Research excellence in 2026: beyond publish and pray
Talk (YouTube, 45 min, February 2026) and preprint (SSRN, 2026)
Publishing is no longer enough. Global scientific output has grown fourfold since 2004 and AI writing tools accelerate it further. In this context, research impact depends not only on quality but on whether the work can be found, trusted and adopted.
The RTVACOS framework
The companion preprint, Beyond publish and pray: engineering research excellence (C. Voyant, R. Amaro e Silva, N. Fichaux, L. Menard, S. Cros, R.-E. Mamouri), proposes a heuristic framework that treats research excellence as a multiplicative system:
- Foundations: Rigour, Transparency, Visibility, Adoption. A weakness in any one collapses overall impact, whatever the performance elsewhere.
- Amplifiers: Collaboration, Outreach, Societal relevance. They scale a solid foundation but cannot replace one.
It is a mirror for reflection, not a scoring instrument; the authors claim no empirical validation and discuss limits such as gamification risk and unequal skill distribution.
Key ideas
- Low-effort discoverability practices compound into substantial long-term impact.
- Collaboration amplifies only when it strengthens foundations, not merely visibility.
- AI governance infrastructure is moving from best practice to legal requirement.
Related work on research assessment
J. P. A. Ioannidis, J. Baas, R. Boverhof, C. Voyant, Science-wide mapping of institutions based on affiliated authors' impact and research integrity proxies, Royal Society Open Science, 2026 · doi:10.1098/rsos.260870 (open access)
How to cite
Voyant, C., Amaro e Silva, R., Fichaux, N., Menard, L., Cros, S., & Mamouri, R.-E. (2026). Beyond Publish and Pray: Engineering Research Excellence. SSRN preprint. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6877118
Voyant, C. (2026). Research Excellence in 2026: How to Make Your Science Visible and Impactful [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMp0uyl59d4