http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2011/04/arrows_other_th.html
I haven't read the papers but is it okay to publish the same thing multiple times? How different is different? And what about Bruno? Any opinions?
Bruno Frey
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Frey, with super publisher Benno Torgler, has now pubbed 4 papers on the same topic making basically the same points. The red flag here is that none of these papers cite each other and there is no explanation of what is different in each from the other, and there is a lot of overlap. There is buzz that the JEP editorship is very pissed off and will be taking public action against the authors.
BTW, Frey has published two other papers that are very similar, one in 2003 in Public Choice and one in 2005 in the European Journal of Law and Economics, both about the ethics of publishing, with the first bearing the portentous title, "Publishing as Prostitution: Choosing between one's own views and one's academic career." Looks like Frey not only suffers from questionable ethics in publishing, but adds hypocrisy on top of this.
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Well, that's nothing new with him, is it? If you look at his CV, you'll find, what, 600+ refereed publications? That looks astonishing on first sight. He appears to be THE top researcher post-war economics.
Then you look at it a bit more in detail, and realize that there are maybe 80-100 original papers there, which is still great. But the Frey Factory is a bit like Warhol's Factory... self-plagiarism and sycophants included.
The unfortunate thing is that without such practices, with 80-100 good original papers and without the Frey Factory business, he would still be among the top 10 or top 5 percent of the profession, and at the same time it would be much easier to respect the guy. But he certainly missed that opportunity.
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e73b.
There is a way to do this and a way not to do this. The way to do this is to make sure that all your versions are distinguished from each other in some way that each has something new that is particular to it, and also that one make this clear by citing all the other versions and exactly how all differ from each other. Otherwise, you look guilty of self-plagiarism, which, while not as frowned upon as plagiarizing others, is still frowned upon rather severely.
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He does something else: he writes papers claiming that the idea is his, when anyone who knows the area knows he is just applying some idea/method to a different dataset. He usually publishes in a place where the people who know will not see it (quickly). But's a bad thing to do in any case.
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He does something else: he writes papers claiming that the idea is his, when anyone who knows the area knows he is just applying some idea/method to a different dataset. He usually publishes in a place where the people who know will not see it (quickly). But's a bad thing to do in any case.
Do you have an example for this? I always considered him to be repeating himself a bit too recklessly, but nevertheless usually pioneering in what he does.
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In his event studies of World War II, he claims credit for an approach that was already in the literature.
He does something else: he writes papers claiming that the idea is his, when anyone who knows the area knows he is just applying some idea/method to a different dataset. He usually publishes in a place where the people who know will not see it (quickly). But's a bad thing to do in any case.
Do you have an example for this? I always considered him to be repeating himself a bit too recklessly, but nevertheless usually pioneering in what he does. -
I agree with a couple of posters above: the real red flag is the lack of self-citations. Not even necessarily explaining the differences in detail -- just mentioning the other papers; then referees and editors can decide on their own whether the differences are big enough, or they can ask you to elaborate in a revision, etc. Simply omitting the other papers is clear, unjustifiable cheating, and should be punished to the extent possible in academia (e.g., retracting the publication, etc.).
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Talk of a Nobel for Frey has sometimes focused on his stuff on happiness, with his JEL paper on the matter having over 1400 cites. However, there is not a single thing in that paper that was done by him. Why the JEL editors selected him to write that is a stone cold mystery. There probably won't be one, but if there is, Richard Easterlin is clearly The Man to get a happiness Nobel, with Frey not remotely on the list for somebody to accompany Easterlin.
The guy is a hypocritical bloviater, pontificater, and self-plagiarizer.
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Talk of a Nobel for Frey has sometimes focused on his stuff on happiness, with his JEL paper on the matter having over 1400 cites. However, there is not a single thing in that paper that was done by him. Why the JEL editors selected him to write that is a stone cold mystery. There probably won't be one, but if there is, Richard Easterlin is clearly The Man to get a happiness Nobel, with Frey not remotely on the list for somebody to accompany Easterlin.
The guy is a hypocritical bloviater, pontificater, and self-plagiarizer.Who cares? Happiness is selfish and shows your laziness. Creating wealth is a signal that you create jobs and wealth to others.