Recently, I saw a debate video between undergraduate students and teachers of Shanghai Jiaotong University. In the video, a sophomore from Shanghai Jiaotong University severely criticized the school teachers for only paying attention to the phenomenon of "project fund paper". The other party is a teacher who has studied and worked in Jiaotong University for more than 30 years. The teacher told the students: you have only been in school for two years. Don't say that the management of Shanghai Jiaotong University is "only paper". You don't understand the "representative evaluation" measure being implemented by Shanghai Jiaotong University. Indeed, as far as I know, the representative work initiative implemented by Shanghai Jiaotong University in the teacher title promotion and assessment mechanism has been implemented for many years. In addition, the university once targeted an excellent lecturer who retired and did not obtain the title of associate professor. The students defended him against injustice. The University made it clear that university teachers could not be promoted to senior professional titles if they did not do scientific research, published academic papers and scientific research achievements.

Some of the public seem to have misinterpreted the government's requirement of "breaking the five virtues" in the performance appraisal of talent evaluation, and think that it is not important for university teachers to publish academic papers. Obviously, this understanding is not accurate, and there is no correct understanding of the spiritual connotation of "breaking the five virtues" in the scientific evaluation advocated by the state. I understand that the core of "breaking the five virtues" belongs to the classified evaluation that should be implemented in talent promotion assessment. In particular, we should break the simple practice of "counting" in talent promotion and performance appraisal, that is, counting the number of papers, the influencing factors of journals and the number of citations of papers. The practice of "counting" is neither scientific nor reasonable. Especially for those applied disciplines, too much emphasis on the number of academic papers published will weaken the work energy of these scholars and reduce the effect of such scholars serving the national economy. For example, our outpatient and clinician's main responsibility is to serve patients and take good care of diseases as their primary responsibility, and then carefully study and summarize those meaningful typical cases and publish academic papers for peer learning and reference. Due to the excessive emphasis on clinicians' publishing papers, a few doctors recklessly falsify papers. Recently, many academic misconduct events released by the National Foundation Committee mostly occurred in the medical community, which seems to be related to this.

However, for most university teachers, especially those professional teachers who claim to build a world-class university, it is "the last word" to publish academic achievement papers. Because the University, as the main position of a country's scientific and technological contribution, has produced major scientific and technological achievements. Recently, I talked to a famous professor of Southern University of science and technology. He told me that since the establishment of the South University of science and technology, the international evaluation mechanism has been implemented. The number of papers should not be used as an evaluation criterion for the promotion of teachers and teachers' titles. Has the final say that the teachers are competent and qualified? They can make their own decisions or listen to their international counterparts. Therefore, it is imperative to promote representative achievements as a measure of promotion and performance evaluation of university professors. Ten years ago, in my blog why publish academic papers, I mentioned that the significance of publishing papers is mainly reflected in three aspects: the priority attribute of achievements, peer sharing achievements, and evaluating the influence of individuals and institutions. Obviously, publishing academic papers by university teachers is one of the main ways to establish your position in academic peers. You can't "say nothing for nothing", "say you can, you can, if you can't".

Talking about the representative results evaluation mechanism reminds me of a meaningful past more than 30 years ago. Mr. Ma Zaitian in the field of geophysical exploration in China first proposed "splitting the high-order operator of one-way wave equation finite difference into low-order operator", which solved the calculation problem of large angle wave field in the theory of wave equation migration imaging method proposed by Professor CLAERBOUT of Stanford University. After Mr. Ma's achievement was introduced to the United States by Chinese students, it was called Markov method, which was also considered by Western seismic exploration scholars as "saving the life of CLAERBOUT migration imaging method". However, Mr. Ma's achievement is only published in a domestic industry journal "petroleum geophysical exploration". In fact, this journal is a mainstream journal in the domestic petroleum geophysical exploration industry and is very popular with Chinese petroleum geophysical exploration scientists and technicians. However, according to the current popular journals in China, this journal can only belong to the "third rate journal". However, Mr. Ma was elected as a member of the academic department (academician) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991 mainly based on the achievements of this "third rate journal".

We should not blame the academic paper itself for being eager for quick success and instant benefit and impetuous academic status. The value of university teachers is reflected in their daily three basic functions of "teaching, scientific research and social service", among which the publication of academic papers is closely related to the three functions. The number of papers published in China has leapt to the first in the world. Therefore, we no longer need to take the number of papers as a proud capital. The number of papers is not the main symbol of a scientific and technological power. As far as I know, at least most key universities in China have begun to abandon excessive "counting evaluation" in the introduction of teachers and teacher performance evaluation, but gradually implement quality evaluation measures, such as representative work evaluation, so that the concerns of the public represented by the sophomore can be gradually eliminated.