Citations from Beyond the Grave
It seems to be widely believed (by those responsible for research assessment) that what is important about research papers and their authors is not the research they describe but how many citations they attract. Thinking about this recently yet another anomaly in this attitude struck me arising from the fact that papers continue to attract citations long after the authors are dead. It seems surprising therefore institutions have not tried harder to use the citations of deceased researchers to boost their research profile. The last Research Excellence Framework in the UK allowed institutions to claim some credit for work by researchers who had moved on to another institution. Why then not allow institutions to claim credit for researchers who passed away?
The obvious problem with this idea is that it might encourage University managers to do even more than they do already to work their staff into an early grave. It seems to me the answer to that is obvious. Researchers should be allowed to stipulate in their last will and testament whom they would like to benefit from post-mortem citations. Or indeed carry some form of donor card…
The free market solution would of course be to set up a market to allow the citations accrued after death of a researcher to be traded.
Another anomaly is that the deceased are generally – though see here for an exception – not allowed to be authors on new papers. I think this is highly discriminatory. You might argue that a dead person can contribute neither to the writing of a paper nor contribute to the scientific discussions that led to it, nor even read a draft of the text, yet I have first-hand experience of many living people who do none of those things yet still manage to appear in the author lists of many papers…
Finally, let me remark that a researcher’s H-index, a quantity often used by institutions to inform decisions about promotion, also continues to increase after the researcher has kicked the bucket. Why, then, should the dead be barred from promotion? Perhaps there should be a new job category of PHR (PostHumous Researcher)? The departed could even take up senior management positions where they could do just as good a job as those in such positions already without incurring any salary costs. This approach could address many of the grave problems facing modern universities.
It is high time institutions adopted a much more inclusive approach to their late researchers who, instead of merely pushing up the daises, could be used to push up the citations.
In the Dark 
April 11, 2024 at 5:23 pm
Deceased people do appear on author lists – I have published at least one paper with someone who died between the paper being written and its publication.
April 11, 2024 at 11:24 pm
As an anecdote regarding deceased authors, Robert Boyer died tragically aged 33 in the 1966 Texas mass shooting. Afterwards a draft was found in a drawer in his office, Lindquist completed the paper and thus in 1967 the world found about about Boyer-Lindquist coordinates for Kerr spacetimes.
April 12, 2024 at 4:27 am
Ghost writer ?
April 12, 2024 at 10:09 am
“They could even take up seen senior management positions where they could do just as good a job as those in such positions already without incurring any salary costs.”
No, they would do a better job, because they would not seek to increase the bureaucracy further.
April 16, 2024 at 3:30 pm
Funny.(I left engineering academia in 2006 for industrial R&D but still do a little Uni teaching part-time in projects and structural mechanics.)Does it really matter? The whole system is a designed managerial type system whereby business types with lower intellectual capability attempt to manage work they know nothing about. My job nowadays involves developing and improving various technologies operating in a certain market sector. While I occasionally read academic publications, I would never dream of reading the vast amount of rubbish published these days and passed off as ‘research’. I tell my own students (on the final-year undergraduate engineering project) to only source references from top 200 institutions (I have to draw the line somewhere).If the authors come from a rubbish ‘University’, I won’t read their work. It is irrelevant how they have gamed the metrics.If the institution is from within the top 200, I’ll glance through it and see if it is relevant before settling down to read it (good papers are still an enjoyable and worthwhile read).As for HR clowns using these metrics in their recruitment/promotion processes – ignore these clowns. Never, ever allow HR processes to factor into your decision making or you’ll end up stupid, mediocre and bitter.