Game theory demonstrates how performance metrics incentivize high efforts in academia, suggesting structural redesign is needed.
Using game theory, we demonstrate how performance metrics in academic science function as a non-monetary currency that solves the principal-agent problem in science and extracts high efforts from researchers. In light of increasingly scarce resources, these incentives require structural redesign of their mechanism to prevent strategic manipulation.
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Bornmann et al. (2026) studied this question.
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