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If academia were a truly meritocratic system, researchers would gain popularity and build a reputation for producing relevant, high-quality work. Factors like the researcher’s geographic location or the journal publishing the work would be irrelevant. But under the current system, journals in North America and Western Europe perform significantly better than those in the rest of the world on many metrics, notably citations received. The impact of a journal’s popularity and geographic location on how many citations strong research will receive is a flaw in the system hurting many scholars, especially in the developing world.
There are several countries outside of North America and Western Europe which produce a significant volume of research. In 2018, China produced 594,590 citable documents in scholarly journals according to the SCImago Journal & Country Rank, and it has since passed the U.S. to become the leading producer of citable documents. India ranked fifth as of 2018, and it has since passed Germany to produce the fourth most research. Among the top 25 countries with the highest research output, 7 are in Asia, 2 are in the Middle East, 2 are in Eastern Europe and 1 is in Latin America.
However, with respect to citations per article, Western Europe and North America consistently rank higher than the rest of the world. Among the top 25 countries producing the greatest research volumes, no country from Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East or Latin America ranks higher than a country from North America, Western Europe or Australia. Of the top 25, India ranks 24th for citations per article, above only Indonesia.
Similarly, the overwhelming majority of journals receiving the most citations per published work are located in North America and Western Europe. The SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) numerically represents the scientific influence of a particular journal. It takes into account the average number of citations per journal article and the prestige of the journals citing it. Thus, a citation in a well-established journal would carry more weight than other citations. For 2020, among the top 2,500 scholarly publications rated by SJR (only considering publications with 100+ citable documents over the past 3 years), 97.56% of them are based in North America or Western Europe. Of the over 15,000 publications assigned an SJR, only 76.92% are located in North America or Western Europe, suggesting that publications from these regions perform much better than publications based elsewhere.
Researchers anywhere in the world can submit their work to top publications to boost their chances of being widely recognized. However, academic networks are often heavily centralized around universities, and researchers in the Western world are more likely to be connected to top publications and renowned collaborators. Scholars in the developing world are severely disadvantaged in becoming noticed as a result. Not every publication submitted to a journal will be peer-reviewed either, so some research can be unfairly disqualified.
Our system does not have to be this way. A transformational service that makes research and academia more meritocratic is Jinso, a network for research mentorship. Jinso disrupts centralized research networks by connecting young researchers with other scholars internationally based on similar interests. Jinso students upload their preprints to open access repositories to share their work without dealing with the bureaucracy of education. Every researcher is viewed based on the merits of their work, regardless of connections or affiliations.
Jinso is available to everyone: undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, professors, and others. Experienced researchers are also able to serve as mentors for younger scholars, earning funding to support their own research. Jinso makes research the meritocratic process it was always meant to be.
GitHub is a popular platform used by computer scientists to manage their collaborative projects, but a similar program does not exist for academic work. There is no standard platform to create work, connect with others, and share work in one place. Most platforms only fall into one or two of these categories.The Jinso collaboration tool is a better way for groups to work on projects. By bringing the entire academic collaboration process onto one tool, it simplifies workflows and communication.The first steps for using the Jinso platform are:
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects. Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time.
Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects.
Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time. Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
When a new Project is created, an initial revision must be shared. This can either be plain text or a PDF.
The Project will be immediately visible to all Group members with the first revision shown. Group members can comment on the revision with questions or feedback, and others can reply to comments.When another revision of the paper has been completed, the Group admin can add a new revision to the same Project.
The revision will become visible above the prior revision, and it will have a new comment box associated with it. Projects make it simple to keep track of a paper’s entire revision history and discussions at each stage.
For each revision, Group admins can also create subtasks. Arrows allow Group members to view all of the different subtasks and comment on them individually. Subtasks allow a paper to be analyzed in unique components. For example, a research paper can have a unique subtask for each of its sections, and collaborators can discuss them all separately in the comment boxes. Jinso is a quicker way to collaborate on long-term projects. It makes it easier to connect, share, and manage the development of ideas and papers. You can create a Jinso account and start using the platform today for your research and academic needs at jinso.io.
If academia were a truly meritocratic system, researchers would gain popularity and build a reputation for producing relevant, high-quality work. Factors like the researcher’s geographic location or the journal publishing the work would be irrelevant. But under the current system, journals in North America and Western Europe perform significantly better than those in the rest of the world on many metrics, notably citations received. The impact of a journal’s popularity and geographic location on how many citations strong research will receive is a flaw in the system hurting many scholars, especially in the developing world.
There are several countries outside of North America and Western Europe which produce a significant volume of research. In 2018, China produced 594,590 citable documents in scholarly journals according to the SCImago Journal & Country Rank, and it has since passed the U.S. to become the leading producer of citable documents. India ranked fifth as of 2018, and it has since passed Germany to produce the fourth most research. Among the top 25 countries with the highest research output, 7 are in Asia, 2 are in the Middle East, 2 are in Eastern Europe and 1 is in Latin America.
However, with respect to citations per article, Western Europe and North America consistently rank higher than the rest of the world. Among the top 25 countries producing the greatest research volumes, no country from Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East or Latin America ranks higher than a country from North America, Western Europe or Australia. Of the top 25, India ranks 24th for citations per article, above only Indonesia.
Similarly, the overwhelming majority of journals receiving the most citations per published work are located in North America and Western Europe. The SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) numerically represents the scientific influence of a particular journal. It takes into account the average number of citations per journal article and the prestige of the journals citing it. Thus, a citation in a well-established journal would carry more weight than other citations. For 2020, among the top 2,500 scholarly publications rated by SJR (only considering publications with 100+ citable documents over the past 3 years), 97.56% of them are based in North America or Western Europe. Of the over 15,000 publications assigned an SJR, only 76.92% are located in North America or Western Europe, suggesting that publications from these regions perform much better than publications based elsewhere.
Researchers anywhere in the world can submit their work to top publications to boost their chances of being widely recognized. However, academic networks are often heavily centralized around universities, and researchers in the Western world are more likely to be connected to top publications and renowned collaborators. Scholars in the developing world are severely disadvantaged in becoming noticed as a result. Not every publication submitted to a journal will be peer-reviewed either, so some research can be unfairly disqualified.
Our system does not have to be this way. A transformational service that makes research and academia more meritocratic is Jinso, a network for research mentorship. Jinso disrupts centralized research networks by connecting young researchers with other scholars internationally based on similar interests. Jinso students upload their preprints to open access repositories to share their work without dealing with the bureaucracy of education. Every researcher is viewed based on the merits of their work, regardless of connections or affiliations.
Jinso is available to everyone: undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, professors, and others. Experienced researchers are also able to serve as mentors for younger scholars, earning funding to support their own research. Jinso makes research the meritocratic process it was always meant to be.
