matching And Early Career Publishing Success For Economics Phds," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(2), pages 290-303, April.
    2. José Miguel Benavente & Gustavo Crespi & Alessandro Maffioli, 2007. "The Impact of National Research Funds: An Evaluation of the Chilean FONDECYT," OVE Working Papers 0307, Inter-American Development Bank, Office of Evaluation and Oversight (OVE).
    3. Hendrik P. van Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2012. "What is on a Demographer’s Mind?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 26(16), pages 363-408.
    4. Necker, Sarah, 2014. "Scientific misbehavior in economics," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(10), pages 1747-1759.
    5. van Dalen, Hendrik Peter, 2020. "How the Publish-or-Perish Principle Divides a Science : The Case of Academic Economists," Other publications TiSEM 6fbb6b92-0e06-4271-b6e7-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    6. van Dalen, Hendrik Peter, 2021. "How the publish-or-perish principle divides a science: The case of economists," Other publications TiSEM a6a5a855-bb5a-4d52-a841-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    7. João Ricardo Faria & Damien Besancenot & Andreas J. Novak, 2011. "Paradigm Depletion, Knowledge Production And Research Effort: Considering Thomas Kuhn'S Ideas," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 587-604, November.
    8. Bruno S. Frey, 2010. "Withering Academia?," CESifo Working Paper Series 3209, CESifo.
    9. Hendrik P. van Dalen & K?ne Henkens, 2005. "Signals in science - On the importance of signaling in gaining attention in science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 64(2), pages 209-233, August.
    10. Daniel Chudnovsky & Andrés López & Martín Rossi & Diego Ubfal, 2006. "Evaluating a Program of Public Funding of Scientific Activity. A Case Study of FONCYT in Argentina," OVE Working Papers 1206, Inter-American Development Bank, Office of Evaluation and Oversight (OVE).
    11. Benavente, José Miguel & Crespi, Gustavo & Figal Garone, Lucas & Maffioli, Alessandro, 2012. "The impact of national research funds: A regression discontinuity approach to the Chilean FONDECYT," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(8), pages 1461-1475.
    12. Wayne A. Grove & Donald H. Dutkowsky & Andrew Grodner, 2007. "Survive Then Thrive: Determinants Of Success In The Economics Ph.D. Program," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(4), pages 864-871, October.
    13. Hille, Erik & Althammer, Wilhelm & Diederich, Henning, 2020. "Environmental regulation and innovation in renewable energy technologies: Does the policy instrument matter?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    14. Müller, Harry, 2012. "Die Zitationshäufigkeit als Qualitätsindikator im Rahmen der Forschungsleistungsmessung," Discussion Papers of the Institute for Organisational Economics 1/2012, University of Münster, Institute for Organisational Economics.
    15. Silverberg, Gerald & Verspagen, Bart, 2002. "A Percolation Model of Innovation in Complex Technology," Research Memorandum 032, Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    16. Borrás , Susana & Edquist , Charles, 2014. "Innovation Policy for Knowledge Production and R&D: the Investment Portfolio Approach," Papers in Innovation Studies 2014/21, Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research.
    17. Anna Maria Biscotti & Eugenio D’Amico, 2019. "Does Equity Market Differently Perceive IC Management and Disclosure Behaviours?," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 10(2), pages 756-775, June.
    18. Engelbert Stockhammer & Paul Ramskogler, 2009. "Post-Keynesian economics How to move forward," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 6(2), pages 227-246.
    19. John A. List, 2024. "Optimally generate policy-based evidence before scaling," Nature, Nature, vol. 626(7999), pages 491-499, February.
    20. Wu, Jiang & Ou, Guiyan & Liu, Xiaohui & Dong, Ke, 2022. "How does academic education background affect top researchers’ performance? Evidence from the field of artificial intelligence," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economic science; public good; citations; wasteful competition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A14 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Sociology of Economics
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20050005. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.