The Spanish university is a ‘macro-factory’ of low-impact research papers

Endogamy, bureaucracy and pressure to publish are issues that are heard daily in academic circles across all faculties. “The “publish or perish” “It’s a real schizophrenia in universities,” says J. Alejandro F. Cuesta, predoctoral researcher at UCM-Santander. But especially in our universities. Spain is among the ten countries in the world with the most scientific publications, according to the ranking of SCImago, a portal that evaluates the production of articles by areas of knowledge, impact and country. We are ninth in the world in volume of scientific publications. “Spanish universities have become a macro-farm of paper-laying hens, macro-factories of articles,” illustrates Emilio Delgado, one of the greatest experts in bibliometrics in our country and professor of documentation at the University of Granada.

If you consult this great portal you will be able to see that in 2024 they were published in Spain 126,393 items2.86% more than the previous year. However, that same year, only 44,333 works were cited. The percentage of the total produced is low, but it must also be taken into account that some citations come from old documents and not from the same year. It is true that the citation potential of an article does not occur immediately, it takes time to arrive. The problem is that often the appointment never arrives. “Here, the “papers” are produced by weightbecause these publications then count towards obtaining a place at university. The fault lies with our evaluation systems”, explains F. Cuesta. Quantity is not synonymous with quality and the impact of the articles is not too high. “It’s not the ‘papers’, it’s the publication. without seeking recognition from the international community reference,” David Teira, professor of philosophy at UNED, told ABC.

“Academics themselves admit that they produce articles because they have to survive. And this ends up materializing in sterile and empty publications, in meaningless articles. In short: we produce irrelevant materials,” criticizes Delgado. “Excellence is easy to detect. But almost all researchers are average, we are mediocre”, continues this expert. For Isidro Aguillo, researcher at CSIC specializing in the evaluation of scientific activity, this “mass production” which does not end up shining has several explanations: we continue to have economic limits if we compare ourselves to other European countries and, moreover, our universities do not have much international prestige. “We generally do not occupy high positions in international rankings, we do not attract talent and we suffer from high inbreeding,” summarizes Aguillo.

According to a study by the CyD Foundation, Spain has a research potential practically equal to that of France, Canada or Australia, but the capacity of Australia or Canada to publish in the best journals in the world (Q1 journals), such as “Nature” or “Science”, is significantly higher. The same thing happens with the international collaboration indicatorin which the percentage of works co-written with foreign researchers remains less than 50%. To this must be added the presence of a most conservative sector from the academy who refuses to publish in Englisha reluctance which does not help internationalization.

“the changes are published. In other words, it is not so strange that five publications are “deleted” from the same article. Not to mention that there is also the phenomenon of self-citing internal networks», explains F. Cuesta. To use Delgado’s comparison: “In the faculties, there are ‘reference posters and researchers cite by citation. This practice can be verified by carrying out various searches in SCImago.

Endogamy of teachers

With the desire to examine a specific topic, ABC analyzed what is happening with publications that appear in the field of communication. In 2000, Spain ranked 26th for the quality indicator, with 22.1 citations per document. In 2022, we dropped to 74th place with 0.5 citations per document. Academic inbreeding does not contribute to the excellence of publications and, in Spain, we suffer from it. It is enough to recall that the CyD Foundation recorded in a 2019 study that approximately 70% of permanent professors have completed their doctorate in the same institution where he ended up working.

Continuing the analysis of studies in the field of communication, this journal was able to verify how national researchers prefer to publish in Spanish journals listed in Scopus rather than in international journals. A trend that corresponds to the perception they form “customer networks” that make themselves known and cite each other. “Is the problem the “paper” format or the way we understand it in Spain?” asks F. Cuesta. For the CSIC Aguillo scientist, apart from the fact that “the hard core” of the evaluation to obtain a place is the number of “articles”, Not all first quarter magazines are synonymous with excellence: “Most are not as prestigious as “Nature” or “Science”. However, in Spain, publication in “Nature” obtains the same score as in many academic journals without international prestige.

What is happening in the human sciences?

In certain academic circles, particularly in the field of human sciences, resistance posture which criticizes the fact that the transfer of knowledge in the sciences extends to literature. Let Excel contaminate philosophical thought. “The argument is going around that we should devote ourselves to writing books and that we would be better off for it,” Teira recalls. However, this professor affirms that, for 40 years, the Ministry of Culture has distributed subsidies every year for the translation of books by contemporary Spanish humanists. “80 translations of philosophical essays have been subsidized and the vast majority are neither cited, nor commented on, nor have the slightest influence,” he laments.

Teira believes that, in the human sciences, in philosophy, the peer review, discussion with other colleagues internationally, that’s what makes you a good academic. “I think there are ‘papers’ and ‘papers’. Many articles have revolutionized the way we think about different problems in philosophy. The problem is to confuse the form with the substance and the means with the end,” explains F. Cuesta. “Publishing small articles is very profitable and academics know this,” adds Delgado.

If in Spain there is a tendency to publish “by weight”, this practice is even more evident depending on the discipline. Our country occupies the third place worldwide in the production of articles of Arts and humanities. There are 85 Spanish philosophy journals and the vast majority are local, departmental or faculty journals. “These don’t have any impact. Those that operate like international journals, with better peer review practices, like ‘Theoria,’ have an impact.”

However, it can be tricky to compare what is happening in articles and citations from one science or another. Emilio Delgado insists on marking the differences between “soft” sciences, such as the human sciences, and “hard” sciences, such as experimental sciences. In the human sciences, the citation rate will always be lower because “the knowledge digestion processes are slower» explains Delgado. But this is not the only reason, or even the main one. In Philosophy, he says, which is the soul of the Humanities, there is a strong cognitive dissentthere are schools of thought, bands and sides. Therefore, since there is no consensus, citation will not be as common as in experimental sciences. If Spain mass produces articles on the humanities and, in itself, these tend to be rarely cited, our country will have less impact on a good part of its articles.

In any case, Delgado defends the existence of a “certain contamination” of bibliometric criteria from the hard sciences to the soft sciences. He partly understands this current of academics who regret that Excel is too present in philosophy faculties and is an ardent defender of the book. “The real fthe intellectual source of reference are bookstrials, not scientific journals,” he believes.

But this professor of documentation knows well the reason why there has been the “boom” of journals in the human sciences: “It is true that there can be a contamination of the forms of other hard sciences, but the fact is that before it was impossible to measure knowledge, which was only published in books. Journals, not books, served to make the humanities more “measurable.” Delgado. It seems hopeless that there are more cases of academic fraud, precisely, among philosophers.