The publication epidemic and research cartels

[jerseyjay]

Like everything else, this depends on field and type of institution.

The chair of the Harvard physics department published more than 25 papers in 2018, according to the department website (https://scholar.harvard.edu/efthimios_kaxiras/publications?page=1). The chair of the history department seems to have only published three articles in 2017 (https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/ablair/publications-0). It seems that all the physicist's papers are coauthored, while all of the historian's papers are single-authored. (I should also say that as a historian at a non R-1, if I publish three articles in a year, I will be very happy, while for the chair of the Harvard history department, it actually appears to be a slow year.

According to the Columbia website, Eric Foner has published more than 20 books in his career (https://history.columbia.edu/person/foner-eric/). As a historian, if I publish 10 books I will be very happy. If I published just one book that was as well respected as one of Foner's, I would be ecstatic.

How do people publish 400 papers per year? I haven't the faintest idea, but I suppose part of it depends on what "publish" means--and perhaps what "paper" means, also.

Is it beneficial? Beneficial to whom? The institution? The researcher? Humanity as a whole?

How should a regular researcher feel? Assuming you are in the same field as these "superstars", I wouldn't feel too bad. As others have said, focus on making your own work as well as possible.

[Myword]

Great advice, Cheerful. No one can publish 400 articles in a year, more than one a day...unless of course you created your own little journal for this purpose. So it is not legit.  I suspect journal articles are very brief and cursory. If no one actually checks them, how do we know they are real? Who will take the time to research each one and read it?
They could be nothing more than references to other research and authors, that is so common in many fields. And those references could be either fictitious or irrelevant. Someone mentioned my article by referring to a point I never made in an educational journal. Reverse plagiarism? I'd rather not be cited this way. My guess is this is common. In English, some professors cite anything they published in tiny journals, even personal stuff.

What are these "inside deals" Cheerful mentioned?

[Kron3007]

As others have said, most of these people are likely in leadership positions in fields where co-authorship is the norm, and including the head of the institute is standard practice.  In my field I am not aware of anyone with these numbers, but I do know of some heads of institutes that are added in this manner.  They publish a lot of papers, mostly decent quality, but they are really just a name on the paper and did not contribute to the research.  This is generally understood.

I know another poster said not to compare yourself to others, but I partially disagree and think you should be aware of your relative productivity.  However, I wouldn't focus on these people as they are almost definitely quite senior and not what you should be comparing yourself to.  They likely have a large team of researchers at your stage and above all working to their end.  If you want to compare your productivity, you need to look at people at your stage, or slightly ahead of you to see what it takes to get where you want to be.     

[Puget]

Yes, a more useful question for the OP to ask is "how does the rate and quality of my publications compare to others in my sub-field at a similar career phase?" To do this, you need to look not only at raw publication counts, but publication venues, impact (citations etc.), and authorship position (e.g., in many fields you want first author as a grad student/postdoc, then to move to last author as a PI with your trainees first, with the occasional first author review article or such).

A potentially useful broader question is "what are the standards for authorship in a given field and are they being followed in practice?"
For example, in psychology the APA has long defined the standard for being included as an author as making a substantial intellectual contribution, and explicitly states that merely funding the research, or being a head of an institute/department does not count, nor does routine work like data collection done by research assistants/technicians who just follow the study protocol. All authors are also required to read and approve the final draft. In practice, the field recognized these standards were not always being followed, so journals mostly now require an authorship statement were the role(s) of each author in the research are stated (often selected from a set list of roles). Once could of course still lie on this, but it most likely has nipped some sloppy habits of adding people who didn't actually contribute much.

[mleok]

I know another poster said not to compare yourself to others, but I partially disagree and think you should be aware of your relative productivity.  However, I wouldn't focus on these people as they are almost definitely quite senior and not what you should be comparing yourself to.  They likely have a large team of researchers at your stage and above all working to their end.  If you want to compare your productivity, you need to look at people at your stage, or slightly ahead of you to see what it takes to get where you want to be.     

My point was to not compare oneself to superproducers who by virtue of their position have access to an army of graduate students or postdocs. With more limited resources, I would suggest focusing on quality as opposed to quantity, if the goal is to move up in prestige.

[theteacher]

I completed three research ethics courses at different institutions located on three continents (Asia, Europe, and North America). "Being the head of department or research center" was never presented as a valid reason for authorship. People exploit their positions.

[Ruralguy]

They will explain this by saying they regularly met with the students on the papers, funded the work and kept up to date on the drafts.

[Kron3007]

I completed three research ethics courses at different institutions located on three continents (Asia, Europe, and North America). "Being the head of department or research center" was never presented as a valid reason for authorship. People exploit their positions.

True, but authorship is quite free in many fields.  I have seen papers with dozens of authors.  There is no way that dozens of people could have contributed intellectually to these papers, most of them likely just provided some technical capacity that made the project possible, and coauthorship was likely part of the initial agreement when they started the project.

However, as others have said, it is quite obvious when this is the case and most people will recognize that these super publishers are often more administrative at this point.