Academic Publication: Challenges and Concerns

Abstract

The phrase “Publish or perish” is now becoming a harsh reality in every stage of the career in the daily lives of people working in academia. universities, institutions, and academic journals are now equally involved in this prevalent culture of publish or perish.

If students, do not publish means they may have a hard time finding a job. If a new faculty, do not publish means not making progress on the track to tenure. If established researchers, don’t get published in a prestigious journal, it may result in a loss of research funding or their position with the university. If the university or institutions do not publish, they may Face budgetary pressures, fail to attract research funding, and one of the best ways to do that is to be published more and more in prestigious journals. In the case of journals, the increase in submissions from academic researchers under pressure to get published raises their operating costs to process them all if they change any article processing or publication fee. If there is no fee changed then it may be meeting the obligation to publish. Furthermore, the pressure to maintain prominence via Impact Scores and other measures of perceived rank generates increased pressure to publish ground-breaking research that will gather media attention and larger numbers of citations in the era when so many new journals are being published every year. In any case, it is a vicious cycle which has harsh consequences.