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The urgent need for modification of scientific ranking indexes to facilitate scientific progress and diminish academic bullying

[Image: see text] Academic bullying occurs when senior scientists direct abusive behavior such as verbal insults, public shaming, isolation, and threatening toward vulnerable junior colleagues such as postdocs, graduate students and lab members. We believe that one root cause of bullying behavior is...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Mahmoudi, Morteza, Ameli, Saya, Moss, Sherry
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Tabriz University of Medical Sciences 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6977587/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31988851
http://dx.doi.org/10.15171/bi.2019.30
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author Mahmoudi, Morteza
Ameli, Saya
Moss, Sherry
author_facet Mahmoudi, Morteza
Ameli, Saya
Moss, Sherry
author_sort Mahmoudi, Morteza
collection PubMed
description [Image: see text] Academic bullying occurs when senior scientists direct abusive behavior such as verbal insults, public shaming, isolation, and threatening toward vulnerable junior colleagues such as postdocs, graduate students and lab members. We believe that one root cause of bullying behavior is the pressure felt by scientists to compete for rankings designed to measure their scientific worth. These ratings, such as the h-index, have several unintended consequences, one of which we believe is academic bullying. Under pressure to achieve higher and higher rankings, in exchange for positive evaluations, grants and recognition, senior scientists exert undue pressure on their junior staff in the form of bullying. Lab members have little or no recourse due to the lack of fair institutional protocols for investigating bullying, dependence on grant or institutional funding, fear of losing time and empirical work by changing labs, and vulnerability to visa cancellation threats among international students. We call for institutions to reconsider their dependence on these over-simplified surrogates for real scientific progress and to provide fair and just protocols that will protect targets of academic bullying from emotional and financial distress.
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spelling pubmed-69775872020-01-27 The urgent need for modification of scientific ranking indexes to facilitate scientific progress and diminish academic bullying Mahmoudi, Morteza Ameli, Saya Moss, Sherry Bioimpacts Perspective [Image: see text] Academic bullying occurs when senior scientists direct abusive behavior such as verbal insults, public shaming, isolation, and threatening toward vulnerable junior colleagues such as postdocs, graduate students and lab members. We believe that one root cause of bullying behavior is the pressure felt by scientists to compete for rankings designed to measure their scientific worth. These ratings, such as the h-index, have several unintended consequences, one of which we believe is academic bullying. Under pressure to achieve higher and higher rankings, in exchange for positive evaluations, grants and recognition, senior scientists exert undue pressure on their junior staff in the form of bullying. Lab members have little or no recourse due to the lack of fair institutional protocols for investigating bullying, dependence on grant or institutional funding, fear of losing time and empirical work by changing labs, and vulnerability to visa cancellation threats among international students. We call for institutions to reconsider their dependence on these over-simplified surrogates for real scientific progress and to provide fair and just protocols that will protect targets of academic bullying from emotional and financial distress. Tabriz University of Medical Sciences 2020 2019-09-25 /pmc/articles/PMC6977587/ /pubmed/31988851 http://dx.doi.org/10.15171/bi.2019.30 Text en © 2020 The Author(s) This work is published by BioImpacts as an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Perspective
Mahmoudi, Morteza
Ameli, Saya
Moss, Sherry
The urgent need for modification of scientific ranking indexes to facilitate scientific progress and diminish academic bullying
title The urgent need for modification of scientific ranking indexes to facilitate scientific progress and diminish academic bullying
title_full The urgent need for modification of scientific ranking indexes to facilitate scientific progress and diminish academic bullying
title_fullStr The urgent need for modification of scientific ranking indexes to facilitate scientific progress and diminish academic bullying
title_full_unstemmed The urgent need for modification of scientific ranking indexes to facilitate scientific progress and diminish academic bullying
title_short The urgent need for modification of scientific ranking indexes to facilitate scientific progress and diminish academic bullying
title_sort urgent need for modification of scientific ranking indexes to facilitate scientific progress and diminish academic bullying
topic Perspective
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6977587/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31988851
http://dx.doi.org/10.15171/bi.2019.30
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