Several reasons were put forward by the participants for agreeing with the statement: (1) ‘At my institution, there are defined thresholds of publications for academic promotions at least during early career’ (2) ‘Articles in peer-reviewed journals make the most important contribution to my career in terms of status, merit pay and marketability’ (3) ‘If I publish well, I have more chance to get a better position and to obtain grants’ and (4) ‘Because the primary role of my job is to produce research, which is of no use if it does not get into the public domain’. In a survey conducted by Plume (2013), 81 per cent of the respondents agreed with the following statement: ‘My career depends on a history of publishing research articles in peer reviewed journals’. Senior academics may also be under pressure, from their PhD students and junior colleagues, to help them publish as much as possible.Īcademia has become a POP world. For more senior academics, publications play an important role in promotion and in determining standing in the academic community. For those who have made it through the tenure track and probation, ‘perish’ could mean denial of further promotion, the loss of research funding and even termination.Įlliott (2013) uses the expression ‘currency for academic careers’ to describe publications, arguing that ‘they are probably the most important factor determining whether a young researcher gets a postdoctoral research position or lectureship…whether an assistant professor gets tenure and promotion and whether grants are won’ (p. For academics to progress through their career, the rules of POP must be obeyed. In North America, those employed on tenure track contracts are expected to publish a specific number of articles in top-ranked journals over a relatively short period of time. For new academics, the perish part takes the form of failure to obtain tenure or go through probation. Graduate students who do not produce publishable work find it hard to find jobs, which means that they perish by finding themselves with no place in the academic job market. However, POP may mean different things, depending on the stage of academic career. At best, the perish part is denial of promotion and the requirement of assuming a heavy teaching load while under the threat of termination. Indeed, the POP culture has been globalized as universities worldwide demand and measure performance in terms of publications.Īcademics who do not comply with the POP stipulation perish, in the sense of not finding jobs or losing existing jobs. As De Rond and Millier (2005, p.322) put it, ‘the publish or perish principle appears to have become the way of life in academia’. Recruitment, promotion and tenure are determined primarily by the publication record, as judged by quantity and quality (although it is not clear how quality is measured). The process involves a race against time that typically begins when an academic is hired and comes to an end when he or she is retired or dead. The phrase signifies a doctrine according to which the destiny of an academic depends exclusively on success in publishing scholarly work. However, some of the aspects of POP discussed in this book are relevant to non-academic personnel who also seek publications because they are expected to publish, such as those working in medical laboratories, central banks and international organizations (UNCTAD, WHO, IMF, BIS, etc.).ĭe Rond and Millier (2005) suggest that ‘here are few more familiar aphorisms in the academic community than “publish or perish”, which is venerated by many and dreaded by more’. The POP issue is primarily relevant to those working in academic institutions (called academics, academic researchers, or just researchers). In the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, ‘publish or perish’ is used to refer to an attitude or practice existing within academic institutions, whereby researchers are put under pressure to produce journal publications in order to retain their positions or to be deemed successful. ‘Publish or perish’ (POP) is a phrase that describes the pressure put on academics to publish in scholarly journals rapidly and continually as a condition for employment (finding a job), promotion, and even maintaining one’s job.
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