The Tyranny of Rankings in an Artificially Intelligent World
An Academic Writing Example
“It’s good enough. Let’s post it and submit it to an A-rated journal,” I remember my co-author saying as we finished writing another academic paper on technology and start-up financing.
The next day, I uploaded the article as a working paper and shared the link on social media while my co-author sent it to a journal whose editor-in-chief was our former colleague. We wasted no time and started working on our next project, a chapter in a Handbook on Financial Technology.
I enjoy collaborating with co-authors on academic articles. It’s more enjoyable, but I also believe the final product is better.
Collaborating allows us to learn from each other and produce work much faster. This is particularly important in academia, where rankings have become crucial. Having more papers accessible to a wider community leads to better rankings, both in terms of downloads and citations, and more invitations to present the paper to an international audience.
Collaboration with multiple co-authors is common among highly-ranked academics.
And in a world where quantity prevails over quality, artificial intelligence has the potential to significantly manipulate the rankings.
