'Super productive' authors of international articles are suspected: Which Vietnamese are named?

Công trình nghiên cứu về danh sách các tác giả siêu năng suất của GS John PA Ioannidis (Đại học Stanford, Mỹ) và cộng sự đăng trên tạp chí Scientometrics thuộc Nhà xuất bản Springer Nature - Ảnh chụp màn hình — Research on the list of super-productive authors by Professor John PA Ioannidis (Stanford University, USA) and colleagues published in the journal Scientometrics of Springer Nature Publishing House - Screenshot

The journal Scientometrics, published by Springer Nature, has just published a study on the list of hyper-productive authors (publishing more than 60 articles/year). According to Nature, the rapid increase in the number of hyper-productive authors is a concern for the world's scientific community.

"The author has extreme publishing behavior"

The research paper, titled Evolving patterns of extreme publishing behavior across science, was published on July 26. This is the research work of a group of authors: John PA Ioannidis (Stanford University, USA), Thomas A. Collins (Elsevier, USA) and Jeroen Bass (Elsevier, Netherlands).

Professor John Ioannidis and colleagues are also the ones who announced the ranking of "top 100,000 most influential scientists in the world" based on the number of citations from 2019 to present.

In a new study, Ioannidis and colleagues examined all research articles, review articles, and conference proceedings indexed in the Scopus database from 2000 to 2022 to assess the evolution of extreme publishing behavior across countries and scientific fields.

Extreme publishing behavior was defined by the research team as having more than 60 publications (research articles, review articles, conference papers) indexed by Scopus within 1 year.

The researchers suspect that not all of the publications of hyper-productive authors are the result of honest labor. Some authors with “huge” publication output may “collaborate” with others to regularly add their names to papers in the form of affiliation agreements, gift authorship, and other fraudulent practices.

In December 2023, Nature reported on Professor John Ioannidis's research when it was still in pre-publication form. According to Nature, John Ioannidis shared: "I suspect that questionable research practices and fraud may explain some of the most extreme publishing behavior. Our data is a starting point for discussions about these issues across the entire scientific field."

In Less Than a Decade, the Number of Super-Producers Has Quadrupled

The number of hyper-productive authors has quadrupled in less than a decade, with many scientists publishing a new paper every five days, including weekends.

According to research by Professor John Ioannidis and colleagues, Saudi Arabia and Thailand have seen the sharpest increases in the number of super-productive authors in recent years. This increase has raised concerns that some scientists are resorting to questionable methods to publish more papers.

Saudi Arabia có số lượng tác giả siêu năng suất cao nhất trong số các quốc gia có sự gia tăng nhanh nhất. Tuy nhiên, Thái Lan có mức tăng mạnh nhất trong khoảng thời gian từ năm 2016 đến 2022

Saudi Arabia has the highest number of hyper-productive authors among the fastest-growing countries. However, Thailand has the strongest growth between 2016 and 2022.

The team isolated authors from physics, who tend to have a large number of publications because the culture of authorship in physics is different from that in other fields.

In a study recently published in the journal Scientometrics , the team said they identified 3,191 hyper-productive authors across all scientific fields excluding physics and 12,624 such authors in physics.

While physics has had a much higher number of super-productive authors in the past, in 2022 the number of super-productive authors is roughly equal between non-physics and physics fields (1,226 vs. 1,480 authors).

Except for physics, China has the most hyper-productive authors, followed by the United States. The fastest growth in the number of hyper-productive authors between 2016 and 2022 (5- to 19-fold) occurred in Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Spain, India, Italy, Russia, Pakistan, and South Korea.

Excluding physics, most of the hyper-productive authors work in clinical medicine, but from 2016 to 2022, the fastest growth (more than 6-fold) was recorded in the fields of agriculture, fisheries and forestry, biology, mathematics and statistics.

Hyper-productive authors account for 4,360 of the 10,000 most cited authors (based on raw citation counts) across research fields.

While most authors in physics with extreme publishing behavior have modest aggregate citations after adjusting for coauthorship and authorship position, 67% of hyper-productive authors in non-physics fields still fall within the top 2% by this metric.

Many super productive authors from Vietnam

In June 2024, Professor John Ioannidis and his colleagues published detailed data on hyper-productive authors in four lists: 1. List of hyper-productive authors (publishing at least 73 articles/year) excluding physics; 2. List of "near hyper-productive" authors (publishing at least 61 - 72 articles/year) excluding physics; 3. List of hyper-productive authors (publishing at least 73 articles/year) in physics; 4. List of "near hyper-productive" authors (publishing at least 61 - 72 articles/year) in physics.

People from Vietnam whose names are on the list of super productive authors excluding the field of physics: Prof. Dr. Tran Xuan Bach (Hanoi Medical University), Dr. Vo Nguyen Dai Viet and Dr. Bach Long Giang (Nguyen Tat Thanh University), Dr. Nguyen Phuoc Minh (Thu Dau Mot University) and Iraj Sadegh Amiri (Ton Duc Thang University).

Những người từ Việt Nam có tên trong danh sách tác giả siêu năng suất không bao gồm lĩnh vực vật lý

People from Vietnam named in the list of super productive authors not including the field of physics

The list of "near super productive" authors does not include physics, with many people from Vietnam: Prof. Dr. Tran Xuan Bach (Hanoi Medical University), Dr. Vo Nguyen Dai Viet (Nguyen Tat Thanh University), Prof. Dr. Vo Xuan Vinh (Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics), Dr. Nguyen Van Huy (Binh Duong University), Dr. Pham Bao Quoc (Thu Dau Mot University), Dr. Nguyen Minh Duc (Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine), Iraj Sadegh Amiri (Ton Duc Thang University), Hossein Moayedi (Duy Tan University) and Michael Tirant (Hanoi Medical University).

The list of "near super productive" authors does not include physics, with many people from Vietnam.

List of super productive authors from Vietnam, in the field of physics, includes: Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Hong Van (International Center for Interdisciplinary Science and Education - ICISE) and Preecha Yupapin (Van Lang University).

Danh sách tác giả siêu năng suất từ Việt Nam, lĩnh vực vật lý

List of hyper-productive authors from Vietnam, physics field

The list of "near super productive" authors from Vietnam, in the field of physics, includes: Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Hong Van (International Center for Interdisciplinary Science and Education - ICISE), Preecha Yupapin (Van Lang University) and Ahmad Shafee (Duy Tan University).