Publish or perish: rejection, scientometrics and academic success
- PDF / 500,918 Bytes
- 5 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 64 Downloads / 173 Views
Publish or perish: rejection, scientometrics and academic success Adrian Furnham1 Received: 22 July 2020 © Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2020
There have been, over the years, personal reports and studies done on the academic process of peer review (Furnham 2013; Jaremka et al. 2020). Here I offer personal reflections and advice on the psychology of “publish or perish”. It is based on a presentation to young researchers I was asked to give a decade ago, and every year subsequently, which is not dissimilar to the symposium presented to the SPSP (Jaremka et al. 2020). In this symposium and long paper the authors note how fellow academics experience professional challenges like repeated rejection, impostor syndrome, and burnout. They are that discussing these experiences is taboo and censored, creating a sense of loneliness and isolation for many, particularly young academics who assume they are the only ones affected by rejection. Their aim in the symposium and related paper was to “normalise” the experience. Anyone who has sat on an academic selection committee knows the things that really count on a CV. This seems to transcend disciplines and countries and tends to be more common at elite universities. The answer, of course, is primarily the quality and quantity of publications measured by scientometric data. This has become so common that it is not unusual for people to put the impact factor of the journal as well as the number of times the paper has been published. For instance: Smith, J. (2010). This and that. International Journal of Wisdom, 22, 1–10 (IP 2.720; Citations 27). This helps the non-specialist get some idea of the impact of the candidate’s publications. It is said that committees would rather “count than read” and that this process helps them do just that, and come to better conclusions. Some committees insist that they are given the google scholar metrics particular the H Statistic of each candidate. There is an extensive and passionate debate about the justice and wisdom about using these metrics, but they remain popular in the face of nothing as comparably simple and available, particularly non experts. Young hopefuls know this as do their supervisors and they get encouraged to publish their work. Hence publish or perish. Historians will tell you that the phrase was used almost 100 years ago. This issue is so important to an academic career that departments may run workshops on how to get published in top journals.
* Adrian Furnham [email protected] 1
Norwegian Business School (BI), Nydalveien, Olso, Norway
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Scientometrics
The statistics are deeply discouraging. It takes a long time to write a paper with the literature review, data collection and analysis and the write up. Even if done in large teams of experts it takes many months. Writing grant applications can be equally demanding. The rejection rate for top journals and grant money often exceeds 90%, and that number may be 60–80% for “mid-tier” journals. Thus, months of intense egoinvolving work can
Data Loading...
