As we all know, in recent years, China has taken strong measures to introduce relevant scientific and technological talents from abroad. These talents mainly enter universities and National Institutes of scientific research. The state and the unit offer these "talents" extraordinary high treatment (including preferential living treatment and high scientific research start-up funds) during the employment period, hoping that they can contribute to the training of the urgently needed innovative talents and high-level scientific and technological achievements.
 
At present, the important index widely used by many units in the evaluation of various talents is academic papers. Sometimes, academic background will be considered, while the comprehensive examination of applicants' academic experience and academic experience reflects the potential elements of the applicants. The simple measures to take the evaluation of academic papers are mainly based on the number of papers, the influence factors of papers (reflected by the partition) and the number of citations of papers, especially the former two, which are called "evaluation of only papers quantity". This "only paper quantity evaluation" sometimes leads to a small number of talents relying on a "special paper", such as the top journals we often call papers, or "high citation papers" to become "talents". We often say that this phenomenon of talent selection is "a paper to fight the world". It turns out that some of these talents have disappeared in the academic circles for several years, and have not made much scientific achievements. Of course, if the gold content of such a paper is very high, for example, for basic academic papers, it lays the academic status of scholars in the international academic circles, and the application paper solves the important "neck technology" of an industry (it is said that such achievements should reflect the value through patent transfer), and even one such paper should be recognized.
 
I often take Professor wuxincai, an academician of Gaoshan and Professor wuxincai of the University of geology of China (Wuhan) as the model model of the study of Dingtian (basic) and land entry (application). There are few papers published by academicians of alpine mountains. His representative papers creatively expound the "composition of crust chemistry in eastern China", put forward the original views on the structure of the lower crust chemistry stratification in eastern China, thus laying his influence and academic status in the international geochemical field; Professor wuxincai's GIS Application Technology achievements laid his leadership in the domestic geographic information system The leading position of the region.
 
The current "only paper quantity evaluation" method widely used in talent evaluation has produced a large number of academic papers in China, and has made contributions to the achievement of the number of papers ranking the first in the world. According to media reports, China ranked the world's top in 2019 with 684048 papers, and the United States ranked second with 678197 papers. I have no intention to deny the role of the number of papers in the achievement of China's science and technology powers. Because, the number of academic papers is undoubtedly the crystallization of the efforts and hard work of the national science and technology practitioners. Academic paper records are also the embodiment of the scientific influence of scholars. Our academic circles are discussing the relationship between the quantity and quality of papers, and often say that without quantity, there is no quality. This means that if our academic achievements do not have a certain number of papers to support, high-level scientific and technological achievements may become a castle in the air. I often say that scientific research needs to be built up step by step, especially if you expect to produce some important original achievements of "the ancients before, the later without coming", "the world is shocked, and the spirits are crying". The accumulation of scientific research experience and achievements requires basic time. I have said in relevant articles that as long as it is not falsifying data, plagiarizing other people's achievements and other academic misconduct papers, I do not approve of the reference to junk papers. Some "case study papers" (especially in the field of Geoscience) provide scientific data which is of great significance to peer output of important original scientific and technological achievements.
 
However, we must be aware that if an academic institution only pays attention to "paper only quantity evaluation" as the scientific evaluation standard for a long time, it will bring great hidden dangers to the long-term sustainable development of these academic institutions: first, the "only paper quantity evaluation" does not conform to the essence and connotation of talent evaluation. It is a complex matter to evaluate the quality of a young talent comprehensively, and it cannot be completed only by simple "several papers", which is not conducive to the development of some potential talents with a low accumulation. Secondly, the "only paper quantity evaluation" is neither scientific nor reasonable. For example, the top journals and high citation papers are often closely related to the research field, for example, nature and science do not publish basic mathematical papers, and life science and material science are the hot areas of the two published papers. The high-level papers in geoscience are mostly concentrated in the traditional geology and the field of global change, and few geophysics.
 
In addition, some institutions only recognize the contribution of the first author when evaluating talents, which is not conducive to cooperative scientific research and team development. One of my doctoral students published 5 papers in the mainstream international journals related to his doctoral papers. Considering the follow-up development of students, the students are the first authors of these papers, and I only serve as the communication author of two of them. In fact, the students' thesis achievement thought all comes from the National Natural Science Fund project which I presided over, and he was not enrolled at the time of approval. On the contrary, if the first author of the tutor, the student undertakes a large number of specific data collection and analysis and results discussion of the results of the paper, and arranges to be the communication author of the thesis. According to the method of only recognizing the contribution of the first author, it is not a burning thing that neither of the students and I can participate in the sharing of major achievements in the two situations. This will inevitably lead to disharmony between teachers and students, even the opposite of teachers and students, this phenomenon is not uncommon in China. Therefore, the "only paper quantity evaluation" will intensify the utilitarian and impetuous trend of thought in domestic academic circles, and make the fragile academic ecology of our country worse, and should attract the attention of academic institutions. When the documents of "breaking five only" have been published by relevant departments of the state for many times, without the active response and implementation of the majority of grass-roots academic institutions, the "breaking five only" will eventually become a saying, "only paper quantity evaluation" initiative can not achieve our position as a powerful science and technology country.