Response to: Open Debate article "How Bibliometric Indicators Should Be Used to Assess Excellence in Science and Technology" by Nicolini C. 2016

Response by Prof. Eugenia Pechkova, Genova University, Italy To my opinion the present paper is aiming to break the vicious cycle created nowadays in scientific research community, which includes following actors: scientists institutions journals funding agencies and finally, governments. All parties are seriously involved in the mafia-patterned organization, which created the non-independent indicators for future publishing and funding selected scientific groups, institutions and facilities, and often these decisions are made right on the government level. I think that the situation now is became more dramatic, because the involvement of scientific journals in this cycle is more pronounced than before, when the journals were more independent (e.g. decades ago). Today, the indicators result in funding and the journals play the profound role in corrupted pathways, accepting absurdly high numbers of authors and affiliations even for routinely research papers, never occurred before. In many cases, the performed results cannot justify such a high number of authors (more than 50) and involved institutions (more than 10), even with contribution statements required by the journals. Moreover, the same research is often multiplied in several prestigious journals, resulting in replication of the same already well established arguments by the same research groups, while innovative and not enough established research have a hard time to enter in the cycle, often voluntarily excluded by the referees from well-established groups. The indexes are coming to the forefront also in the academic carrier, and the real interest for science is often absent already among the young scientist and students, busy with indexes calculations without real attention of the quality of their research. The future of science appears in this light very dark. The present paper tries to make sense in the indexing system and possibly to exclude the indicators from this dangerous cycle, making this issue more independent and equitable. I suggest to publish the manuscript as a “test-case” indicating to the overall tendency and suggesting the possible solution to this important problem.