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"If we wish to reduce the phenomenon of AI slop flag planting, the main thing we need is for the alternative strategy (publishing lots of low-effort papers) to further lose out for young people." sophie.huiberts.me/blog/2026/me... by @sophie.huiberts.me on the "top 3-paper-only" hiring policy.

Hiring and promotion panels asking for your 3-5 best papers has been standard in the UK for a while now. We also hold the national Research Evaluation Framework (REF) every 7-ish years where (roughly speaking) every academic submits their best 3-4 papers from those years and funding is awarded…

…to each department based on panel assessment of the quality of the submissions. Interestingly this was introduced by the famous number theorist, Swinnerton-Dyer. It’s not perfect, obviously, and it’s going to smash hard against AI when it’s next held in 2029, but it’s not bad. And because…

…it’s so important to funding universities, it firmly establishes the right priority of quality over quantity. www.timeshighereducation.com/features/evo...

Ha ha, well, great minds work in mysterious ways… It’s 2*, 3*, and 4* these days (there might be a 1* but lord knows what that means), and why the stars is a mystery. 2* roughly means “regional or national standard”, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pure maths paper ranked as. Our articles…

…are always 3* or 4*, approximately equating to “of international interest/quality”, with the desirable 4* being top-notch. A good rule of thumb is all one’s papers are 3* unless they’re truly exceptional, and expect maybe one if you’re lucky between each REF cycle.