Getting papers published is now more about embellishing your CV versus a sincere desire to present new research. I see this everywhere at every level. Getting a paper published anywhere is a checkbox in completing your resume. As an industry we need to stop taking this into consideration when reviewing candidates or deciding pay. In some sense it has become an anti-signal.

It'd be nice if there were a dedicated journal for papers published just because you have to publish for your CV or to get your degree. That way people can keep publishing for the sake of publishing, but you could see at a glance what the deal was.

I think its fairer to say that perverse incentives have added more noise to the publishing signal. Publishing 0 times is not better than 100 times, even if 90% of those are Nth author formality/politeness citations.

I'd like to see a financial approach to deciding pay by giving researchers a small and perhaps nonlinear or time bounded share of any profits that arise from their research.

Then peoples CV's could say "My inventions have led to $1M in licensing revenue" rather than "I presented a useless idea at a decent conference because I managed to make it sound exciting enough to get accepted".