UNSW wants to lift its research reputation and is offering academics incentives, as in cash, to do it. DVC R Nicholas Fisk is telling staff that the UNSW goal, “to be a top 50 university” by 2025 involves improving on an average of the Times Higher, QS and Academic Ranking of World Universities’ citation/publication scores.

Professor Fisk says UNSW needs to lift field weighted citation impacts, highly cited researchers and “our Nature and Science papers.”  He presents six “tips: for improved citation impact,” having an ORCID unique identifier, creating a Google Scholar page, promoting research in social media, engaging with open access, “if a paper is more widely available, it has more chance of being cited,” attending UNSW impact workshops and asking expert staff on profile building.

UNSW is also offering cash incentives. A lead UNSW author will get $500 for published papers that appear in selected prestige publications. There is $1000 for each paper identified in the Times Higher and QS five-year windows as a “highly cited paper” appearing in the Web of Science. UNSW corresponding authors of articles published in Nature and Science will receive $10 000 from the university, with “sliding amounts” for other authors.

And for those who decide this is all too hard UNSW wants to help; creating “over 200-education focused roles across the university for those wishing to move out of teaching/research into teaching-only roles.”

Some researchers are not relaxed with this approach, but at least it is not like China. There are Chinese universities which pay publication bounties, (in some case said to be 20 times an author’s annual salary for a paper in Nature). According to researchers Wei Quan, (Wuhan University) Bikun Chen, (Nanjing University of Science and Technology), and Fei Shu, (McGill University) this can lead to citation and publication gaming. There is, they argue, a “golden rule of academia in China: publish or impoverish.”