Vale Ronald D
Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Nov 3;112(44):13439-46. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1511912112. Epub 2015 Oct 27.
Scientific publications enable results and ideas to be transmitted throughout the scientific community. The number and type of journal publications also have become the primary criteria used in evaluating career advancement. Our analysis suggests that publication practices have changed considerably in the life sciences over the past 30 years. More experimental data are now required for publication, and the average time required for graduate students to publish their first paper has increased and is approaching the desirable duration of PhD training. Because publication is generally a requirement for career progression, schemes to reduce the time of graduate student and postdoctoral training may be difficult to implement without also considering new mechanisms for accelerating communication of their work. The increasing time to publication also delays potential catalytic effects that ensue when many scientists have access to new information. The time has come for life scientists, funding agencies, and publishers to discuss how to communicate new findings in a way that best serves the interests of the public and the scientific community.
科学出版物能使研究成果和观点在整个科学界传播。期刊论文的数量和类型也已成为评估职业发展的主要标准。我们的分析表明，在过去30年里，生命科学领域的出版实践发生了很大变化。现在发表论文需要更多的实验数据，研究生发表第一篇论文所需的平均时间增加了，且已接近理想的博士培养时长。由于发表论文通常是职业发展的一项要求，若不考虑加速科研成果交流的新机制，缩短研究生和博士后培养时间的计划可能难以实施。发表时间的增加也会延迟当许多科学家能够获取新信息时可能产生的催化效应。现在是生命科学家、资助机构和出版商讨论如何以最符合公众和科学界利益的方式交流新发现的时候了。
