U.S. Science and Engineering Research Flattens 273
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "The National Science Foundation is reporting that the number of published U.S. science and engineering articles plateaued in the 1990s, despite continued increases in funding and personnel for research and development. This came after two decades of continued growth. Since then, flattening has occurred in nearly all U.S. research disciplines and types of institutions. In contrast, Asian and EU research had significant increases in this period. They do point to one positive for the US, however: article quality. According to one of the researchers, 'the more often an article is cited by other publications, the higher quality it's believed to have. While citation is not a perfect indicator, U.S. publications are more highly cited than those from other countries.'"
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We always used foreign scientist/engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
nuclear weapons/research: Albert Einstein and many other exiles from Europe
computers: John Von Neumann (Hungarian)
rockets and space: America's space and rocket program was kickstarted by a nucleus of German scientists after the war bought here
That is not to say we don't have our own home grown talent - just that science is an international activity and we have been lucky enough to be able to draw the best and brightest, foreign or domestic, to our country.
Whether it remains so in the long run, I am not certain - it requires an open and free country (something we're losing) and enough wealth, of course, as cutting edge science often requires funds scientists usually don't have themselves and hence the US was a good place to find patronage.
Re:We always used foreign scientist/engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a short-sighted approach that is leading to the situation we are now finding ourselves in - Americans unable to do the work required in this technological society. As a culture we have made fun of scientists, valued the steroid-pumped athlete and the slash and burn executive. But innovators, researchers, teachers, etc - all of the professions that would have been able to prepare this country for the future - have been basically discarded.
No child left behind? How about a whole country. We are quickly becoming a third-world entity with nothing but poor and uneducated immigrants flocking here for the vision of what used to be. The people who were/are here are now unable to think critically, innovate, etc.
There are exceptions of course but this is the overall situation. Check any tech rag for an editorial - the critical shortage of US workers capable to do the jobs necessary to keep this country afloat. This is not a time to be like this. We are now dependent on foreign countries for manufacturing, energy, and a lot of raw materials. What do we bring to the table?
It seems all we bring are consumers of the crap we have to import. And that is bankrupting this country fast.
Re:We always used foreign scientist/engineers (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a major part of the problem is that the U.S. public education system has an overwhelming focus on bringing the slow learning underachievers up to par. Far too little is done to accelerate and unleash the potential of the best and brightest. Raise your hand if you were in the public education system and got all 'A' and 'B' grades while rarely or never bringing a book home with you. I susepct that most of the readers here were taking AP or college prep classes as well.
With idiotic programs like "No child left behind" the entire herd has to move at the pace of the slowest member. For example, I know an elementary school teacher that has a small group of students who are children of recent immigrants. They barely speak English, yet the school is supposed to make sure that they don't get "left behind"? Where do you think she needs to focus all of her extra effort? The phrase is emotionally pleasing, but the implementation has serious negative consequences (I HOPE they are unintended, but I'm not sure). I think that kids SHOULD be left behind a lot more frequently than they are.
I'd be in favor of getting the Federal government out of the public education system entirely. We should eliminate the Dept.of Education and distribute the entire department budget as block grants to the states for the next couple of years.
Re:We always used foreign scientist/engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
Facilities in the US are good, but a lot of research seems to be funded by military sources, which some might have an objection to, and in the US the focus is far to narrow - it's on getting a marketable product ASAP. It's been reported here that because universities in the US are now responsible for their own IP, they have IP lawyers hanging around. This is not an atmosphere conducive to innovative research.
Another problem, which is a problem in the EU also, is that funding from corporations is required for most research projects. This means that any research goals have to be watered down to make them acceptable to shareholders. This is also not conducive to innovative research. Neither is the simplistic "Paper Counting" which values number of publications over anything and everything else (it's very frustrating and slows down actual work a lot).
Micheal Crichton, in a talk, suggested that companies who want to donate to research donate to an anonymous fund. They can specify in what areas it goes, but the researchers never know who donated, and the results are public. This makes more sense than the short-term profit view of companies influencing research.
China versus South America (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, obviously there's lots of other factors, but note that China has a huge industrial base now. Basically anyone can work in a factory or business doing ordinary tasks. In South America, the poor continue to be poor and the well educated move to other countries.
I'd like to think there's significant value in teaching nearly everyone to read and write well, basic math skills, and the ability to follow directions. Remember that these immigrant children are going to end up marrying your daughters, working in your office, and taking care of you in your old age. You get a pretty good return on investment spending a few thousand dollars in basic education per kid. Don't let prejudice derail common sense.
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Y'know what, That wasn't true in the 1950s when schools had to deal with the baby boom that caused huge classes and a relative shortage of classrooms and teachers and it's not true now in a lot of schools. I've actually worked recently in a rural school (K-8 -- 300 students). Yes, a lot of effort is expended on the low end. But the really exceptional kids on the high end aren't ignored. They get guidance, spec
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Congratulations, and best of luck in your future pursuits.
"I'm surprised you're not aware of special schools in your state, the ones smart kids goto. Yes you are going to drive your kids there or maybe even pay for them to go to such school but this is your choice or duty as a parent."
"goto"
I'm aware of "special" schools and the home schooling option, but my interest in education is broader than the needs of my own fam
A little balance (Score:3, Informative)
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Q: What is an American University?
A: This is a strange place where Russian professors teach Chinese students in English.
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US tends to attract top researchers (Score:5, Insightful)
The US continues to be attractive because it tends to offer the best facilities (laboratories, datasets, computers, funding) in the world. Plus it hosts some of the best researchers in the world. Taken together this of course attracts *other* very good researchers. This in turn results in articles that have a higher citation index than most. So far so good.
I believe that the US cannot realistically expect to continue to lead the world in basic scientific research. As a matter of fact, it has lost that position already in a number of fields. What I believe it *can* expect to do is to continue to lead the world in applying research and turning up with innovative products.
Why? Because part of it is cultural. People here are always willing to go out and build something for themselves, which is the essence of starting a business, and society as a whole is very much geared towards giving new ideas and new businesses a chance, weed out the failures, cherish the successes, and let those who failed try again. That's important. In e.g. Europe failure in a business venture attracts a heavy stigma. Not so in the US. In the US it's also relatively easy to hire people for a startup, and to fire them the minute things go wrong, or even if revenues are lower than expected. And last but not least ... in the US venture capitalists are thoroughly aware that they must sow ten potatoes to reap one truly outstanding venture, three reasonably ones, and perhaps six poor ones. Unless other countries can copy that, the US is at an advantage.
Now both China and India are busily trying to imitate the US in this respect, and especially China has made a lot of headway. But the US still has the lead. And to be honest ... who would want to go the China and learn Chinese when they can also go the to US and use the English they learned in school? Excepting Chinese of course. Ever tried to find your way in China? The US has a big cultural advantage when it comes to competing as a destination of choice.
The undertone of the article is a bit warning of course. Even if one were somehow able to revitalise the US primary and secondary school system *and* make it attractive for Americans to pursue a career in science and/or engineering instead of business management, law, marketing, the military, etc. etc., it would take about two decades for the results to become visible. Personally I would say that the best bet for the US is continue to do what it has traditionally been good at, which is to focus on first attracting and then absorbing those immigrant researchers and turning their research into products.
This is precisely why the US takes such an agressive stance on "Intellectual Property", and does whatever it can to make every country in the world respect US copyrights. It's of strategic importance.
This is also at the heart of the US immigration policy, which runs approximately as follows: "We want those of you if you are the best or one of the best in your field. Those we will welcome to stay, and offer the chance to join the club and become a citizen. Others will be required to enter as illegal immigrants."
It's a bit parasitic, but it works.
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Actually with the latest cuts in funding this is no longer the case. Since GWB took office, the NSF funding per researcher has gone down and nowadays there are top notch american based scientists whose last n funding requests have been declined. In the past requests from such researchers had much higher rates of success.
US continues to lead in Computer Networks research (Score:3, Informative)
Take SIGCOMM for example. It is arguably the top conference in networking. It is the most reputable
among computer networks researchers and it happens to be among the top 4 most cited conferences
in computer science in general ( http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/impact.html [psu.edu]
http://libra.msra.cn/conf_category_24.htm [libra.msra.cn]).
Out of the 33 papers in SIGCOMM 2007, there are 29 papers from American research centers
(MIT, UCB, UCSD, Cornell, CMU, SDS
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The top US academic institutions have the most money of any in the world, by far.
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Money can facilitate research, and hence the top researchers tend to go where the money is (so they can accomplish the most they possibly can).
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The US is a large country, but small compared to the entire world. Japan has almost half as many people as the US. The EU has more. Let's not forget Russia. And then there are China and India.
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Speaking of China and India, education is rapidly increasing there, leading them to actually generate an 'industrialized nation' share of scientists proportional to their population.
Given all these factors, you shouldn't be surprised at all that the faculty at top US academic institutions are diverse. It might have nothing to do with any 'decline' of US capabilities (I'm not saying there isn't such a thing, just that this particular observation doesn't really support it).Re: (Score:2)
This gap has narrowed substantially with the last six years of NSF cuts, and in some areas a researcher is likely to obtain more funds overseas than at home.
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Couldn't this be said for the vast majority of advancements? By your standards we'd also have to neglect just about everything Bell and Edison had ever done. I guess that makes it convenient for your argument.
So, by your own little rules tell me of advancements made by any scientist that
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Can anyone think of a real, world-beating innovation by an American, born here, whose parents were also born here Americans?
I'm not into inventor genealogy, but Edison? Bell?
Shockley, inventor of the transistor? (Oddly enough, this article http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/shockley/ind e x.html [pbs.org] does go into his family history, and apparently it includes the Mayflower).
Regarding fields of pure science (like Wagner), Feynman in quantum physics, Linus Pauling and Mullikan in Chemistry, a variety of ot
Who's wondering why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Add the religious side and you'll see why Europe currently feels an influx of researchers, not only from "poor" countries where they can't get funding, but also a healthy dose of quite capable people from the US who prefer to ponder what their findings mean, not to ponder what they may write should they not want to be censored. It's Reneaissance all over again, where you can find whatever you want, but if you want to remain in the good standing and be respected as a researcher, you better find what government, industry and especially media want to hear, or you'll soon find yourself being attacked and badmouthed, and your reputation ruined.
Would you want to do research in that kind of climate?
Re:Who's wondering why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the more that applies to a country, the more likely that country is to go down the drain. See history books for examples.
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Too true, actually. You have no idea how much "research" in Germany between 34 and 45 was tied to finding "proof" that they're the superior race. Especially in history, anthropology and related studies, trying to do sensible and unbiased research was a surefire way to not only getting no money, but also often losing whatever reputation you had, while coming up with "results" that defy or outright contradicted reality were praised and
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Just take a different example, then. The history books are still full of them even if you omit Nazi Germany.
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Re:Who's wondering why? (Score:5, Insightful)
That means that pure research is harder to pursue because of grant competitions. It's very sad because applied research may end up only being relevant to very specific groups. Pure research can also provide some of the most startling insights into the world and create real leaps in knowledge.
I had this argument with my father: he said that a lot of scientific research is pointless and doesn't help anybody ("research for its own sake") until I pointed out the number of things that we take for granted these days that were based on theoretical research.
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Applied research can
Re:Who's wondering why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo, that kind of attitude would have prevented Einstein from getting funding today for "gravity studies". He and many others started quantum theory, they had no application they could point to. Biology is replete with these examples; modern drugs would be impossible without the previous theoretical work that was "pointless", not to mention all the advances in other disciplines that no one in those disciplines had any idea would be of use in the technology behind biology or medicine.
And you are right, many scientists do spend 40-50% of their time on begging for money, I and my fellow scientists here do as well. It's an insane way to fund scientists. I'm good at doing science, not writing goddamn grant proposals for some business school product to wonder about. I mostly do logic and math, try making a claim for money without tying it to some feature (security, reliability, etc.) that not only pollutes the grant proposal, but will waste gobs of my time both in feeding some application I was pushed into supporting and making it hard to do because I haven't the time to get the theory correct before I must somehow apply it.
Also, science progresses as much by its failures as its successes. In an atmosphere that only rewards applications, by definition it pisses on anything that might fail. The consequence is that scientists are pushed into small incremental steps that only extend established theory in a minor way rather than thinking far outside the box. Thinking outside the box can be abused, but so too can forcing us to only think inside the box.
Gerry
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Just a thought... The fact that unpopular research is underfunded or censored may give rise to new gentleman scientists [wikipedia.org]: people who have a passion for research and possess the necessary wealth to pursue it independently. I personally believe that the best research is done when you have the means to do it independently, not as an professional researcher in a company, the government, or a university. When you research while being effectively an employee you end up focusing more on sustaining the paycheck an
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There are some fields where I doubt this would work, as you'd be looking for talent in too small a pool. Astronomy is a good example of amateurs doing good science, but no one would want the situation where there were only amateur astronomers. Particle physics would be dead. Theoretical physics wouldn't have the experimental results it needs, and would just be an exercise in mathematics. A lot of other pure science would die or be limited. All that would be left would be some slowly progressing pure science
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Speaking theoretically, it would be possible to start a mailing list for the purpose of creating a group capable of building an amateur particle accelerator (or deaccelerator), spreading the word and waiting until enough smart people got interested in the project, then secure the necessary land, materials, and perhaps a government permit, and start making it. Of course there are many *practical* difficulties (there aren't enough smart people out there, the governments would probably distrust amateur mad sc
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Let's first of all see how you get rich today. Let's for a moment assume that you didn't inherit it. Inherited money often causes lazyness and a general lack of drive to actually do something productive. For reference, see Paris Hilton.
To get rich today, being a researcher is probably not the best venue. A researcher's get-rich-quick scheme would probably be that of a patent, and patents rarely if ever go to researchers anymore, they belong to the company or insti
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You can hear, every single day, "Science" sneered at in the same dismissive tone as "The Media" on talk radio and blogs of a certain political stripe. When someone doesn't like the results of research, they just go find some hungry grad of Regent U. who'll gin up a paper that says the opposite. The same way that when someone doesn't like what's happening in their world, th
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When I was a little kid, being a scientist was one of the coolest things you could be. Hell, I used to play with chemistry sets so I could pretend to be a scientist. No, today "Science" is under such constant attack I'm not surprised that people would rather become consultants to some corporation or move overseas to work.
If chemistry sets, model rockets, and amateur astronomy have truly become unfashionable to kids, I think it would much more to do with Steve Urkel than with anything that creationists have ever done.
However, I doubt that science activities are actually strictly uncool to kids these days. The problem is that they are competing against video games, cable TV, and the internet.
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Try getting the funding in Europe for research to prove that global warming isn't caused by carbon emissions.
In America, climate change is something to be censored. In Europe, climate
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Output of papers isn't too useful (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyways, as the article states, papers aren't always the best indication of actual information output. It's common practice for researchers to "recycle" papers, adding a bit of new information on top of the bulk of previous published work. It's in a researcher's best interest to limit the amount of both papers AND information, as to keep a steady stream of output (and keep their job). Tracking citation count seems more accurate in representing useful information output. It'd be even more accurate if we could somehow track actual implementation and use of the information.
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The bit I found most interesting is the emergence of the four asian countries. The US will always have it's place at the top table but it's total pre-eminence cannot be guaranteed forever.
Re:Output of papers isn't too useful (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is that? You're chosen by God?
This kind of attitude has been heard many times before going back through history. Ask the Brits. Or the Spanish. Or the French. Or the Chinese. Or the Iranians (yes, they too where once "at the top table"). I could go on, but you get the point I hope...
When my great grandmother was alive the Brits dominated the world as comprehensively as the USA does today.
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Actually Oxford has nearly dropped out of the top ten, courtesy of Lady Thatcher's cuts to education funding.
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She closed down one of the local institutions in my home city - the idea was that by closing it down, that would save the taxpayer money. All the researchers who had families to feed and kids at school, could only find employment as teachers and lecturers. At least they got a pay
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Nuclear weapons don't help maintain scientific supremacy.
It wasn't an outburst, it was just challenging common assumptions.
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A much better indicator of paper quality would be a weighted combination of the Journal quality
How does funding factor in? (Score:5, Interesting)
The NSF has had some serious funding woes since the 90s that very well may be causing this "draught" -- I wouldn't even go as far as to completely blame it on the Bush administration either (although they certainly did contribute).
As far as physics research goes, Clinton's cancellation of the already partially-constructed SSC easily set the entire field of particle physics back by 20 or so years. The LHC, which is being constructed in Europe as its "substitute" isn't even remotely as big or powerful as the SSC was originally planned to be.
Re: How does funding factor in? (Score:2)
The NSF has had some serious funding woes since the 90s that very well may be causing this "draught"
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I associate "paperwork" with the latter, but perhaps you meant the former.
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As the second sentence of the link says, this happened at a time when the NSF and NIH budgets were receiving steep *increases*! Subsequent funding caps and cuts haven't helped, I'm sure, but certainly aren't an issue for these numbers.
Also not an issue: the various bogeymen of politics and climate change. Putting aside that we're talking about the Clinton era, the overwhelming major
Citation vs Language (Score:5, Insightful)
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"I wonder if the higher citation rate of US articles is due to the fact they are written in English and therefore more accessible to a higher percentage of the scientific community?"
In most fields, that does not matter much. All good scientists in e.g. physics publish in english. What IMO matters more is that both American and European authors tend to cite american authors. The reason for that may be any of "American author did a better study", "American author did it earlier", "American author bragged
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pre-end of cold war was another story with plenty of russian journals.
this comes from my experience in the world of physics/condmat/matsci but appears to be true throughout the other hard sciences
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Citations (Score:2)
B.
Re: Citations (Score:2)
Review is almost always done anonymously, and by reviewers who aren't assigned until the paper is received. How would you know who to suck up to?
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One thing I have heard from colleagues, is that they would like to have the names of the reviewers on the final published article as well, so that the reviewers might put an extra effort in reviewing. They (colleagues) complain about badly reviewed papers.
sorry, n
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Review is almost always done anonymously, and by reviewers who aren't assigned until the paper is received. How would you know who to suck up to?
Typically, there are only a dozen or so people who are qualified to review a given paper. Each conference or journal will be for a particular area within a broader field, and each paper will be within a narrow specialty within this area. There will usually be one reviewer doing a general 'is this interesting to the community at large?' review, and one doing a specific 'is this novel?' review. The latter will be one of the dozen who is qualified to know the answer. Of this dozen, you can usually narrow
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Creationism (Score:4, Insightful)
That'd be why!
The real fun (Re:Creationism) (Score:2)
Possibly all at the same time.
The USA has the perfect answer to this (Score:2)
Citations (Score:5, Interesting)
And yes, this is the quality that counts - the quality of storing and indexing research papers.
It's the patent system (Score:5, Insightful)
The horrid irony of it all is that the only valid basis for the patent system is to encourage people to publish in cases where they would otherwise keep precious designs secret.
There is absolutely no justification for patents in areas where people publish spontaneously. Except, of course, greed, and the lust for money above all.
Time for reform of the global patent system.
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The truth is ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ultimately, science, like art, often has to be useless to be good. In many cases however, useless science might eventually and surprisingly turn out to be quite useful indeed, practically. Take number theory: what beancounter of the world would have guessed that this esoteric branch of pure matematics would once become the fundamental force behind e-commerce, authentification and authorization systems and other applications of electronic cryptography?
More english publications (Score:2)
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Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics (Score:2, Insightful)
University course choice is not determined by (Score:4, Insightful)
In the past a degree in law was the opportunity to earn high salaries. Now of course there are far too many lawyers and not enough cases to supply them. Science and engineering degrees are not as popular, perhaps because some work involving measurement, assesment and being able to look up a book or a dictionary using all of the letters of the alphabet is a requisite.
Degree courses go through fads, witness the number of marketing graduates in the late 80's early 90's most of whom are not employed with a stone's throw of any marketing activity. Science is presently akin to magic and prospective students are surprised to discover that membership of Slytherin, is not part of the enrolment procedure. Nor are they given a magic wand or a tricorder along with the university calendar. The necessity to provide some evidence of achievement in the form of science papers and test results is a pale shadow to the ease of making an extended exposition on man's obsession with himself in lawyer school. Thank goodness there is no stand alone course concept in Web Design - lecturing staff would be crushed in the stampede as so many students (when asked to express a preference) often suggest that they intend a career in PR (the discipline of mixing a rather tasty Bucks Fizz.) or Web design. When you are paying for your education by working in The Golden Arches or as an exotic dancer, it becomes rather important to you, to choose a career path that you expect to be rewarding, at least in the financial sense if nothing else.
Immigration Issues (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't it a good thing? (Score:5, Funny)
It is best explained in Intelligent Design paradigm. We the clergy have been intelligently molding the public opinion against all knowledge in general and science in particular. Let us not forget that we were banished from the Garden of Eden because we tasted the Fruit of Knowledge. We have already convinced 55% of America that Evolution is a hoax. Pretty soon we will have the other 45% too. Then it is party party party time for us. We will tell everyone what they should do and how they should live and we get 10% of their paychecks. And much more than 10% from the sinners, by selling them indulgences!
The pagan, nature worshipping, Linux running, Open Standards promoting, Microsoft bashing, Apple fanboiing slashdotters might think it is a bad thing. But they are the minority. We are the majority. We will use their own Democracy to steal the nation from them! That will teach them.
Language bias. (Score:2)
What language base are they using to determine such a value? English no doubt. Are they counting papers in Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, French or Chinese? English is the third most spoken language on Earth after Spanish. America, where this research was performed, is the largest English speaking country. Go figure.
There are many more people in Europe than in America and each coun
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This is a network effect, not a sign of quality (Score:4, Interesting)
In a system where your prestige depends on being connected to well connected others, being among the first to be connected has its advantages. Others will want to be connected to you in order to show that they are also connected. It should be noted that after WWII, the US was really alone in the western research world. It's still accruing benefits from that.
I wouldn't be soothed by the citation statistic. At this juncture, it's an historical artifact.
And when the quality falls... (Score:3, Insightful)
"U. S. research articles consistently rated higher than European articles on the Flesch Reading Ease scale."
"U. S. research articles have been shown to be higher in 'eyeball stickiness.' Readers spend more time per page, go back and read each page more often, and 'click through' to generate more reprint requests than European articles."
"The NAS reported that although U. S. research failed to meet all eighteen of its benchmarks, it had made satisfactory progress toward achieving eight of them."
Less education emphasis on Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Until we get rid of this crap that "The business of America is business" this will not change and we will continue to lose ground on the science front.
Skewed Assumptions (Score:2)
The 'flattening' has been going on for 20 years now, and it's due primarily to enormous cost increases. Many US journals are pricing themselves out of existence because even major university libraries can't afford to keep all of them. Plus, access to electronic versions of articles makes subscribing to the entire journal a
Comparative Advantage (Score:2)
This is not about diminishing returns (Score:3, Insightful)
The European Union, which passed the U.S. several years ago in total numbers of articles published, posted an average annual growth rate of 2.8 percent during the same period, more than four times faster than the United States.
Law of diminishing returns my ass. And this plateu began to occur in the 90s? Would that be the late 90s? Would that be right before the Fundy/faux-Conservative/Anti-Intellectual revolution in politics occurred in the US? Massive sweeping tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% (most importantly corporations) does tend to dampen scientific development; so does cutting the programs that rely on those tax dollars for funding. Unbridled, shameless bedsharing between corporations and educational institutions resulting in patents instead of universally accessible scientific results also tends to suffocate collaboration (i.e. scientific progress).
If anything, the rapid proliferation of computer, network, and storage technologies should have made the 200X years a blockbuster decade for science and technology in the US. But sadly my friends, when you ignore politics...or live in a country ignorant enough to vote extremists into office...you will see very real effects down the road. The only bright side to having that clown in the whitehouse and his cronies in power is that a great deal of money (read massive debt that you and your children will have the responsibility of paying down over decades) went into defense related research and development. Historically, those technologies will eventually migrate back into civilian hands.
Re:Fuck the USA (Score:4, Interesting)
Acceptance only evaluates the scientific merits, citation requires the paper to have given the citing person insight.
I'd love to see this compared with british statistics, and possibly french (since the majority of non-english journals i know are french)
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I guess my point was that I think, whether or not the language is in your primary language, matters. Then i further speculated that it matters more for Citations than it does for acceptance.
But you're right, measuring the quality of an article by the amount of citations is often useless.
Measuring by what they cite can be even worse.
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The data comes from Thomson Scientific/ISI, and we do exactly that for every paper published in just about every journal in the last 100 years.
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The impression I have is that a lot of foreign countries grant tenure based purely on the number of publications, not the quality.
In the UK, the RAE system requires academics to submit one paper per year on average (actually four every four years) for evaluation. While most publish more than one paper a year, it is possible to get the top classification if you only publish one paper a year, as long as it's a sufficiently high-impact paper. The USA has much more of a focus on the number of publications than the we do.