Publish or perish

This article is about the concept in academia. For the Columbo episode, see Columbo (season 3) § Episodes.

"Publish or perish" is an aphorism describing the pressure to publish academic work in order to succeed in an academic career.[1][2][3] Such institutional pressure is generally strongest at research universities.[4] Some researchers have identified the publish or perish environment as a contributing factor to the replication crisis.[5]

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.[6] 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 over the last two years.[7]

  1. ^ "Publish or perish". Nature. 467 (7313): 252. 2010. Bibcode:2010Natur.467..252.. doi:10.1038/467252a. PMID 20844492.
  2. ^ Fanelli, D. (2010). Scalas, Enrico (ed.). "Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists' Bias? An Empirical Support from US States Data". PLOS ONE. 5 (4): e10271. Bibcode:2010PLoSO...510271F. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010271. PMC 2858206. PMID 20422014.
  3. ^ Neill, U. S. (2008). "Publish or perish, but at what cost?". Journal of Clinical Investigation. 118 (7): 2368. doi:10.1172/JCI36371. PMC 2439458. PMID 18596904.
  4. ^ Irons, Jessica G.; Buskist, William (2009). "Chapter 9: Preparing for a Career at a Teaching Institution". In Davis, Stephen F.; Giordano, Peter J.; Licht, Carolyn A. (eds.). Your Career in Psychology: Putting Your Graduate Degree to Work. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 117–132. ISBN 9781405179423. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  5. ^ Al-leimon, Obada; Juweid, Malik Eid (27 September 2024). ""Publish or Perish" Paradigm and Medical Research: Replication Crisis in the Context of Artificial Intelligence Trend". Annals of Biomedical Engineering. doi:10.1007/s10439-024-03625-7. ISSN 0090-6964.
  6. ^ Gad-El-Hak, M. (2004). "Publish or Perish—An Ailing Enterprise?". Physics Today. 57 (3): 61–62. Bibcode:2004PhT....57c..61G. doi:10.1063/1.1712503.
  7. ^ Liu, Xue-Li; Gai, Shuang-Shuang; Zhou, Jing (2016). "Journal Impact Factor: Do the Numerator and Denominator Need Correction?". PLOS ONE. 11 (3): e0151414. Bibcode:2016PLoSO..1151414L. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0151414. PMC 4792445. PMID 26977697.