Ms. Nguyen Thi Hong Van (sitting in the middle) with colleagues at the central control room of the ATLAS-LHC experiment - Photo: NVCC
The article "Suspected "super-productive" authors of international articles: Which Vietnamese people are named?" published in Tuoi Tre on April 3 attracted public attention, especially the Vietnamese scientific community.
Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Hong Van (senior researcher at the Center for Theoretical Physics, Institute of Physics - Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology) is one of the Vietnamese people on the list of 'super productive' authors.
Talking to Tuoi Tre, Ms. Van said:
- According to published research, from 2000 to 2022, my name was in a total of 202 scientific articles. Of which, from 2012 to 2013, there were 180 articles, so in the remaining 10 years, there were only more than 20 articles.
In fact, the 180 scientific articles in 2012 and 2013 were articles belonging to the ATLAS-LHC experiment (one of the two largest LHC experiments), when I was doing my PhD thesis in France and therefore the address in my articles was the address of the French scientific agency (CEA, Saclay), not related to the Vietnamese address.
During my research, I was not the only one participating in the ATLAS-LHC experiment. Together with CMS-LHC, these are the two largest experiments in the world, each involving more than 40 countries (mostly developed countries in Europe and America).
A paper of the ATLAS-LHC experiment that I participated in had more than 3,000 authors, not just a few. After I finished my PhD in France, I was no longer allowed to participate in the LHC experiment, because Vietnam was not a member country. That is why, 10 years later, I only have more than 20 scientific publications.
During this time, in addition to me, there were also a number of Vietnamese colleagues participating in the experiment. We all worked on behalf of scientific agencies in developed countries in Europe and America, so there was no Vietnamese address listed in our scientific publications related to the LHC.
So the statistics of 180 articles with my name mentioned above must include me as an author from France. Therefore, the article on Tuoi Tre listing me as having publications as an author from Vietnam is incorrect and may cause misunderstanding among the public.
* The research team of Professor John PA Ioannidis (Stanford University, USA) has separated the authors in the field of physics, who tend to have a large number of publications because the culture of authorship in the field of physics is different from other fields. As a physicist whose name is in this book, what is your opinion?
- In the article, the research group of Professor John PA Ioannidis separated the research of physics. Because physics, especially high-energy physics, has its own characteristics with large-scale experiments such as ATLAS-LHC, with hundreds, even thousands of authors from dozens of countries participating. So it is normal for the field of physics to have many publications. This is a characteristic that other fields in general do not have.
Therefore, each article is the joint work of thousands of people, so it is impossible to calculate for just one person to confirm that he has super publications. For example, if a person has 100 articles a year, divided by 3,000 authors, the contribution coefficient of an author is very low, 100/3,000 authors, so it is impossible to say that "the author has super publications".
This is also clearly stated in the English article: "While articles by physics authors have extremely low average author citation coefficients, non-physics fields have extremely high coefficients. Because the number of authors in physics articles is large. Therefore, the research team does not doubt physics because it has its own characteristics as mentioned above."
* Could you share more about your specific contributions to the LHC project? What conditions must an author satisfy to be named in a scientific publication of the LHC?
- For major experiments in the field of physics, each individual must contribute to a certain level to be named as the author of a joint publication. It is not possible for an individual to be named as the author.
Each contributor must satisfy pre-determined criteria (approved by a committee) to become an author of the paper. All evaluation criteria are made public to the experimental group.
The author's address must be contributed by the corresponding governing body in terms of expertise and finance... Even if a teacher wants to put his student's name as the author of the article, he cannot. I started my PhD research in 2008, and after nearly three years, I was able to start having my name on the article because I had just completed all the obligations and requirements.
In the paper, the research team did not equate physics with other disciplines, so they did not include physics in their research when presenting data on the rapid increase in the number of publications, especially in recent years.
Therefore, naming physicists as questionable super-productive authors, I find inappropriate, misleading, and affecting those doing research.
Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Hong Van
How is the list of "super productive" authors determined?
On July 26, the journal Scientometrics, published by Springer Nature, published a study on the list of hyper-productive authors (publishing more than 60 articles/year). 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). According to Nature, the rapid increase in the number of hyper-productive authors is a concern for the world's scientific community.
In their study, Professor Ioannidis and colleagues indexed all research articles, review articles, and conference proceedings 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 a year.
The team also 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 hyper-productive authors in the past, in 2022 the number of hyper-productive authors was roughly equal between non-physics and physics fields (1,226 versus 1,480 authors).
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.
In a study recently published in Scientometrics, Professor Ioannidis and colleagues explain how they determined the affiliations of authors: "For each Scopus author identifier that met the criteria for extreme publishing behavior in a given year, we collected the number of articles published by the author in that year, the author's workplace and country listed in Scopus (at the time of data collection), the total number of publications over the author's entire career and during the period 2000-2022, as well as the author's main research area." The team also said: "We used Scopus data as of May 2023."
The statistics are from 2000 to 2022, in which Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Thi Hong Van (International Center for Interdisciplinary Science and Education - ICISE) had two super productive years, 2012 and 2013. Thus, the author's affiliation was determined at a time, when Professor Ioannidis's group collected Scopus data, in May 2023.
In fact, Ms. Van has published many articles with both addresses ICISE and VAST, some articles with ICISE address before VAST. This may be the reason why Scopus determined Associate Professor Van's affiliation as ICISE and not VAST.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/nha-nghien-cuu-viet-nam-co-ten-trong-danh-sach-tac-gia-sieu-nang-suat-noi-gi-20240804223207796.htm
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