Researcher at work (Photo : Reuters)
It had to happen and it has. A new scientific study, ""Attention Decay In Science", by researchers in California and Finland concludes there are too many scientific studies for scientists to keep track of.
And why is this so? The reason's also scientific, it turns out. Scientists crave professional recognition from their peers, a result that can only be achieved by publishing study after study in peer reviewed journals and publications.
This recognition is the traditional means by which scientists can advance in their chosen fields of study. Since the internet has made a stupendous amount of data immediately available, the researchers of this study believe this flood of studies will most certainly increase, said Cnet.
The result of this flood is that the "attention of scholars depends on the number of published items ...."
"Attention, measured by the number and lifetime of citations, is the main currency of the scientific community, and along with other forms of recognition forms the basis for promotions and the reputation of scientists."
There is a serious disadvantage to all this publishing, however.
"Nowadays papers are forgotten more quickly," reported the study.
Researchers used the word "decay" to describe the more rapid disappearance of studies. They also noted that if publishing studies becomes too easy, there will also be more and more studies, which is the case today.
They looked at "all publications (articles and reviews) written in English till the end of 2010 included in the database of the Thomson Reuters (TR) Web of Science. For each publication we extracted its year of publication, the subject category of the journal in which it is published and the corresponding citations to that publication."
Because of this unending torrent of studies, scientists can't keep track of all the studies in their field.
