When I use a word . . . “Publish or perish”: adverse effects

Abstract

I have previously defined the “publish or perish” doctrine as “An aphorism that describes the pressure on an academic to have innovative scholarly material published in reputable journals or other forms of scholarly output, sufficiently often, in order to avoid demotion, dismissal, failure to progress in one’s scholarly career, or diminishing the status or reputation of one’s scholarly community or discipline.” The doctrine has been responsible, at least in part, for many deleterious effects on academic practice: increased numbers of publications, accompanied by an increase in the numbers of co-authors on each paper; a reduction in the quality of the work being published; wasted resources and the reproducibility crisis; stifling of innovation; increased research misconduct of different types; the burgeoning of paper mills and predatory journals; increasing numbers of retractions of published work; increased burnout among senior academics and an increased reluctance on the part of trainees to enter research; and diversion of attention from teaching to research. I have previously defined the “publish or perish” doctrine as “An aphorism that describes the pressure on an academic to have innovative scholarly material published in reputable journals or other forms of scholarly output, sufficiently often, in order to avoid demotion, dismissal, failure to progress in one’s scholarly career, or diminishing the status or reputation of one’s scholarly community or discipline.”1 I call it a doctrine, which is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) as “That which is taught or laid down as true concerning a particular subject or department of knowledge.”2 The doctrine states that if you do not publish you will perish. Others have attached a range of other words …