ON THE RECORD
“There are a lot oftesticles around.”Chris Barratt of BirminghamWomen’s Hospital explains whystem cells from testicles could be a useful alternative to those fromhuman embryos.
“I haven’t done anyconquering, per se.”Tom Robinson, an accountingprofessor, considers his newlyidentified genetic link to Genghis Khan.
“Swabbing butts is notmy highest priority, butit’s a national emergencykind of thing.”Biologist Rick Lanctot bites the bulletand samples shorebirds in Alaska forthe H5N1 flu virus.
Sources: The Guardian, Miami Herald,Reuters
SCORECARD Sporting antsScientists fiddle withants’ pheromones to
whip up team rivalries in theworld’s tiniest football match: the Ant World Cup.
Horse whisperingAn acoustics scientistfinds that horse whinnies
are far more complex thanoriginally believed.
Young footballersKids playing football innew boots can end up
with toxic shock syndrome fromblisters, doctors report.
NUMBER CRUNCHHave jet fuel, will travel. InventorBrian Walker is building a massive,cross-bow-style rocket launcher ina bid to fire himself 32 kilometres into the air this autumn.
6,000 newtons is thethrust Walker hopes his home-made rocket will achieve.
7 metres is the length of thecarbon-fibre ‘bow’ Walker will useto launch the rocket.
$15,000 is the cost ofWalker’s safety gear: a surplusRussian space suit.
Source: WiredSID
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TOKYOFinancial rewards for publishing high-profilepapers are spreading. Starting later this month,South Korean researchers will receive US$3,000from the government when they publish in elitejournals. And that’s a pittance compared withChina, where some scientists can rake in morethan ten times that amount.
As institutions and countries strive for inter-national recognition, some are hoping thatpublication bonuses will help. But critics fearthat this strategy could lead to a dangerous fix-ation on a few indicators of scientific success.
The Korean initiative, funded by the Min-istry of Science and Technology, will award 3 million won (US$3,000) to the first and thecorresponding author on papers in key jour-nals. “The plan is part of efforts to raise themorale of scientists who boostdevelopment in the country’sscience and technology sector,”says Young Nam Lim, deputydirector at the ministry’sdepartment of basic sciencepolicy. A ten-member commit-tee composed of ministry officials and researchers will choose the rele-vant journals. They are likely to include Nature, Science and Cell among others, Lim says.
Similar practices are already in place else-where. In Pakistan, under a system introducedby the science ministry in 2002, researcherscan receive $1,000 to $20,000, based mainly onthe cumulative one-year impact factor of theirpublications. Half is given as a research grantand the rest for personal use.
In China, bonuses are left up to the individ-ual institution. China Agricultural Universityin Beijing, for example, will pay up to $50,000for high-impact papers, says its presidentZhang-liang Chen. “This is not a big deal forgreat papers,” he says.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Instituteof Biophysics in Beijing has a scale tuned toimpact factors. Authors published in journalswith an impact factor between 3 and 5 receive2,000 yuan ($250) per point, while a factorover 10 earns 7,000 yuan ($875) per point. Apaper in Nature, Science or Cell earns 250,000yuan ($31,000). The institute has had severalsuch papers published over the past few years.
Advocates of the bonus schemes say that theincentives compensate for the low academicwages in the countries concerned. A bonus of
$1,000, for instance, could be three times themonthly salary of a Pakistani university lec-turer. Thanks partly to the incentives, the out-put of papers has increased dramatically, saysAtta-ur-Rahman, chairman of the Pakistangovernment’s higher education commission,who helped introduce the reward system.
But critics charge that more papers aren’tnecessarily better. “The bonus plan has had adevastating effect,” says Pervez Hoodbhoy, aphysicist at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islam-abad. “University researchers are rushing topublish by hook or by crook, and scientific andacademic ethics are ignored in this haste.” Hesuspects that many papers with little signifi-cance are churned out, and says that bonusescould be adding to the problems of plagiarismand faked data that he has seen and heard.
Others feel that the bonussystem belittles their work.“Good papers are the productof sweat, joy and sorrow,” says Sunyoung Kim, a biologistat South Korea’s Seoul NationalUniversity. “If this is calcu-lated to be 3 million won,
I feel insulted.”Yuan Tseh Lee, a Nobel prize-winning
chemist, agrees. “There is too much pressure onscientists to get recognition in China,” says Lee,who is president of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica.“If you just aim for fame and money, you willmake yourself and your students miserable.”
Partly because of such concerns, the Shang-hai Institute of Biological Sciences cancelled itsbonus program in 2003. But Chen argues thatat the moment bonuses are necessary, espe-cially in China where a socialist system hasmade it difficult to reward hard work. “It’s anecessary stage,” he says. “In ten years I’m surethe situation will be different.”
Peter Cotgreave, director of the London-based lobby group the Campaign for Scienceand Engineering in the UK, says reward systems have some merit, in part because thepeople effectively judging the award — anony-mous peer reviewers — are independent of theaward. Deserving researchers might miss out, he says, when, for example, high-qualitypapers are rejected by top journals. But hedoubts that poor work would be rewarded, asresearchers “only win if they are good enoughto get into Nature or Science”. ■
Ichiko Fuyuno and David Cyranoski
Cash for papers: putting apremium on publication
“Good papers are theproduct of sweat, joyand sorrow. If this iscalculated as 3 millionwon, I feel insulted.”
15.6 News 792 MH 13/6/06 9:43 AM Page 792
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