Michael Fire and Carlos Guestrin have self-archived "Over-Optimization of Academic Publishing Metrics: Observing Goodhart's Law in Action."
Here's an excerpt:
In this study, we analyzed over 120 million papers to examine how the academic publishing world has evolved over the last century. Our study shows that the validity of citation-based measures is being compromised and their usefulness is lessening. In particular, the number of publications has ceased to be a good metric as a result of longer author lists, shorter papers, and surging publication numbers. Citation-based metrics, such citation number and h-index, are likewise affected by the flood of papers, self-citations, and lengthy reference lists. Measures such as a journal's impact factor have also ceased to be good metrics due to the soaring numbers of papers that are published in top journals, particularly from the same pool of authors.
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