Publish or perish explained
"Publish or perish" is an aphorism describing the pressure to publish academic work in order to succeed in an academic career.   Such institutional pressure is generally strongest at research universities. Some researchers have identified the publish or perish environment as a contributing factor to the replication crisis.
Successful publications bring attention to scholars and their sponsoring institutions, which can help continued funding and their careers. In popular academic perception, scholars who publish infrequently, or who focus on activities that do not result in publications, such as instructing undergraduates, may lose ground in competition for available tenure-track positions. The pressure to publish has been cited as a cause of poor work being submitted to academic journals. The value of published work is often determined by the prestige of the academic journal it is published in. Journals can be measured by their impact factor (IF), which is the average number of citations to articles published in a particular journal.
The earliest known use of the term in an academic context was in a 1928 journal article.  The phrase appeared in a non-academic context in the 1932 book, Archibald Cary Coolidge: Life and Letters, by Harold Jefferson Coolidge. In 1938, the phrase appeared in a college-related publication. According to Eugene Garfield, the expression first appeared in an academic context in Logan Wilson's book, "The Academic Man: A Study in the Sociology of a Profession", published in 1942.
Research-oriented universities may attempt to manage the unhealthy aspects of the publish or perish practices, but their administrators often argue that some pressure to produce cutting-edge research is necessary to motivate scholars early in their careers to focus on research advancement, and learn to balance its achievement with the other responsibilities of the professorial role. The call to abolish tenure is very much a minority opinion in such settings.
This phenomenon has been strongly criticized, the most notable grounds being that the emphasis on publishing may decrease the value of resulting scholarship, as scholars must spend more time scrambling to publish whatever they can get into print, rather than spending time developing significant research agendas. Similarly, humanities scholar Camille Paglia has described the publish or perish paradigm as "tyranny" and further writes that "The [academic] profession has become obsessed with quantity rather than quality. ... One brilliant article should outweigh one mediocre book."
The pressure to publish or perish also detracts from the time and effort professors can devote to teaching undergraduate courses and mentoring graduate students. The rewards for exceptional teaching rarely match the rewards for exceptional research, which encourages faculty to favor the latter whenever they conflict.
Also, publish-or-perish is linked to scientific misconduct or at least questionable ethics. It has also been argued that the quality of scientific work has suffered due to publication pressures. Physicist Peter Higgs, namesake of the Higgs boson, was quoted in 2013 as saying that academic expectations since the 1990s would likely have prevented him from both making his groundbreaking research contributions and attaining tenure. "It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964," he said. "Today I wouldn't get an academic job. It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough."
According to some researchers, the publish or perish culture might also perpetuate bias in academic institutions. Overall, women publish less frequently than men, and when they do publish their work receives fewer citations than their male counterparts, even when it is published in journals with significantly higher impact factors. Unfortunately, because of the “publish or perish” culture, we may have lost the sight of the essence of science – to advance our understanding of the phenomena governing the world so that we can make it a better place to live.
DIsadvantages on a list:
- Increase in ConflictOfInterest, due to Incentives, SelfInterestedPublishing
- Low AcademicRigor harms Objectivity Reliability Science Data
- KnowledgeAsAMarket, due to Capitalism, results in MarketFailure (part of IntellectualCapital)
- Reduces Trust, Confidence
The MIT Media Lab's director Nicholas Negroponte instituted the motto "demo or die", privileging demonstrations over publication. Director Joi Ito modified this to "deploy or die", emphasizing the adoption of the technology.
- Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom. New York: The Free Press, 1998.
- Thomas K. Grose, "21st Century Professor," ASEE Prism, January 2007
- Richard L.S. Evans, "Chrysoloras' Greek: The Pedagogy of Cultural Transformation."
- Herb, Ulrich. (2010) "Sociological implications of scientific publishing: Open access, science, society, democracy, and the digital divide" First Monday, Volume 15, Number 2 – 1 February 2010 Better link https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2599/2404
- Publish or Perish program (PoP) calculates various author-level metrics, including the h-index and the g-index using Google Scholar data
- Publish or Perish? A YouTube video (6 Nov 2014) slide presentation of the disadvantages of the Publish Or Perish system.
Notes and References
- 10.1038/467252a. Publish or perish. Nature. 467. 7313. 252. 2010. 20844492. 2010Natur.467..252. . free.
- Fanelli . D.. Scalas. Enrico. Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists' Bias? An Empirical Support from US States Data. 10.1371/journal.pone.0010271. PLOS ONE. 5. 4. e10271. 2010. 20422014. 2858206. 2010PLoSO...510271F . free.
- Neill . U. S.. Publish or perish, but at what cost?. 10.1172/JCI36371. Journal of Clinical Investigation. 118. 7. 2368. 2008. 18596904. 2439458.
- Book: Irons . Jessica G. . Buskist . William . Davis . Stephen F. . Giordano . Peter J. . Licht . Carolyn A. . Your Career in Psychology: Putting Your Graduate Degree to Work . 2009 . Wiley-Blackwell . Malden, MA . 9781405179423 . 117–132 . https://www.google.com/books/edition/Your_Career_in_Psychology/97JcaLZeYGcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA118&printsec=frontcover . 6 August 2020 . Chapter 9: Preparing for a Career at a Teaching Institution.
- Gad-El-Hak . M. . Publish or Perish—An Ailing Enterprise? . 10.1063/1.1712503 . Physics Today . 57 . 3 . 61–62 . 2004 . 2004PhT....57c..61G .
- 10.1371/journal.pone.0151414. Journal Impact Factor: Do the Numerator and Denominator Need Correction?. 2016. Liu. Xue-Li. Gai. Shuang-Shuang. Zhou. Jing. PLOS ONE. 11. 3. e0151414. 26977697. 4792445. 2016PLoSO..1151414L. free.
- Case. Clarence Marsh. 1928. Scholarship in Sociology. Sociology and Social Research. 12. 323–340. 0038-0393. sn83004127. 5088377. Google Books.
- Book: The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs. Doyle. Charles Clay. Mieder. Wolfgang. Shapiro. Fred R.. 22 May 2012. Yale University Press. 978-0300136029. 209. en.
- Book: Archibald Cary Coolidge: Life and Letters. Harold Jefferson. Coolidge. Robert Howard. Lord. 22 March 1932. Books for Libraries Press. Google Books. 9780836966411.
- Web site: Association of American Colleges Bulletin. 22 March 1938. The Association. Google Books.
- Eugene Garfield . What Is The Primordial Reference for the Phrase 'Publish Or Perish'? . The Scientist . 10 . 12 . June 1996 . 11.
- Vuong, Q.-H.. 2019. Breaking barriers in publishing demands a proactive attitude . Nature Human Behaviour. 3. 10. 1034. 10.1038/s41562-019-0667-6. 31602012. free.
- News: Decca. Aitkenhead. Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system. The Guardian.
- Paglia, Camille. Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf. First published in Arion Spring 1991, republished in Paglia's Sex, Art and American Culture: New Essays (Vintage, 1992)
- Web site: Bauerlein. Mark. Literary Research: Costs and Impact. Center for College Affordability and Productivity. 17 November 2011. 29 March 2015.
- 10.1007/s11948-015-9638-0. 25742806. M. van. Wesel . Evaluation by Citation: Trends in Publication Behavior, Evaluation Criteria, and the Strive for High Impact Publications. Science and Engineering Ethics. 1. 22. 199–225. 2016 . 4750571.
- Aitkenhead, Decca. Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system, The Guardian 6 December 2013; accessed 24 August 2016
- 10.1371/journal.pone.0145931. On the Compliance of Women Engineers with a Gendered Scientific System. 2015. Ghiasi. Gita. Larivière. Vincent. Sugimoto. Cassidy R.. PLOS ONE. 10. 12. e0145931. 26716831. 4696668. 2015PLoSO..1045931G. free.
- Web site: Publish or perish: how PhDs can achieve academic success?. 2021-06-21. en-GB.
- Computers and People 33–37:1:7, 1984 (?)
- Nancy Duvergne Smith, "Deploy or Die—Media Lab Director's New Motto", Slice of MIT, July 29, 2014