PUBLISH OR PERISH


I was once advised by someone way senior in my field to find ways to put out a minimum of 20 publications per year. 20! After wracking my brain and conferring with some of my peers, we arrived at the conclusion that the only way this would be possible for us (as students/early career researchers) is to involve ourselves in one or more of the following:

1.      Tag-along – Beg other authors to let you tag along as one among the many being listed as authors in their hard work. (I guess at the temple of academic institutions, we are all akin to beggars in some shape or form.)

2.      Gift authorships – Similar to tag-along, where you contribute next to nothing to a publication's intellectual and practical workload, gift authorship is where you are invited to become an author. (But who would gift us something so special? What would that gift be in exchange for?)

3.      Paid authorships – Pay to have your name included as an author in a paper you know next to nothing about. (Fortune favours the rich once again! Someone say “Cha-Ching!”)

4.      Pressured authorships – I know many seniors in the field who pressure their juniors into adding their names as authors in publications where they have no say or involvement whatsoever. What if a senior were to pressure their juniors or students to include our names as authors? (I wish I’d made powerful friends like that! Maybe it’s not too late to start networking?)

5.      Hired writers – While hiring a writer to polish and streamline our manuscripts may not be wrong, allowing one to actually write the entire research without your key involvement or scrutiny IS wrong. (Just think, using the mathematical skills of permutation and combination over the n number of variables and observations in our research, how many bogus research papers could be written just like that!)

6.      Slicing – Splitting a single note-worthy observation, which, if published as an individual paper, would have much more impact, into two or more smaller publications for the sake of increasing your number of publications. (I think this one is called SALAMI Publications. Sounds tasty!)

7.      Duplicate publishing – Mooching off of someone else’s research, done somewhere else, re-writing it to deliver a “Brand New” publication. (How efficient! No need to waste time doing all that research, eh?)

8.      AI-empowered! – Have AI write our publications for us. (Like the hi-tech variant of hired writers. ChatGPT to the rescue!)

I am sure there are plenty more ways, but it all boils down to one thing: How willing are you to compromise on your integrity as a researcher? Maybe one day, I’ll refine my research and writing skills to such a level that I might end up putting out 200 publications! Who knows?

For now, though, I’d rather stick to doing my best with the 2 manuscripts I can put out each year and convert that into GOOD QUALITY publications.

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