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[My office-mate, Robert Bamberger, and I wrote this abstract after attending a particularly LPI-ish conference. :-) ]

An Analytic Study of the Least Publishable Increment

Abstract

This paper presents an analytic study of the least publishable increment (LPI). The LPI is defined as the smallest acceptable difference between two publishable papers. Two metrics for the LPI are derived. The first metric is based on a generalized distance measure derived from the Hausdorff metric and is used to differentiate between papers on similar topics by different authors. The second metric describes a distance measure for papers from the same author.

Further studies using cross-journal and conference proceedings relations are also discussed. We outline a simple strategy for maximal publication based on these distance measures. An illustrative example of the maximal publication scheme is shown and its correlation to actual publications is also given.

We present a proof that maximal publication based on the LPI is an optimal approach for junior faculty members attempting to get tenure.

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