Wrong incentives

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Nature featured an interesting opinion piece on Feb. 19 by Australia’s chief scientific adviser, Alan Finkel (2019, DOI: 10.1038/d41586-019-00613-z). In his article, he talks about how the current incentive system in scientific research encourages quantity over quality and that, for the sake of science, the focus should shift away from metrics and toward best practice and better research. “People respond to incentives. Change will come only when grants and promotions are contingent on best practice,” he writes. Finkel suggests, among other measures, that when evaluating researchers’ performance for grants and promotions, funders and supervisors start by examining the top five most read and most cited articles the researchers have published in the last five years. Researchers would also submit a statement describing their work and how it has contributed to society. Contrary to common practice, this process would ignore the exact number of papers the researchers have published. Finkel also