This paper investigates how competition to publish first and thereby establish priority impacts the quality of scientific research. We begin by developing a model where scientists decide whether and how long to work on a given project. When deciding how long they should let their projects mature, scientists trade off the marginal benefit of higher quality research against the marginal risk of being preempted. Projects with the highest scientific potential are the most competitive because they induce the most entry. Therefore, the model predicts these projects are also the most rushed and lowest quality.
It's interesting to think about what subjects are perceived to be high value and therefore have rushed and low quality research regularly published about them. (attn @theluddite )
#Science #ScienceResearch #SciencePublishing #competition