S1E10.1 - Publish or Perish (Academic Publishing)

#Academia #Publications #Satire #PublishOrPerish #BoardGames #Science Introduction Merry early Christmas, as we go through a short bonus episode on Publish or Perish, a satirical card game by Dr. Max Bai. We talk about the nature of academic publishing, including problematic aspects like predatory journals, and how some of the quirkier aspects of the process get reflected in the game. So enjoy this lighter offering, and we'll see you with Season 2 in 2025! Find our socials at https://www.gamingwithscience.net  Timestamps 00:00 - Introduction 01:53 - The Importance of Publications 05:06 - Gameplay and Mechanics 12:15 - Grades (& more Importance of Publication) 15:52 - Generative AI & Predatory Journals 21:26 - Wrap-up Links Publish or Perish (Kickstarter page)    This episode of Gaming with Science™ was produced with the help of the University of Georgia and is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. Full Transcript Brian  0:06  Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast where we talk about the science behind some of your favorite games. In this bonus episode, we're going to discuss publish or perish by Dr Max Bai Jason  0:20  All right, everyone, welcome back. We're well, Brian says that this one is actually science with gaming instead of gaming with science as we're doing a game about the scientific process itself instead of about a science topic. This is Jason. This is Brian. And welcome technically, we're in our between season break right now, but we like giving y'all bonus episodes, and honestly, this was something we couldn't pass up. So we're just going to dive right into it. Publish or Perish, is a game that is just out by Dr Max Bai. So he is an independent social psychologist. So he got his PhD in social psychology, did a postdoc at Stanford, and now runs an independent research lab, which I don't know exactly how that works. He says on his Kickstarter page he started a few companies, so I assume they provide him enough income he can just do his own research what he wants. And maybe social research is less expensive than biology research. I don't know. I do not have enough money to be an independent researcher and run my own lab. Brian  1:07  Well I mean, research can vary widely in how expensive or inexpensive it is, depending on how you're doing it. Jason  1:13  but whatever the case is, he's running an independent research lab, which means he doesn't have any of the administrative overhead and all the deans and stuff that we spend all our time complaining about, and that's probably a preview for how this episode is going to go, because this episode is about the scientific process itself, not really about any specific scientific discipline. And so you're going to see maybe a peek behind the curtains, if you don't know it already, if you're already in the sciences, then hopefully this is not too traumatizing, as we bring up maybe some of the less fun parts of being a researcher and a scientist. So anyway, what is this game? I don't know if he made this as a graduate student or as a postdoc. It is a light party game meant to kind of poke fun at the scientific publishing enterprise. So we've mentioned this a few times on the episode. We scientists don't have very much. We're generally not in it for the money. Most of us don't get very famous like the one thing we have is our reputation with other scientists, and we establish that by publishing academic research papers. And people look at those papers, and that's how things like promotion and tenure, which is basically job security and being hired by another university or going off into industry is important, like if you're going on the job market either as a freshly minted Master's or PhD student, or as a professor who's been in it for 20 years, people are going to look at your publication record to see, are you actually a good scientist? Are you actually putting out a lot of work, and hopef