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 Publish or Perish

MOOSA TEXT.indd 1 06/12/2017 08:53

 To Nisreen, Danny and Ryan

MOOSA TEXT.indd 2 06/12/2017 08:53

 Publish or Perish
Perceived Benefits versus Unintended
Consequences

Imad A. Moosa
Professor of Finance, Royal Melbourne Institute of
Technology (RMIT), Australia

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

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 © Imad A. Moosa 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior
permission of the publisher.

Published by
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited
The Lypiatts
15 Lansdown Road
Cheltenham
Glos GL50 2JA
UK

Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

William Pratt House
9 Dewey Court
Northampton
Massachusetts 01060
USA

A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017947237

This book is available electronically in the

Social and Political Science subject collection
DOI 10.4337/9781786434937

ISBN 978 1 78643 492 0 (cased)

ISBN 978 1 78643 493 7 (eBook)

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

02

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 Contents
List of figuresvi
Prefacevii
List of abbreviations and acronymsix

1 Publish or perish: Origin and perceived benefits 1

2 
Consequences of POP: Research quality and dissemination of
knowledge18
3 
Consequences of POP: The journal industry and authorship
pattern37
4 Consequences of POP: Research misconduct 56
5 The citation approach to journal ranking 76
6 Other approaches to a hazardous endeavour 101
7 The peer-review process 119
8 Journal ranking schemes 138
9 
The ranking craze: From journals to universities
and departments 157
10 The way forward 172

References183
Index211

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 Figures
2.1 Average growth rates of published research in science and
engineering (%) 18
3.1 The rise of the fractional author (six business journals) (%) 52
5.1 Correlation between SJR and h-index84
5.2 Correlation of h-index with variants of the impact factor 85
5.3 Ranking six economics journals by IF and h-index86
5.4 Correlation between the percentage of self-citations and
country ranking 89
6.1 Correlation of downloads, abstract views and citation indices 108

vi

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 Preface
Publish or perish (POP) has become a global phenomenon, as universi-
ties worldwide put pressure on academic staff to publish or perish, where
‘perish’ could be anything from denial of promotion to passing away. The
doctrine of publish or perish may be advocated on the grounds that a
good track record in publications brings attention to the authors and their
institutions, which can facilitate continued funding and the progress of
those authors. However, the perceived advantages of POP pale into insig-
nificance compared to the adverse consequences of guiding academia by
the rules of this doctrine.
Having lived through the culture of publish and perish for over 25
years, I thought that writing a book on the subject would be a stimulat-
ing exercise, and so it has been. The book covers not only the concept and
consequences of POP but also related topics. For example, an ingredient
of the publish-or-perish culture is the wasteful activity of journal ranking.
Another issue is that whether an academic publishes or not may lie entirely
out of his or her control and in the hands of people, called referees, whom
the author does not even know. Another issue that goes hand in hand with
the publish-or-perish culture is that universities are allocated public funds
as drips via some costly but ineffective and not impartial research evalu-
ation programmes. All of these topics are dealt with in detail in the ten
chapters of this book. It is also demonstrated that the publish-or-perish
doctrine is a product of the dominance of the neoliberal, free-market
approach to economic activity and that its emergence coincided with the
Reagan–Thatcher ‘counter-revolution’.
Writing this book would not have been possible without the help and
encouragement I received from family, friends and colleagues. My utmost
gratitude must go to my wife, children and grandson (Afaf, Nisreen,
Danny and Ryan) who are my source of joy. As usual, Afaf was instru-
mental in helping me finish the manuscript by providing technical support
in various shapes and forms, particularly data collection and graphics. I
would also like to thank my colleagues and friends, including John Vaz,
Kelly Burns, Vikash Ramiah, Mike Dempsey, Larry Li, Liam Lenten and
Brien McDonald.
In preparing the manuscript, I benefited from an exchange of ideas with

vii

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 viii Publish or perish

members of the Table 14 Discussion Group, and for this reason I would
like to thank Bob Parsons, Greg O’Brien, Greg Bailey, Bill Breen, Paul
Rule, Peter Murphy, Bob Brownlee and Tony Paligano. My thanks also
go to friends and former colleagues who live far away but provide help via
means of telecommunication, including Kevin Dowd (to whom I owe intel-
lectual debt), Razzaque Bhatti, Ron Ripple, Bob Sedgwick, Sean Holly,
Dan Hemmings and Ian Baxter. Last, but not least, I would like to thank
Alex Pettifer, Editorial Director of Edward Elgar Publishing, who encour-
aged me to write this book.
Naturally, I am the only one responsible for any errors and omissions
that may be found in this book. It is dedicated to my daughter, Nisreen, my
son, Danny, and my grandson, Ryan.

Imad A. Moosa
May, 2017

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 Abbreviations and acronyms
AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science
ABDC Australian Business Deans Council
ABS Chartered Association of Business Schools
AER American Economic Review
AERES Agence d’Evaluation de la Recherche et de
l’Enseignement Supérieur
AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
APA American Psychology Association
ARC Australian Research Council
ARCH autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity
AWCR age-weighted citation rate
BARDsNET Business Academic Research Directors’ Network
BIS Bank for International Settlements
BMOP bring money or perish
CEO Chief Executive Officer
CIP covered interest parity
CSSE Computer Science and Software Engineering Conference
CTV Canadian Television Network
CV curriculum vitae
CWPA Council of Writing Program Administrators
DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals
ECR early-career researcher
EJ Economic Journal
EL Economics Letters
EMH efficient market hypothesis
ERA Excellence in Research for Australia
ESF European Science Foundation
FNEGE Foundation National pour l’Enseignement de la Gestion
des Entreprises
FoR field of research
GTS Good Teaching Scale
HASS humanities, arts and social sciences
HEC Hautes Etudes Commerciales
HEFCE Higher Education Funding Council for England

ix

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 x Publish or perish

HP Hodrick-Prescott
IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
IF impact factor
IJED International Journal of Exotic Dancing
IMF International Monetary Fund
ISI Institute for Scientific Information
JACS Journal of the American Chemical Society
JCR Journal Citation Report
JEBO Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
JEP Journal of Economic Perspectives
JET Journal of Economic Theory
JFK John Fitzgerald Kennedy
JME Journal of Monetary Economics
JPE Journal of Political Economy
JPE Journal of Public Economics
LPU least publishable unit
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NMR nuclear magnetic resonance
OA open access
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development
OED Oxford English Dictionary
OSI Overall Satisfaction Index
PAFOP publish and flourish or perish
PAP publish and perish
PBNP publish but nevertheless perish
PBRA Performance-Based Research Assessment
PBRF Performance-Based Research Fund
PI-BETA papers ignored – by even the authors
PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
POP publish or perish
PPP purchasing power parity
PR public relations
PWOP publish while others perish
QUT Queensland University of Technology
RAE Research Assessment Exercise
RAF Research Assessment Framework
RAP Research Assessment Programme
REE Research Excellence Exercise
REF Research Excellence Framework
REP Research Excellence Programme
RePEc Research Papers in Economics

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 Abbreviations and acronyms ­xi

RES Review of Economic Studies

RPAE Research Performance Assessment Exercise
RPEF Research Performance Excellence Framework
RQE Research Quality Exercise
RQF Research Quality Framework
SCI Science Citation Index
SJR SCImago Journal Rank
SPU smallest publishable unit
SSCI Social Science Citation Index
TEC Tertiary Education Commission
TEO tertiary education organization
TR Thomson Reuters
UCU University and College Union
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
WHO World Health Organization

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MOOSA TEXT.indd 12 06/12/2017 08:53
 1. 
Publish or perish: Origin and
perceived benefits
1.1 THE NOTION OF PUBLISH OR PERISH

‘Publish or perish’ (POP) is a phrase that describes the pressure put on

academics to publish in scholarly journals rapidly and continually as a
condition for employment (finding a job), promotion, and even maintain-
ing one’s job. In the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, ‘publish or
perish’ is used to refer to an attitude or practice existing within academic
institutions, whereby researchers are put under pressure to produce journal
publications in order to retain their positions or to be deemed success-
ful. The POP issue is primarily relevant to those working in academic
institutions (called academics, academic researchers, or just researchers).
However, some of the aspects of POP discussed in this book are relevant
to non-academic personnel who also seek publications because they are
expected to publish, such as those working in medical laboratories, central
banks and international organizations (UNCTAD, WHO, IMF, BIS, etc.).
De Rond and Millier (2005) suggest that ‘[t]here are few more familiar
aphorisms in the academic community than “publish or perish”, which is
venerated by many and dreaded by more’. The phrase signifies a doctrine
according to which the destiny of an academic depends exclusively on
success in publishing scholarly work. The process involves a race against
time that typically begins when an academic is hired and comes to an end
when he or she is retired or dead. Recruitment, promotion and tenure are
determined primarily by the publication record, as judged by quantity and
quality (although it is not clear how quality is measured). As De Rond and
Millier (2005, p. 322) put it, ‘the publish or perish principle appears to have
become the way of life in academia’. Indeed, the POP culture has been
globalized as universities worldwide demand and measure performance in
terms of publications.
Academics who do not comply with the POP stipulation perish, in the
sense of not finding jobs or losing existing jobs. At best, the perish part
is denial of promotion and the requirement of assuming a heavy teach-
ing load while under the threat of termination. However, POP may mean
different things, depending on the stage of academic career. Graduate

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 2 Publish or perish

students who do not produce publishable work find it hard to find jobs,
which means that they perish by finding themselves with no place in the
academic job market. For new academics, the perish part takes the form
of failure to obtain tenure or go through probation. In North America,
those employed on tenure track contracts are expected to publish a specific
number of articles in top-ranked journals over a relatively short period
of time. For academics to progress through their career, the rules of POP
must be obeyed. For those who have made it through the tenure track and
probation, ‘perish’ could mean denial of further promotion, the loss of
research funding and even termination.
Elliott (2013) uses the expression ‘currency for academic careers’ to
describe publications, arguing that ‘they are probably the most impor-
tant factor determining whether a young researcher gets a postdoctoral
research position or lectureship. . .whether an assistant professor gets
tenure and promotion and whether grants are won’ (p. 625). For more
senior academics, publications play an important role in promotion and in
determining standing in the academic community. Senior academics may
also be under pressure, from their PhD students and junior colleagues, to
help them publish as much as possible.
Academia has become a POP world. In a survey conducted by Plume
(2013), 81 per cent of the respondents agreed with the following statement:
‘My career depends on a history of publishing research articles in peer
reviewed journals’. Several reasons were put forward by the participants
for agreeing with the statement: (1) ‘At my institution, there are defined
thresholds of publications for academic promotions at least during early
career’; (2) ‘Articles in peer-reviewed journals make the most important
contribution to my career in terms of status, merit pay and marketability’;
(3) ‘If I publish well, I have more chance to get a better position and to
obtain grants’; and (4) ‘Because the primary role of my job is to produce
research, which is of no use if it does not get into the public domain’.
POP may be advocated on the grounds that a good track record in pub-
lications brings attention to the authors and their institutions, which can
facilitate continued funding and the progress of the authors themselves.
Conversely, those who publish infrequently or focus on activities that do
not result in publications (such as the vital activity of teaching under-
graduate students) are likely to lose ground in competition for new jobs
and promotions – they may even lose their existing jobs. We will find out
that the perceived benefits of POP pale into insignificance compared to the
adverse consequences of guiding academia by the rules of this doctrine.
According to Plume and Van Weijen (2014), the POP phenomenon has
become a focus of academic research itself, as a search for the phrase in
Scopus retrieved 305 documents published on the topic since 1962. On

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 Publish or perish: Origin and perceived benefits ­3

average, more than 20 articles per year were published on the topic during
the period 2009–13. These studies deal mainly with the consequences of
POP, which will be described in detail in Chapters 2–4. One consequence
of the pressure put on academics to publish is that poor work is invariably
submitted to academic journals, some of which appears in print although
it lacks substance. While publication rates are at an all-time high as a result
of POP, this growth has not been caused by improvement in productiv-
ity but rather by changes in publication patterns. The growth of research
output has not been accompanied by improvement in quality as perceived
by academics, let alone quality as measured by impact on the society.
The phenomenon of POP has also been dealt with in several articles pub-
lished in prominent North American newspapers. According to Spooner
(2014) these articles correctly attribute changes in academia to ‘the
­publish-or-perish culture that overwhelmingly imbues our u ­ niversities’.
For example, Lawrence Martin argues in an article in the Globe and Mail
that ‘[a]cademia has been overtaken by specialists who are absorbed in
their own little world with its imperative to publish’ (Martin, 2013). In the
New York Times, Nicholas Kristof (2014) contends that ‘[i]f the sine qua
non for academic success is peer-reviewed publications, then academics
who “waste their time” writing for the masses will be penalized’. Writing in
the Ottawa Citizen, Tom Spears (2014) brings attention to ‘some of these,
nicknamed predatory journals, [which] offer fast, cut-rate service to young
researchers under pressure to publish’. The growth of predatory journals
will be dealt with in Chapter 3.
The POP culture has led to a relentless quest for publications – the
sole objective being CV building rather than the advancement of human
knowledge. Elmer (1982, p. 313) tells a story of how things were in 1958,
before POP took hold of academia, and the present time in which POP
dictates the destiny of academics. He writes:

In 1958, when James D. Watson worked his way up to the rank of associate
professor at Harvard, the young biochemist had on his curriculum vitae 18
papers. One of them, published 5 years earlier, described the structure of deoxy-
ribonucleic acid. Today, the bibliography of a candidate facing a similar climb
often lists 50 or even 100 papers. As the comparison suggests, paper inflation
has become a fact of academic life during the past two decades.

Colquhoun in The Guardian (2011) highlights the phenomenon of paper

inflation under POP, arguing that ‘[t]o have “written” 800 papers is
regarded as something to boast about rather than being rather shame-
ful’ and that ‘[u]niversity PR [public relations] departments encourage
exaggerated claims, and hard-pressed authors go along with them’. It is
not surprising therefore that Colquhoun (2011) describes the status quo

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 4 Publish or perish

in academia as ‘this sad situation’, blaming it on ‘the people who have

imposed a publish-or-perish culture, namely research funders and senior
people in universities’.

1.2 THE ORIGIN OF POP

There is no consensus view on who actually coined the term ‘publish or

perish’. Garfield (1996) suggests that it is difficult to trace the origin of
what he calls the ‘ubiquitous expression publish or perish’. By conducting
a literature search, he revealed that none of the authors writing about POP
had cited a source for this ‘common expression’. He also searched diction-
aries, both in print and online, but that search produced nothing.
According to Garfield (1996), the expression appeared for the first time
in an academic context in Wilson’s (1942) book, The Academic Man: A
Study in the Sociology of a Profession. In a chapter on prestige and the
research function, Wilson referred to the ‘prevailing pragmatism forced
upon the academic group’, describing it as being ‘that one must write
something and get it into print’, hence: ‘Situational imperatives dictate
a “publish or perish” credo within the ranks’ (p. 197). However, Garfield
(1996) argues that it is not clear whether Wilson cited someone who coined
the term or he coined it himself. Hence there is no agreement on whether or
not Logan Wilson, a former President of the University of Texas, was the
first person to use the phrase ‘publish or perish’ in print – that is, it is not
certain whether he created the phrase or got it from a source. Since Wilson
is dead, the true origins of POP retain a certain element of mystery.
There are, however, other views on the origin of POP. In a non-academic
context, the phrase appears in Coolidge and Lord (1932), where it is stated
that ‘the Council must publish or perish’ (p. 308). In 1938 the phrase
appeared in Volume 24 of the Association of American Colleges Bulletin,
where reference is made to ‘read or barbarise’ (p. 465) and also to ‘publish
or perish’. Sojka and Mayland (1993, p. 202) attribute the expression to
Kimball Atwood, a geneticist at Columbia University. They write:

‘Publish or Perish’ is a phrase that may have originated with Kimball C.

Atwood, then of Columbia University, sometime during or shortly before 1950.
It is the scientists’ equivalent of ‘The buck stops here; Cherche’ la femme [sic];
and Live long and prosper’ all rolled into one maxim. And yet the story of its
utterance is a lesson unto itself. For today its origin with Atwood can only be
documented anecdotally. Atwood never published the phrase, and as the story
goes, had only to wait a month before he heard it delivered in an address by a
visiting lecturer, who afterward told Atwood he heard the phrase from a partici-
pant in Atwood’s originating conversation.

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 Publish or perish: Origin and perceived benefits ­5

Yet another view is presented by Shapiro (1998) who asked John Simpson,
the editor-in-chief of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), about the earli-
est use of the phrase in the OED. The response that Shapiro got was that the
earliest citation could be traced to a letter written by Marshall McLuhan to
Ezra Pound on 22 June 1951, which said the following:
The beaneries [Pound’s term for universities] are on their knees to these gents
[foundation administrators]. They regard them as Santa Claus. They will do
‘research’ on anything that Santa Claus approves. They will think his thoughts
as long as he will pay the bill for getting them before the public signed by the
professorry-rat. ‘Publish or Perish’ is the beanery motto.

Irrespective of who coined the expression or who put it in writing first,

POP is the doctrine according to which contemporary academia is run.
This is a not a non-trivial matter because the doctrine has changed aca-
demia in a substantial manner. Most academics seem to believe that aca-
demia has changed for the worse as a result of the POP culture, although
a view that is expressed by people from within and outside the profession
suggests that it is an excuse for academics to complain. According to
Plume and Van Weijen (2014), ‘it seems clear that researchers suffer from
this phenomenon on an increasing scale’.

1.3 PERCEIVED BENEFITS

One perceived benefit of the POP model is that some pressure to produce
research is necessary to motivate academics early in their careers to focus
on research advancement and learn to balance research activity with other
responsibilities. Another perceived advantage is identified by Van Dalen
and Henkens (2012) who argue that ‘[t]he publish-or-perish model and
our reliance on publication metrics, is not altogether bad – as it helps to
identify and reward scientists based on merit and not on favoritism and
nepotism – only that it comes with consequences for the role of science
in society’. Other supportive statements come from Cohen (2010) who
argues that ‘publishing in elite journals is an unavoidable part of univer-
sity life’; Meltzoff (2005) who suggests that ‘publication means bringing
written materials to the public’; and Scanes (2007) who contends that
‘graduates and academic scholars have an obligation to publish a record
of ­publication’ and that ‘dissemination is the first step in the career
ladder’. Sojka and Mayland (1993, p. 202) go even further by arguing for
the importance of publications in academia. This is what they have to say:
Publication documents the precedence of ideas. It documents the stewardship
of research funds. It documents the productivity of scientists, justifies our

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 6 Publish or perish

salaries and our reputations, and allows the cultivation of our egos. But most
importantly, it liberates information and knowledge from the imprisonment of
chaos and file cabinets to the free access of other scientists and for the better-
ment of mankind. The publication ethic was being evoked as early as the mid-
18th century by Benjamin Franklin, who exhorted scientists simply ‘to study, to
finish, to publish’.

Why is it that publication is given more importance than other aca-

demic duties and do publications represent the only measure of output
or ­performance? After all, the ability to publish a paper in general or in a
particular journal may be beyond the control of the researcher. Whether
a paper gets accepted for publication is only partly determined by the
quality of the paper and the soundness of the research. Other factors that
determine the fate of a submitted paper, and hence a researcher’s career
opportunities, include journal policies, the referee’s mood, the papers
submitted by other researchers, and so on. I have always said that, if a
paper is well written and presented and it is free of fundamental errors, the
acceptance or rejection of the paper is a stochastic process. In a sense, then,
publication as a measure of performance may be indicative of ‘criterion
­contamination’. Sojka and Mayland (1993) get it wrong on three fronts:
(1) no mention of the role of academics as teachers and educators, which
should also justify salaries; (2) there is no such thing as a free access to
published work; and (3) most published research these days has nothing to
do with the ‘betterment of mankind’.
POP has caused inflation of publications over the past few decades.
Things have changed from publishing when there was something impor-
tant to publish to the status quo of publishing because we have to, irrespec-
tive of whether or not what we want to publish is worthy of publishing.
As a result, we can readily witness a destructive race to the bottom. In an
interview on Indecision Blog, Dick Thaler (a renowned economist) sug-
gested that the research that led to Kahneman’s (and Tversky’s) Nobel
Prize would not be adequate to obtain tenure in many places these days
although it is more deserving of tenure than a long list of publications each
of which contributes little or nothing (Halonen, 2013).
Even if the perceived benefits of POP are real, they are overwhelmed
by the realized and tangible adverse consequences of working under the
conditions dictated by POP. The benefits are illusory, as academics are
forced to publish anything rather than caring about the advancement of
human knowledge, which cannot materialize under pressure. The POP
culture does not teach academics how to balance research with other
­responsibilities – rather it encourages them to ignore other responsibili-
ties (including teaching) and concentrate on research that is more often
than not of interest to the author only. As a part of a survey conducted

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 Publish or perish: Origin and perceived benefits ­7

by Mason, Steagall and Fabritius (1992), a disenchanted economist com-

mented on what is published in economics journals by declaring that he
found ‘most of the contents to be of possible interest only to the authors’.
He adds the following:

I suspect that the average readers-per-article is less than one, even among aca-
demics. The growth of journal publication in all fields of science is ludicrously
disproportionate to the advances of knowledge. I attribute this to the replace-
ment of the search for truth by frenzied resume building. It has occurred to me
that vast savings of money, timber and library shelf-space would be accom-
plished by replacing journals with tables of contents. Anyone wanting to read a
piece could send for a copy. Better yet, more savings would be accomplished if
the articles were written only after such a request.

This disenchanted economist describes succinctly the kind of research

encouraged by the POP culture.
The perceived benefits of rewarding scientists on the basis of merit
require the definition of merit. Under the POP model, merit is measured
by the quantity and quality of publications, but how do we measure the
quality of publication? For example, is there more merit for one of ten
authors of a paper appearing in a top journal (say ranked 5) than for a
single author in a journal that is ranked 20? We will see that journal ranking
is a hazardous business and that not every paper published in a top journal
is a high-quality paper. When POP is the rule of the land, there is no merit
in non-research activities (such as teaching and community service), no
merit in non-article publications, and no merit in good research that does
not get published in a top journal very quickly.
Contrary to the argument of Van Dalen and Henkens (2012), the POP
culture discourages research that is beneficial to the society as a whole. Let
us for the sake of argument assume that the advancement of science and
human knowledge in general is broadly represented by the mission and
objectives of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS). The mission is to ‘advance science, engineering, and innovation
throughout the world for the benefit of all people’. The broad goals associ-
ated with the mission are: (1) enhancing communication among scientists,
engineers and the public; (2) promoting and defending the integrity of
science and its use; (3) providing a voice for science on societal issues; (4)
promoting the responsible use of science in public policy; (5) strengthen-
ing and diversifying the science and technology workforce; (6) fostering
education in science and technology for everyone; and (7) increasing public
engagement with science and technology. The culture of publish or perish
is certainly not conducive to the achievement of the AAAS objectives.
Under POP, the public, societal issues, public policy, the workforce and

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 8 Publish or perish

everyone else are irrelevant. Academics conduct research not to benefit the
society but to get their names in journals, preferably top journals – and no
one can blame them for that as they have to follow the rules of the game
or else perish. Under POP, the objectives change from advancing society to
advancing (or preserving) oneself by building an ‘impressive’ CV contain-
ing 250 publications.
Even POP enthusiasts, such as Van Dalen and Henkens (2012), admit
that POP has drawbacks. This is how they interpret their results:

The results presented in this article show that the publish-or-perish culture can
have both beneficial and detrimental effects. . . A consensus can be detected on
the benefits of publications, as they improve the upward mobility of scientists.
However, the detrimental effects revealed are the widening gap between science
and policy, and especially for those scholars working outside the United States
the incentive to publish in peer-reviewed journals is perceived to discourage the
production of local knowledge.

Hence, Van Dalen and Henkens (2012) identify two serious consequences
of POP: (1) publications become increasingly irrelevant to policy (and
divorced from reality); and (2) bias against research that produces national
benefits, which is particularly alarming for developing countries.
The rules of POP dictate that academics report some publications at the
end of the year to ‘meet expectations’ and satisfy the objectives stated in
the ‘work plan’. What academic departments strive for is to provide a list at
the end of the year containing a large number of publications, with some
appearing in top journals. However, publishing a paper in a top journal
does not guarantee any impact on the profession or, more importantly,
society at large. As far as society is concerned, publishing in a triple A
journal or a triple Z journal makes no difference whatsoever. But even for
the academic community, while it is often claimed that what matters is
the quality of research, quality under publish or perish is judged in terms
of the journals where publications appear, not in terms of impact. The
issue of journal quality and classification, as well as the hazard of journal
ranking, will be considered in Chapters 5 and 6.
The argument that research is conducive to good teaching is not neces-
sarily valid. Universities are supposed to be teaching institutions, the venues
for acquiring specialized knowledge as opposed to the general knowledge
acquired in primary and secondary school. Universities produce doctors,
engineers and economists by passing on knowledge through teaching.
Yes, it is true that the knowledge passed on by a professor to his or her
students may benefit from his or her research, but that ceases to be the
case under POP where research and publications become the end rather
than a means to an end. Under POP the last thing a professor wants is a

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 Publish or perish: Origin and perceived benefits ­9

student knocking on her door to ask a question. Research-active profes-

sors strive to avoid teaching, even by buying out teaching time financed by
grant money that is supposed to be used to finance research. Under POP,
research and teaching cease to be complementary and become two incom-
patible functions competing for limited resources.

1.4 THE RISE AND RISE OF POP

Once upon a time, when governments viewed higher education as an
investment rather than a cost, universities were well funded. At that time,
academics ran the show and a vice-chancellor was typically a brilliant
scholar who got paid a salary loading of no more than 10 per cent of the
professorial salary. The standard of graduates was extremely high and
the academic staff enjoyed job satisfaction. With the passage of time,
governments decided that it was wise to spend taxpayers’ money on wars
instead of higher education, so they started starving universities of funds,
encouraging them to operate like businesses – and so they have done. Vice-
chancellors became CEOs with seven-figure salaries and a big entourage
of suit-and-tie bureaucrats with fancy job titles such as assistant deputy
vice-chancellor for sustainability, deputy pro-vice-chancellor for design
and innovation, pro-vice-chancellor for engagement activities, associate
pro-vice-chancellor for academic partnerships, deputy vice-chancellor for
engagement and vocational education, pro-vice-chancellor for design and
social context, and assistant deputy pro-vice-chancellor for the campaign
against Donald Trump (I made up the last one, but it is no more ridicu-
lous than the real ones). On a more junior level of the bureaucracy, there
has been a significant increase in the number of employees called ‘senior
managers’ – as a matter of fact every administrative staff member has
become senior something. Schools and departments have school manag-
ers, who typically think they are more important than professors. These
bureaucrats are called ‘professional’ staff, which means that academics are
‘unprofessional’.
Ryan (2005) argues that the changes enforced by the Thatcher govern-
ment and reinforced by successive governments, both in Britain and in other
parts of the English-speaking world, led to a development whereby increas-
ingly scarce funds are absorbed by a ‘growing managerialist/­administrative
group’. As a result, he argues, ‘The growth of this group has been remark-
able and today it is not uncommon that academic staff form less than 50%
of the total employed by a university’ (p. 658). Universities started advertis-
ing for students to the extent that one university advertised that anyone who
got a new student to enrol would be rewarded with a fully paid holiday in

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 10 Publish or perish

Bali. Needless to say, standards deteriorated as courses were watered down

and academics were told to treat students like customers (and, as we know,
the customer is always right). This has been a characteristic of what Ryan
(2005) calls the ‘new consumerist mass system that prevails today’ (p. 657).
Al-Nakeeb (2016, p. 99) describes the situation in Britain as follows:

In Britain too, under the present conservative government, public universities,

which used to be free before the Thatcher-Reagan counter-revolution, are now
charging students nine thousand pounds a year. Education no longer caters for
merit but money. Learning is rationed so the have-nots remain ignorant, which
expedites the perpetuation of plutocracy and the deterioration of democracy. It
also means that a major part of the Anglo-Saxon world is steadily falling behind
countries with relatively generous education budgets like China, India, Japan,
and Russia. (Original emphasis)

Following the Reagan–Thatcher ‘reform’ of everything except the

war machine, governments started funding universities on a model that
depends on the number of students and research performance. To boost
the first metric (number of students), universities started to water down
entry requirements. The second metric, research performance, led to the
rise of the POP mentality. Universities then started seeking research grants
from both the government and the private sector, thus boosting the POP
culture, since grant applications do not succeed without impressive publi-
cation lists (unless of course the applicant knows members of the panel).
Big bureaucracies evolved to implement the new business model in which
academics are looked upon (by senior suit-and-tie bureaucrats) as being
‘hopeless’. Still, these hopeless people are expected to spend a big portion
of their time filling application forms to attract external research funds,
which is taxed by the centre to pay the bonuses of those who think that
academics are hopeless. This is a far cry from days gone by when it was
expected that someone with a PhD would obtain a permanent position in
which teaching was the primary responsibility.
According to the discussion so far, the rise of POP can be attributed to
changes in university funding by the government, which depends largely
on research output. Indicative of this tendency is the distinction between
the best and the rest – that is, between elite universities that have strong
research records and the rest of universities that are not blessed by strong
research records. The quality of teaching and student satisfaction has
no place in the equation. Within universities, bureaucratic apparatuses
evolved to manage research where bureaucrats are in charge. For example,
scarce time is typically wasted on research meetings that involve the discus-
sion of ‘vital issues’, as in this meeting called for via the following email
sent by a research administrator:

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 Publish or perish: Origin and perceived benefits ­11

Our Research Centres and Research Groups. . .connect researchers with a

shared purpose, support research leadership and provide recognition for areas
of research strength. The Research Office invites researchers and research
administrators to a workshop to discuss how Research Centres and Research
Groups can work better. . . These discussions will inform the Research Centres
and Research Groups policy rules and processes. We hope to agree on appropri-
ate establishment criteria, how best to manage and review Research Centres and
Research Groups, as well as other key issues.

Those with sharp eyes will readily observe that the word ‘research’ appears
12 times in this email. At a time when researchers are expected to produce
publications, more time is spent attending meetings about research than
the time allocated to doing the research itself. It is a tragic situation caused
by governments that have the wrong ordering of priorities as unnecessary
wars come first. What is more tragic is that these changes in university
funding are called ‘reform’ – so beware of reform.
While the majority of academics accept this explanation for the rise of
POP, others present alternative explanations. One explanation, which pro-
vides justification for the status quo, is that POP is good because it encour-
ages the conduct of research. De Rond and Millier (2005) explain how
the POP culture started in US business schools in terms of the belief that
research in business is important. In the mid-1950s, the Ford Foundation
(Gordon and Howell, 1959) and the Carnegie Corporation (Pierson, 1959)
commissioned independent inquiries into the status of business education
in the USA. The reports emanating from the two studies were published
in 1959, both criticizing the status quo with respect to research and teach-
ing, with the implicit assumption that good teaching goes hand in hand
with good research. In particular, the two studies found that research was
based on ‘feeble empirical evidence and insufficient analytical rigor and
depth of penetration’. The studies also noted the ‘conspicuous absence of
high-quality journals’. In reaction to these findings, business schools began
to stress the development of a stronger research culture. It was then that
research was transformed from a peripheral activity to ‘the decisive crite-
rion of the academic enterprise’, as it was given equal or greater emphasis
than teaching (Porter and McKibbin, 1988).
This change was felt in Europe. In the United Kingdom, the Franks
Commission (1966) released a report that recommended the creation of
two national business schools (in London and Manchester) to enhance the
quality and provision of management education. In France, the response
took the form of establishing a foundation to foster management educa-
tion. In the particular case of management research, the POP culture has
encouraged the proliferation of nonsense – that is, research (if it may be
called so) dealing with trivial issues such as the effect of the colour of the

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 12 Publish or perish

annual report on corporate performance and how to convince surfers to

eat more hot dogs. This kind of nonsense is hardly conducive to good
teaching. However, I must say that some research in management is highly
useful, but when everyone in management is forced to publish, we get non-
sense (which is true for every other discipline).
Another explanation for the rise of POP can be found on the
Neuroskeptic blog (2013) where it is argued that perishing is not necessar-
ily linked to publishing, but rather that the association between the two is
a coincidence. Perishing, according to this view, is related to the survival of
the fittest. In today’s academia, there are more people at the bottom (PhD
students) than there is room at the top (professorships). At every step up
on the career ladder, less posts are available, which means that not all of
those entering academia will make it to the top and that some of them
(perhaps the majority) will perish somehow. Perishing is therefore attrib-
uted to competition for jobs and advancement – it is ‘an inevitable conse-
quence of the demographics’. According to this view, perishing is linked
to publishing only by accident, just because it happened that academics
are assessed mostly by their publications, which means that publishing is
the means whereby perishing can be avoided. If this argument is valid, the
appropriate course of action is not to ‘reform’ the publication process or
to evaluate academics by alternative criteria.
The rise of the POP culture cannot be attributed solely to governments
that look at higher education as a cost not an investment or those believ-
ing that it is not their job to fund education. Tam (2007) quotes a former
president of York University, Canada, Harry Arthurs, as saying that he
blamed the culture shift on the private sector’s eagerness to commercial-
ize research and that universities and governments gave in to pressure to
show a return on public investment. Arthurs actually condemned aca-
demics for being ‘not only complicit, but sometimes proactive in these
developments’. Colpaert (2012) argues that it is ‘really a shame for insti-
tutions that call themselves universities’ to yield to this kind of pressure
and evaluate their academic staff as suggested by governments. Kostoulas
(2014) contends that ‘by rewarding articles that offer the appearance of
legitimacy, but do not necessarily contain significant discoveries, aca-
demic journals perpetuate a “public-or-perish” culture that incentivizes
researchers to compromise academic rigor and churn out articles at an
unrealistic pace’. And by measuring academic success through journal
publications, universities ultimately foster this same culture on their
campuses.

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 Publish or perish: Origin and perceived benefits ­13

1.5 POP AS A CONSEQUENCE OF GLOBALIZATION

AND NEOLIBERALISM

It has been suggested by some observers that globalization has led to the
‘McDonaldization’ of universities (Altbach, 2004). Lo (2011) argues that
global scholarship is predominately defined by the West (read the US ‘fan
club’). As Deem, Mok and Lucas (2008) point out, the quest for best prac-
tices and more advanced systems leads to ‘policy copying’ through which
non-Western (that is, non-Anglo-American) higher education systems have
been strongly influenced by the Anglo-American standards and ideolo-
gies. The globalization of higher education can be interpreted as a form of
neocolonialism that maintains the patterns of dependency and reinforces
the superiority of Anglo-American scholarship. Colpaert (2012) outlines
major changes that have transformed the academic landscape, including
the impact of neoliberal ideology on the evaluation of academic quality.
This ideology has led to a policy whereby universities are held account-
able for the scholarly output they produce, as measured by the numbers
of publications and citations. Altbach (2015, p. 2) describes the changing
environment in universities as follows:

Universities worldwide are becoming marketized, privatized, differentiated,

and otherwise changed to meet the demands of an academic environment that
stresses accountability and mass access. Higher education is increasingly seen
as a ‘private good’ – a commodity that should be subject to the logic of the
market. These changes have had a profoundly negative impact on the academic
­profession – the heart of any academic enterprise. Working conditions and
career paths for the academic profession are deteriorating.

The spread of POP is like the spread of McDonald’s (and the junk-food
industry in general), which came with globalization. Neoliberal thinking
dictates that whatever is done in America is right for the rest of the world.
Privatization is good under any conditions, so countries worldwide started
to privatize public assets. Subsidies are bad because they undermine eco-
nomic efficiency, so countries started removing subsidies, irrespective of
the pain inflicted on the poor by doing just that. Like privatization, POP
must be good because it is a principle based on the free-market doctrine
that leads to efficiency and hence welfare. So, countries started to adopt
POP as the model used to manage universities. This has happened even
in countries that do not think that education is a cost, such as China.
Even countries where funding for higher education has not been cut, the
­allocation of these funds is determined by the rules of POP.
Djuric (2015) discusses the academic setting in Serbia after 2007 when
state universities began requiring publication in journals having Thomson

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 14 Publish or perish

Reuters (TR) Journal Impact Factors for completion of a PhD or promo-

tion. In the rest of the world, the POP culture thrived even in publicly
funded universities because publications are required for accreditation
(by American bodies). In China the phenomenon has taken hold of
­universities – Tian, Su and Ru (2016) argue that China has followed the
Anglo-American model by recognizing research productivity as condu-
cive to economic competitiveness. The Chinese government has decided
to boost research expenditure, leading to competition for government
funding amongst Chinese universities. As a result, Chinese universities are
putting great pressure on their staff to publish in journals appearing in the
Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI).
Tian et al. conclude as follows (2016, p. 1):

A so-called ‘publish-or-perish’ academic culture, as a result of the Chinese

universities’ introduction of various evaluation and incentive policies, is now
emerging on campuses. The culture particularly affects junior faculty. The
number of papers these young scholars publish often determines their career
path.

One consequence of the spread of the POP culture to Chinese universi-

ties is that Chinese academics have become reluctant to spend time on
non-research academic activities, including teaching and training. Tian et
al. (2016) also report that considerable time is devoted to writing, which
results in fatigue and negatively affects family relations. Participants in the
survey conducted by Tian et al. admitted that they had to rush to publish,
and therefore were less likely to produce papers of better quality or those
with novel discoveries.
There is no doubt that academia has endured significant changes as a
result of the dominance of the neoliberal market ideology. At one time
academics enjoyed a high degree of autonomy as well as fairly secure
academic freedom. The few research ‘stars’ were rewarded mainly with
high status rather than large salaries, and most were teachers who did little
research. Altbach (2015) argues that these changes are not observed in the
USA only – rather, deteriorating conditions for academics is a worldwide
phenomenon, thanks mainly to globalization. This is what he says about
other countries (p. 3):

In other countries, the situation is similarly grim. The traditional employment

security of the academic profession is being weakened by moving academics
from the civil service. In Britain, tenure was abolished as part of a major univer-
sity reform aimed at making the entire academic system more competitive. In
Germany, most new academic appointments do not permit promotion, forcing
many academics to compete for new positions at other universities. In Central
Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union, the traditional academic

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 Publish or perish: Origin and perceived benefits ­15

profession has been greatly weakened by changes in working conditions, dete-

riorating salaries, and loss of status. It is common in developing countries for
academic salaries to be so poor that even full-time professors must hold more
than one job. In Latin America, traditional reliance on part-time teachers has
prevented the emergence of an effective professoriate.

A profession that thrived on autonomy and a certain detachment from

direct competition is now exposed to the tyranny of the market all over the
globe. It is indeed a tragic situation.

1.6 POP, PAP, PBNP, PWOP, BMOP AND PAFOP

POP implies that if an academic publishes well, he or she will have a happy
working life without the fear of perishing. However, this is not always the
case, as publishing may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for
not perishing. In this case POP becomes PAP (publish and perish) or, what
Molinié and Bodenhausen (2010) call ‘publish but nevertheless perish’
(PBNP).
In 2016 a member of the academic staff of a university published 19
papers, two book chapters and a book, while obtaining two research grants
and producing five successful PhD completions. Even by the rules of POP,
one would tend to think that this particular academic would be left in
peace and rewarded with less teaching in 2017. But that was not to be the
case, as he was hit with a teaching load involving seven different subjects
in the second semester of 2017 (this is a true story). It remains to be said
that in this particular institution, the expected performance of a professor
over three years is nine papers of acceptable quality, the supervision of
an average of seven research students, the production of four successful
completions (masters or PhDs) and obtaining external research grants of
$300 000–500 000. And yes, these expectations apply to someone who is
required to teach seven different subjects in one semester and to those who
are about to retire (no reprieve whatsoever).
I should not forget to say that high teaching scores must be achieved as
determined by the ‘customers’ through the quality of teaching survey. An
academic must not only publish but also strive to get a high GTS (Good
Teaching Scale) score and OSI (Overall Satisfaction Index). A good pub-
lisher may still perish if he or she does not do well in terms of student
evaluation scores or fails to obtain research grants.
Various situations arise leading to the emergence of new POP-related
concepts. For example, the classification of academic staff into the ‘best’
and the ‘rest’ gives rise to the concept of publish while others perish
(PWOP). Under POP, the best are the star publishers, even though the

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 16 Publish or perish

contribution of their research to human welfare is zero, whereas the rest

are those who do not fall under the first category. The best get research
money and little teaching whereas the rest are deprived from resources and
recognition while they have to do the unimportant job of teaching. So, the
best publish while the rest perish. And because academics are expected to
bring in external research funding, someone who fails to do so may perish.
This is a situation of BMOP (bring money or perish). In general, however,
attracting external research funding is dependent on publishing. Therefore,
the situation is PAFOP – that is, publish and flourish or perish.

1.7 THE ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES OF POP: A

PREVIEW

While it is easy to dismiss POP as an excuse for academics to complain

about working conditions, the imposition of pressure to publish or perish
(or publish and still perish) has adverse consequences for the individuals
concerned, academia and the progress of human knowledge. In the follow-
ing three chapters we consider these consequences in detail. In Chapter 2,
we examine the effect on the quality of research and dissemination of
knowledge. In Chapter 3, we deal with the growth of the journal industry
and the changing authorship pattern, with the rise of the fractional author
and the demise of the solo author. In Chapter 4, we will see how the POP
culture has led to various forms of research misconduct, including plagia-
rism, violation of generally accepted research practices, falsification and
fabrication of data, and others.
This chapter comes to an end with a sombre note on the adverse effects
on the health and well-being of academics who are put under pressure
to publish while under constant threat of perishing one way or another.
Kinman and Wray (2013) used health and safety executive measures,
assessed against a large sample of over 14 000 university employees, to
reveal growing stress levels among academics prompted by heavy work-
loads, a long-hours culture and conflicting management demands. They
found that academics experience higher stress than those in the wider
population. The environment created by POP is punitive, resulting in a
negative influence on life balance, health and well-being. Under a POP
environment, women are likely to suffer more than men, given the busy life
of women attempting to balance home and career.
Under publish or perish it is a never-ending struggle to come up with a
list of publications at the end of the year in order not to perish. One bril-
liant economist worked so hard for 40 years and achieved everything that
any academic economist wishes. Towards the end of his career, he wanted

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 Publish or perish: Origin and perceived benefits ­17

to wind down, so he moved to another university, thinking that he would

spend the three years before retirement playing golf and mentoring col-
leagues and graduate students. But that was not to be, as he was told that
he had to produce x numbers of papers in designated journals every year.
This story is not unique to this particular economist but rather a very
common story in academia. I am not sure if that particular economist is
still in the same place, but I very much doubt that. It is this kind of envi-
ronment that has led to the early and premature retirement of brilliant
academics who would otherwise have contributed significantly by mentor-
ing junior staff. This is also the same environment that has led to multiple
shootings at Concordia University in 1992 when a professor shot and
killed four professors (Arthurs, Blais and Thompson, 1994). Yes, POP may
drive academics to the brink of insanity.

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 2. 
Consequences of POP: Research
quality and dissemination of
knowledge
2.1 THE INFLATION OF SCHOLARLY
PUBLICATIONS

A consequence of the publish or perish (POP) culture has been the pro-
liferation of published research at a rate that is disproportional to the
advancement of human knowledge. Figure 2.1 shows the compound
annual growth rates of publications in engineering and science (scientific
and technical journal articles) as reported by the World Bank for countries
from Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa,
and Latin America. The publications cover the fields of physics, biology,

Egypt
Iran
China
Lebanon
Indonesia
Morocco
Brazil
Singapore
Mexico
Argentina
World
Venezuela
France
Germany
Japan
UK
US

0.0 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0 25.0 30.0

Figure 2.1 
Average growth rates of published research in science and
engineering (%)

18

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 Research quality and dissemination of knowledge ­19

chemistry, mathematics, clinical medicine, biomedical research, engineer-

ing and technology, and earth and space. In 1990 the global number of
publications in these fields was 472 086, rising to 2 166 236 in 2013 – that
is, a compound annual growth rate of 6.6 per cent per annum. The highest
growth rates over the same period were experienced by Iran and Egypt at
about 28 per cent per annum.
Under POP, publishing is motivated by the requirement to be compli-
ant with the rules of the game, which leads to explosive growth in the
volume of published research. We would expect that research in physics
revolves around theoretical issues that can be transformed into techno-
logical innovations, but this is no longer the case. Einstein’s 300 published
papers were not motivated by POP, but rather by the urge to explore the
universe, with profound implications for technology. Today, Lowe (2010)
describes research in physics as being POP driven – this is what he says in
his blog:

Academic publication has passed that point in most, if not all, disciplines – in
some fields by a long shot. For example, Physica A publishes some 3,000 pages
each year. Why? Senior physics professors have well-financed labs with five
to 10 Ph.D.-student researchers. Since the latter increasingly need more pub-
lications to compete for academic jobs, the number of published pages keeps
climbing.

According to Molinié and Bodenhausen (2010), the explosion of pub-

lished research has been aided by combining copy-and-paste methods
with the power of search engines, making it easy to write a paper. When
published research is massive, it is difficult to separate the wheat from
the chaff. In a survey conducted by Plume (2013), a respondent said the
­following (p. 10):

It is certainly impossible for any person who wishes to devote a portion of

his time to chemical experiment, to read all the books and papers that are
­published. . .; their number is immense, and the labour of winnowing out the
few [of interest]. . .is such, that most persons who try. . .inadvertently, at times,
pass by what is really good.

Most of the published work goes unnoticed even by academics working

in the same field. Some 98 per cent of articles in the arts and humanities
and 75 per cent in the social sciences are never cited. Things are slightly
better in the hard sciences, as 25 per cent of the published articles are never
cited and the average number of cites even of those is one or two (Hiltzik,
2015). For Lowe (2010), this means that ‘instead of contributing to knowl-
edge in various disciplines, the increasing number of low-cited publications

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 20 Publish or perish

only adds to the bulk of words and numbers to be reviewed’ and that ‘even
if read, many articles that are not cited by anyone would seem to contain
little useful information’.
This is why some suggestions have been put forward to slow down the
growth of publications, which cannot happen in a POP environment.
Geman (2007) suggests the imposition of a limit of 20 lifetime papers. He
believes that the sheer volume of publications introduces noise, arguing
that ‘given all the noise due to the sheer volume of papers, the signal,
namely the important, lasting stuff, is awfully difficult to detect’. Lowe
(2010) suggests some solutions, including: (1) limiting job applications and
tenure reviews to the top five or six papers that a person has to offer; (2)
prorating publication records by the quality of the journals that the papers
appeared in; and (3) adopting length restrictions in printed journals, with
the rest of the information to be held digitally. One respondent to the
Plume (2013) survey suggested the imposition of a limit on the number
of journals. Molinié and Bodenhausen (2010) argue that using the h-index
(see Chapter 5) for research evaluation could slow down the growth of
published papers because it is about publishing a small number of good
papers, rather than endless series of minor works. Last, but not least, a
suggestion has been put forward (albeit as a joke) for authors to write
abstracts or proposals only – subsequently, full papers are written only if
potential readers show interest in sufficient numbers (Mason, Steagall and
Fabritius, 1992).

2.2 THE DETERIORATING QUALITY OF

PUBLISHED RESEARCH

While published research has exploded in terms of volume, quality has

been deteriorating, irrespective of how quality is measured (citations, rec-
ognition, societal impact or otherwise). We have already seen that most of
the published research goes unnoticed, implying low quality. The marginal
contribution to human knowledge of most published work these days is
almost zero – actually, it could be negative for irritated readers who venture
into reading some of the published nonsense. While I am only familiar
with published research in business disciplines (economics, finance, etc.),
the fact remains that most published work does not contribute to human
knowledge across disciplines. In an interview with Elon Musk (the CEO of
Tesla), published by quora.com, he argued that ‘most academic papers are
useless’, making it difficult for researchers to separate the good from the
bad and ugly. In response to Musk, one commentator made the following
remarks:

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 Research quality and dissemination of knowledge ­21

Based on my experience reading computer science papers, many of them

are indeed pretty much useless (i.e. papers that bring no real contribution to
research. . . And I have been told it might be even worse in some other fields.
But it really depends on where the paper has been published. Some places accept
anything, like computer-generated papers, while others are truly selective. There
are far too many articles due to overreliance on bibiliometrics. . . In my opinion,
the best way to avoid useless academic papers would be through open science,
which among many other things would allow any reader to provide feedback on
papers, which should make it easier to ignore useless papers and focus on useful
ideas. (Quora, 2015)

Zeff (1996) attributes deteriorating quality to pressure on editorial

boards and referees. He argues that ‘while the appearance of journals carry-
ing a richer variety of research is to be welcomed, one can hardly be insensi-
tive to the issue of the adequacy of editorial resources to meet this demand’,
which has implications for quality. He conducted a survey of the editorial
boards of 22 high-profile accounting journals and found the following: one
academic serves on the editorial boards of eight journals, one on seven, two
on six, six on five, 13 on four and 21 on three. This distribution does not
account for accounting academics on the editorial boards of journals in
finance, economics, psychology and management science. This observation
is not limited to accounting journals – rather, it is the case across disciplines.
Good editors and referees are hard to find, particularly when there is such
high demand for journal space. A shortage of competent referees leads to
the problem of referee incompetence, which will be discussed in Chapter 7.

2.3 IMPEDING INNOVATIVE RESEARCH AND THE

DISCOVERY PROCESS

Under POP, academics scramble to publish whatever they can get in print
rather than working on the development of serious ideas that may take
years to produce a publication. Even if an academic came up with a bril-
liant idea with practical applications that have the potential of making our
lives more pleasant, this academic must keep on churning out papers, or
he or she will perish. Under these conditions, the development of a novel
idea is the opportunity cost of publishing anything, which matters because
academics are rewarded for publishing anything on a regular basis, not for
the development of novel ideas that produce a publication with a delayed
effect. Spending ten years researching a drug that cures AIDS is not worth-
while, particularly if the project ends up with the drug but not a paper,
because the paper matters more. It is even worse if this academic ends up
not getting the drug and going ten years without publishing anything – this

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 22 Publish or perish

person will perish. It is in this sense that POP impedes innovative research
and the discovery process.
Take, for example, the case of Peter Higgs, the British physicist and emer-
itus professor at Edinburgh University who gave his name to the ‘Higgs
boson’. In an interview with Aitkenhead in The Guardian (2013), Higgs
declared that no university would employ him in today’s academic environ-
ment because he would not be considered ‘productive enough’. Higgs (who
has never sent an email, browsed the Internet or made a mobile phone call)
published fewer than ten papers after his groundbreaking work (published
in 1964) in which he identified the mechanism whereby subatomic material
acquires mass. Higgs does not believe that a similar breakthrough could
be achieved in today’s academic culture, because of the expectations on
academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. Today, the likes of
Higgs are considered to be ‘isolated’ researchers who work alone and are
likely to perish because they are not members of research groups. In this
context, the word ‘isolated’ is used in a derogatory manner.
In the interview, Higgs said ‘It’s difficult to imagine how I would ever
have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I
did in 1964’. It remains to be said that Higgs made this interview with The
Guardian while he was travelling to Stockholm to receive the 2013 Nobel
Prize for physics. Higgs, 84, said that he would almost certainly have been
sacked had he not been nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1980. The man-
agement of Edinburgh University apparently took the view that he ‘might
get a Nobel Prize – and if he doesn’t we can always get rid of him’. This is
certainly not the kind of attitude that leads to the advancement of science.
But then we cannot blame university management for this kind of attitude.
If university funding is determined by the rules of POP, then university
management has no alternative but to oblige.
Irrespective of what someone has done at some point in his or her aca-
demic career (including winning a Nobel Prize), academics are asked at
the end of the year what they published during the previous 12 months.
Everyone must provide a list of publications, which eventually goes into
submission for some government research evaluation exercise (see Chapter
9). Higgs said that whenever it was time to put in something in the list of
publications, he was ‘an embarrassment to the department’ because he
would say ‘none’ – that is, he did not publish anything the previous 12
months. Which university wants to employ someone like him, ‘Mr None’?
Higgs is not alone in thinking his way. Curry (2014) reflects the views of
‘so many Nobel Prize recipients’ who believe that ‘they would never have
survived this current academic environment’. She then wonders about the
‘implications of this on the discovery of future scientific paradigm shifts
and scientific inquiry in general’.

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 Research quality and dissemination of knowledge ­23

Molinié and Bodenhausen (2010) tell another story about Albert

Overhauser, the originator of the nuclear Overhauser effect, whose name
is well known to a broad community of scientists, ranging from solid-state
physicists to organic chemists. Overhauser’s seminal paper, which appeared
in the Physical Review in 1953, is modestly entitled ‘Polarization of Nuclei
in Metals’ (Overhauser, 1953). Molinié and Bodenhausen (2010, p. 79)
argue that had the paper been submitted 50 years later, ‘it would probably
have been turned down by the referees unless it had been “hyped up” to
something like “Thousand-fold Enhancement of NMR Signal Intensity”
or “A Paradoxical Violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics:
Nuclear Cooling Through Heating of the Electron Spin Reservoir”’. This
paper gathered a mere 530 citations in 56 years – by modern standards,
this is nothing.
De Rond and Millier (2005) argue that emphasis on ‘productivity’ at
the expense of innovation generates output that may be seen as relatively
incremental, lacking in significance and substance, and too often restating
the obvious. They contend that junior academics, in particular, are often
forced to play a numbers game to earn tenure, where the criteria for tenure
are likely to be some function of the number of articles published and
the relative prestige of their outlets. As a result, those academics typically
shy away from research that is less likely to see the light of day quickly.
Pressure to publish on a year-to-year basis discourages any bold or origi-
nal work on the part of junior academics. The POP culture assigns more
importance to getting the research published than doing the research prop-
erly. According to Smith (1990, p. 191), ‘When so much rests on not simply
doing the research but, more important, getting it published, the risks of
doing something unorthodox, something that might offend strongly held
prejudices in a particular field, are great’.
In my field, economics, most of the published research is of interest to
the author only. Instead of developing novel and practical ideas that help
deal with recurring economic problems and financial instability that have
disastrous consequences for our livelihood and well-being, emphasis has
been on developing abstract models and hypothesis-testing techniques that
have contributed nothing whatsoever to our understanding of the working
of the economy and financial markets. In 1982 Robert Engle proposed the
autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) model to represent
volatility clustering, which opened the floodgates for a non-stop flow of
ARCH-like models (Engle, 1982). This article created an industry aimed at
coming up with sequels of ARCH for a quick publication in the prestigious
journals such as Econometrica and Journal of Econometrics. Bollerslev
(2008) argues that what he calls ‘Rob Engle’s seminal Nobel Prize
winning 1982 Econometrica article’ spurred a virtual ‘arms race’ into the

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 24 Publish or perish

development of ‘new and better procedures for modelling and forecasting

time-varying financial market volatility’. As a result, there have been more
sequels to ARCH than to Jaws, Rocky, Rambo and Die Hard put together.
As for ‘better’ models, it is not obvious to me in what way the extensions
and alternative models are better – it has been an extravaganza that served
no purpose whatsoever, apart from providing the means whereby students
get their PhDs and academics get their promotions. What Bollerslev (2008)
calls an ‘arms race’ has been a total waste of brain power as we moved from
ARCH to other versions of volatility models obtained by simple tweaks.
The contribution of these studies and ‘seminal’ papers to human welfare
is zero.
One of the disturbing facets of the phenomenon of chasing publica-
tions for their own sake is that an increasing number of physicists have
left physics and moved to economics and finance because physicists have
a comparative advantage over conventional, down-to-earth economists
when it comes to publishing technical papers. Over the past 40 years or
so, economics has become increasingly mathematized, to the extent that
it is rather difficult to publish in top economics and finance journals
without knowledge of partial differential equations, stochastic calculus
and measure theory. Unlike conventional economists, physicists know
these techniques rather well as they use them to investigate matters in ther-
modynamics and fluid mechanics. What is disturbing about this trend is
that physicists are supposed to work on projects that lead, amongst other
things, to improvement in the efficiency of the internal combustion engine.
The influx of physicists to economics and finance has not produced any
piece of work of value, in the sense of contributing to our understanding
of the working of the economy and financial markets. On the contrary, it
has caused the premature departure of brilliant economists who could not
cope with the excessive and unnecessary mathematization of economics.
Foster, Rzhetsky and Evans (2015) suggest that researchers have long
faced a natural tension and trade-off when deciding whether to build on
accumulated knowledge in a field or pursue a bold new idea that challenges
established thinking. It is a conflict between ‘productive tradition’ and
‘risky innovation’. In their study of contemporary research in biomedicine
and chemistry, they found that a remarkably consistent pattern character-
izes this research in that more than 60 per cent of the published papers
have no new connections, meaning that ‘they primarily built on tradition
and eschewed innovation’. They note that researchers who confine their
work to answering established questions are more likely to have the results
published and thus avoid perishing. Conversely, researchers who ask more
original questions with the objective of advancing knowledge are more
likely to stumble on the way to publication and eventually perish. They

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 Research quality and dissemination of knowledge ­25

also suggest that ‘universities could encourage more risk-taking in research

by decoupling job security from productivity’ and note that a similar
approach was successful at Bell Labs in the mid-twentieth century where
scientists could work on a project for years before it was evaluated. Based
on the results of their investigation, they recommend a model in which
research funding goes to individual scientists, rather than specific research
projects. This is exactly the opposite of what we observe under POP where
‘isolated’ researchers are expected to perish, since it is a widespread belief
that only collaboration produces published research. They also propose a
reduction of barriers to innovative research by ‘using funding schemes that
make it less risky for researchers to pitch a novel idea’.
It seems that POP enthusiasts have forgotten that most of the brilliant
discoveries came out of the work of ‘isolated’ researchers who were not
evaluated by the POP rules. Colpaert (2012) asks a simple question: how
many points would Louis Pasteur, Henri Poincaré, Claude Shannon, Tim
Berners-Lee and others nowadays earn within the new academic evalu-
ation system? In the first half of the twentieth century, mathematicians
published less than ten papers in a lifetime. One example is Eduard Helly,
whose name is known to every student of mathematics because he was the
originator of Helly’s theorem, which is a basic result in discrete geometry
on the intersection of convex sets. While Helly made his discovery in 1913,
his results were not published until 1923. What about the Russian math-
ematician Grigori Perelman who, at the age of 44, solved the Poincaré
Conjecture, which no one could solve in more than 100 years? Perelman
solved the problem without the desire to publish a paper – rather, he
was motivated by the urge to solve the problem. Pressures to maximize
­‘productivity’ measured by publications harm the quality of research.

2.4 SLOWING DOWN THE DISSEMINATION OF

KNOWLEDGE

It takes a long time to get a paper published in a journal, particularly in a

good journal. When a paper is submitted to a journal, it is first screened
by the editor or a co-editor. If the submitted paper passes this hurdle, it
will be sent to two to three ‘experts’ in the field for peer review. The review-
ers evaluate the paper and send the editor comments, which are passed
on to the author, as well as a recommendation: accept, reject or revise
and resubmit where the revision can be major or minor. Even following a
revise and resubmit, the author may be asked to go through another round
of revision or the paper can still be rejected. In the case of rejection, the
author goes through the same process all over again with a new journal.

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 26 Publish or perish

The process could take years and some good papers are never published.
After five rejections, for reasons that do not make sense implied by a set
of stupid comments, the author may decide to forget about the paper and
move on. Any value in that paper may be lost forever. This process impedes
the presentation of important research findings to the scientific commu-
nity and general public.
The problem lies in the inordinate emphasis placed on publication in
a few journals that typically have rejection rates of over 90 per cent. In
Chapter 7 we examine the peer-review process and find out why significant
findings may never see the light or that they see the light with significant
delay. The single-minded focus on selective journals slows down the rate
of knowledge dissemination and hampers subsequent research that may
build off otherwise unpublished findings. The key problem is obsession
with publication in some journals for the sake of publishing in those jour-
nals, which may be done at the expense of sitting on valuable findings for
unnecessarily extended periods of time.

2.5 THE PRACTICAL IRRELEVANCE OF

PUBLISHED RESEARCH

Most published research has nothing to do with reality – this is at least

the case with my disciplines, economics and finance. De Rond and Millier
(2005, p. 325) argue that ‘the effect of publish or perish on the intellectual
life and morale of faculty are inextricably wound up with those of influ-
ence and relevance’. Practical applications do not matter, as academics
write for themselves, not for the general public or policy makers. This is
what Hambrick (1994) calls the ‘incestuous, closed loop’ of writing almost
exclusively for each other, or what Coser (1975, p. 691) referred to as ‘sect-
like, esoteric ruminations’. Hambrick actually said the following (p. 13):

Each August, we come to talk to each other [at the Academy of Management’s
annual meetings]; during the rest of the year we read each other’s papers in our
journals and write our own papers so that we may, in turn, have an audience the
following August: an incestuous, closed loop.

Likewise, Pettigrew (2011) notes that ‘some publishing may have become
an end in itself’ and that ‘including the impact of research in the social,
economic, and cultural spheres beyond academia is an important correc-
tive to this displacement of goals’. Science, however, should not be an end
in itself, but rather a means to an end, which is the improvement of human
welfare. Under POP, this ultimate goal of science is eroded as it turns
inwards to become an end in itself.

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 Research quality and dissemination of knowledge ­27

Take, for example, the case of research in management. Ford et al.

(2003) suggest that although the acquisition of business books costs $1
billion each year, remarkably few of these books are written by academics.
Sykes (1988, p. 6) argues that ‘[i]n tens of thousands of journal articles,
the system of academic publishing has been perverted into a scheme that
serves only to advance academic careers and bloat libraries with masses of
unread, unreadable, and worthless articles’. Porter and McKibbin (1988)
contend that ‘the very structure of our system is to blame for this: publi-
cations intended for, and peer reviewed by, fellow academics count, while
those intended primarily for practitioners do not’.
Actually, sometimes the irrelevance of published research is extended
to academics working in the same field – this is particularly true for my
field, economics, which has become so mathematized and abstract that
the majority of economists do not understand what they read in some
journals – actually, the majority of journals. Currently the profession has a
class structure whereby those who sit on the top are economists who know
enough advanced mathematics to be able to publish in Econometrica.
Economists from different classes cannot even communicate. I recall one
occasion when the keynote speaker in a conference made his presentation,
and when it was time for Q&A, only one person (belonging to the same
class) asked a question. The rest of the participants had no clue what those
two were talking about. On the same occasion, I asked one of my col-
leagues who was sitting next to me if he understood anything – he replied
by saying ‘Yes, but only the first 45 seconds of the presentation’. Needless
to say, this kind of work cannot be communicated to the public and policy
makers, which makes it irrelevant.
Work in economics in particular is so much divorced from reality that it
has come to be known as office-based theorizing and junk science, produc-
ing results that are only good for publication. This junk science has alleg-
edly produced some ‘precise numerical facts’ such as the following. One
study tells us that a 1 per cent increase in the number of people carrying
concealed guns ‘causes’ a 3.3 per cent decline in the murder rate. Naturally
we are not told how the cause-and-effect process works, but what is impor-
tant is that the paper got published in a top journal. Another study tells us
that every time a prisoner is executed, eight future murders are deterred.
Other studies reveal that 10 to 20 per cent of the decline in crime in the
1990s was caused by an increase in abortions in the 1970s, that the murder
rate would have increased by 250 per cent since 1974 if it were not for the
building of new prisons, and that the welfare reform of the 1990s would
force 1 100 000 children into poverty (see Goertzel, 2002 for a review of
these ‘facts’). There is also a study telling us that firing a regulator leads
to the creation of a precise number of new jobs (Beard et al., 2011). The

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 28 Publish or perish

numerical ‘facts’ derived from these studies are not checked against reality
because reality is irrelevant.
Even Nobel Prize-winning papers contain nonsense and they are
divorced from reality. Bergmann (1999, p. 52) suggests that ‘[w]e econo-
mists ought to open our eyes and see that having a Nobel Prize for eco-
nomics is making the economics profession look ridiculous’. She further
refers to the embarrassment arising from the need to explain to the public
the alleged achievement of the newest laureate. As examples, she mentions
the prize won by economists telling us that ‘politicians and bureaucrats act
in their own interest’ and that ‘people save and spend their savings at dif-
ferent times in their lives’ (p. 53). The Nobel Prize was even awarded to an
economist who came up with the unethical conclusion that slavery was a
good business, at least for those holding the whip.
Bergmann also argued that rather than looking around the world to
see what is actually going on, economists tend to think up some simple
version of what might be going on, adopting what she called the ‘retire-
to-your-study’ approach. On the empirical side of research, economists do
not observe the actual decision-making process but rather look at some
­computer-generated numbers to find out if they are consistent with the
theory. Bergmann (1999) tells a story about a ‘famous monetary econo-
mist’ with whom she had a conversation and suggested that monetary
economists should talk more to bankers. The famous economist told
Bergmann that she was wrong, because he talked to bankers all the time
and never learned a thing. She inferred that he did not talk to bankers
about their business, which was deciding when to make loans (and at what
price), but rather about his view of the world.
Perhaps nothing vindicates Bergmann more than the widespread prac-
tice of testing covered interest parity (CIP) when in fact it is not a testable
hypothesis. CIP is a deterministic equation that represents a mechanical
operation used by bankers to calculate the forward exchange rate for a
certain maturity and quoting that rate to a customer at a particular point
in time, given the prevailing conditions. Instead of asking bankers how
they determine the forward rate, economists write CIP as a stochastic
equation then test for cointegration between the spot and forward rates (as
the necessary condition) and for coefficient restrictions (as the sufficient
condition) for the validity of CIP. Econometric extravaganza follows by
adding more explanatory variables, using a member of the extended family
of ARCH models and other fancy estimation techniques, only to conclude
that deviations from CIP can be observed. This kind of work gets pub-
lished in top journals although it is at odds with reality (Moosa, 2017a).
Let us now consider academic research in finance, which contributed
significantly to the advent of the global financial crisis because of its

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 Research quality and dissemination of knowledge ­29

divorce from reality. Finance academics claim that practitioners do not

know anything about anything. The academics are the smart people who
can solve partial differential equations and come up with empirical models
that forecast financial variables and are used for profitable trading. In a
previous life I was a practitioner in investment banking and this is how
I know that the work of finance academics is totally irrelevant, perhaps
with the exception of the Black-Scholes formula of option pricing. This is
why practitioners say ‘Those who know don’t tell, and those who tell don’t
know’. In other words, a finance academic who publishes papers on how
to make millions by trading financial assets does not know – otherwise he
will not divulge the secret strategy in a paper published in a top journal.
Another version of this motto is ‘Those who know invest, and those who
don’t know teach’. Actually, it should be ‘Those who know invest, and
those who don’t know publish’. In this respect teaching is more valuable
than research. Someone contemplating a job in the financial sector does
not go to university to devise profit-generating tricks but rather to learn
problem-solving and analytical skills that can be useful for their career
in finance. The development of profit-generating tricks comes later with
practice, and when that happens, they would not tell anyone about the new
recipe.
Once upon a time, two finance academics who have published in every
top finance journal under the sun were put in charge of a multibillion-
dollar hedge fund. They ran the fund by utilizing the theories they had
published in top journals and came up with a model that predicted the
impossibility of divergence between the yields on bonds issued by coun-
tries like Russia and the USA. Within a short period of time, the fund
collapsed and would have caused a systemic failure if it were not for the
generosity of American taxpayers who bailed it out. Did they admit that
their theories were wrong? No, they are still in business as usual and still
admired by young finance academics. Yet another academic model, used
by a giant insurance company in the run up to the global financial crisis,
predicted the impossibility of a simultaneous collapse of house prices
across the USA. The opposite turned out to be the case, the company
­collapsed – again, it was the generosity of American taxpayers that kept
the company afloat.
The models devised by finance academics and published in top journals
are divorced from reality. One lesson that we have not learned from the
global financial crisis is that quantitative models do not work because they
do not provide an adequate representation of the behaviour of market
participants. For example, Blommestein (2009) argues that academic
finance models fail systematically to account for real-world phenomena.
Horn (2009) contends that ‘[w]e seem to be witnessing the dismantling of

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 30 Publish or perish

an approach that, at least in its shallow mainstream version, has to make a

series of absurd assumptions in order to reach any conclusion – with both
the assumptions and the conclusions being astonishingly out of touch with
reality’. The assumptions are typically formulated to achieve one objective:
model elegance – a model that looks worthy of publication. Colander et al.
(2009) trace the deeper roots of the failure of quantitative models to the
profession’s insistence on constructing models that, by design, disregard
the key elements driving outcomes in real-world markets. The economics
profession has failed to communicate the limitations, weaknesses, and even
dangers of quantitative models to the public, perhaps because of the belief
that quantitative models are perfect (beauty is in the eyes of the beholder).
Economists have largely developed and come to rely on models that disre-
gard key real-world factors (including the heterogeneity of decision rules,
revisions of forecasting strategies, and changes in the social context) that
drive outcomes in asset markets. It is obvious, even to the casual observer,
that these models fail to account for the actual evolution of the real-world
economy. These models fail because they ignore history and human nature.
This is why Taleb (2009) calls for the marginalization of the economics
and business school establishments and for abolishing the Nobel Prize in
economics.
Dowd (2009, p. 145) attributes the failure of academic finance models to
unrealistic assumptions. This is what he says:

[T]hey assume that financial risks follow Gaussian distributions (and so ignore
‘fat tails’ which really matter); they assume that correlations are constant (and
ignore the fact that correlations tend to radicalize in crises and so destroy
the portfolio diversification on which a risk management strategy might be
­predicted); and they make assumptions about market liquidity that break down
when they are most needed.

Dowd adds that risk models are focused far too much on normal market
conditions, which do not matter, at the expense of ignoring the abnormal
conditions that do. He argues that markets are not ‘mathematizable’, but
finance academics thrive on mathematical models that enable them to
publish in top journals, although these models and reality are incompatible.
Storbacka (2014) suggests that if business academics conduct research
to help practitioners to do a better job (not immediately after they have
read the papers, but at least over time), then there is a need to redefine our
impact measures by assessing the extent to which we influence manage-
ment practices. However, practitioners are not really interested in what
academics write about, to the extent that ‘to be a scholar is, often, to be
irrelevant’ (Kristof, 2014). Kristof supports this claim in the New York
Times by arguing that ‘[t]he most stinging dismissal of a point is to say

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 Research quality and dissemination of knowledge ­31

“That’s academic”’ (Kristof, 2014). Storbacka (2014, p. 289) envisages the

following:

We can react to this sad state of affairs in many ways. We can ignore it, or we
can adopt November’s (2004) view that one of the reasons practitioners should
ignore our papers is that they are not the intended audience for them. While this
reason is robust, it does not negate the premise that the ultimate beneficiaries of
our work is – or should be – anyone involved in managerial work.

Under POP, a scholar is rewarded more handsomely if he or she publishes

a paper that has no relevance to reality in one of the top journals. A paper
like this is considered to be of high quality (that is, quality by association),
even ‘seminal’, although it has no relevance to reality.

2.6 UNRELIABLE AND BIASED RESEARCH

FINDINGS

Ioannidis (2005) suggests that most published research findings are false
and he has reasons to believe that research findings may be unreliable.
Under POP, soundness and reliability of the results matter less than the
ultimate objective of getting the paper published, and given the loopholes
in the peer-review process, papers with faulty results can and do get pub-
lished. Errors are likely to be made when a job is rushed. In a letter to the
opinion page of the Australian Financial Review, Ting (2016) shares the
sentiment, arguing that as long as the POP culture is present and pressure
is put on academics to publish, ‘misleading interpretation of manipu-
lated data will continue to taint the scientific community, incurring loss
of public trust, embedding erroneous findings in healthcare (resulting in
patient harm), and incurring the adoption of ineffective social policy as
well as undermining future research underpinned by false premises’.
Biased research findings typically take the form of accepting papers that
confirm the underlying hypothesis. Ioannidis (2005) argues that papers
are more likely to be accepted by journals if they report positive rather
than negative results. Fanelli (2010) examined a random sample of 1316
papers from various disciplines involving hypothesis testing and found
that ‘outcomes could be significantly predicted by knowing the addresses
of the corresponding authors’ because ‘those based in US states where
researchers publish more papers per capita were significantly more likely
to report positive results, independently of their discipline, methodology
and research expenditure’. Based on his results, Fanelli (2010) concludes
that ‘competitive academic environments increase not only the productiv-
ity of researchers, but also their bias against “negative” results’. He further

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 32 Publish or perish

suggests that negative results either go completely unpublished or are

somehow turned into positive results through selective reporting, post-hoc
reinterpretation, and alteration of methods, analyses and data.
Selective reporting of empirical results is a big problem in economics.
In 1983 a brilliant statistician, Edward Leamer, published his provocative
article ‘Let us Take the Con out of Econometrics’, in which he justifiably
criticized the reporting of one of the few regression equations (the ones
the researcher likes) following the estimation of 1000 of them (Leamer,
1983). Gilbert (1986) casts significant doubt on the validity of the practice
of assigning 999 regressions to the waste bin, because they do not produce
the anticipated results. Leamer and Leonard (1983, p. 306) argued strongly
against the conventional reporting of empirical results, stating that ‘the
reported results are widely regarded to overstate the precision of the
­estimates, and probably to distort them as well’.
Thanks to the POP culture, this malpractice has become more wide-
spread. A testable model is assembled by combining various hypotheses to
come up with a cross-sectional regression equation that has no correspond-
ing theoretical model. The equation is subsequently twisted and turned
until it produces the results that tell a nice story from the perspective of
publishability. The researcher may aim at producing results that corrobo-
rate those reported in a paper published by a journal editor or a potential
referee, or to support an ideological preconceived belief that the editor or
a potential referee subscribes to.

2.7 BIAS AGAINST RESEARCH FROM

DEVELOPING AND NON-ENGLISH-SPEAKING
COUNTRIES

Under POP, academics have to publish their work in peer-reviewed jour-

nals to progress in their careers or at least protect their jobs. This is a
problem for academics working in developing countries, now that POP is
a global phenomenon. These researchers have different agendas and con-
cerns and no connection whatsoever to the journals that matter.
Mahroum (2016) tells the story of a French academic researching soil in
Africa who reports that only 5 per cent of the published work in his field
has originated from African researchers. When he dug deeper into his own
research, he found that 50 per cent of what he had learned about African
soil came from African researchers who have not or could not publish
their work in ‘international’ journals. As for the English language factor,
Mahroum (2016) suggests that countries where English is not the lingua
franca are particularly disadvantaged, not because they lack academic

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 Research quality and dissemination of knowledge ­33

excellence, but because English-language journals call the shots. He further

writes:

As a result, the scope of research topics that many countries can undertake
is limited, and they must struggle to retain scientific talent. This is particu-
larly true in the Middle East, where governments are struggling to diversify
their economies, in order to make them more resilient. As English-language
­empirical-research journals consolidate their hold on the channels that deter-
mine whether or not a scientist will have a successful career, developing coun-
tries will have to invest heavily in their own data infrastructure to place domestic
researchers on a more competitive footing.

An academic from a developing country makes an interesting observation

in a comment on an article in the Neuroskeptic blog (2013). This is what
he says:

When I first heard ‘publish or perish’ as a graduate student in a developing

country I thought it was the silliest thing ever. I’m supposed to beg for research
funds that could otherwise be used to build a new elementary school, read jour-
nals that cost more than the library’s operating budget, write a paper that may
be 10 other people in the world will read, then pay the equivalent of our clerk’s
annual salary to actually publish it (if it is worthy). Maybe this system works in
the first world, but publishing shouldn’t be what the scanty few scholars in the
third world should be aspiring for. And yet that’s how they’re measured simply
because everyone else does.

It may not be an exaggeration to suggest that the POP culture is an obsta-

cle to economic development because it discourages work on the local
problems faced by developing countries. I firmly believe that the resources
allocated to publishing in international journals (including subscriptions
and submission fees) should be used for development aid.
This issue is not only relevant to developing countries – it is about the
fact that the POP culture impedes the development of local knowledge and
makes it less attractive to work on research projects that have potential
national benefits. Take Australia, for example, where the top journal in
economics is the Economic Record, the journal of the Economic Society of
Australia. According to the journal classification system used in Australia
(the ABDC list) this journal is classified as A whereas a not-so-great
US-based journal, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, is classi-
fied as A*, the elite group of journals. Australian economists wishing to be
in high ranks look more favourably on publishing in the American rather
than the Australian journal. Hence they avoid working on domestic issues,
using local data and opt instead to work on US, international or abstract
issues. This is not only a problem of POP on its own but also of the defunct
journal ranking system used to evaluate the quality of research.

MOOSA TEXT.indd 33 06/12/2017 08:53

 34 Publish or perish

2.8 BIAS AGAINST NON-ARTICLE PUBLICATIONS

Under the POP culture, publications mean journal articles. There is no

place for books, whether they are textbooks or research monographs.
Textbooks in particular have no merit, and writing textbooks is consid-
ered a waste of time, because textbooks are not even listed in the research
output of a particular department. No academic would dare request
resources (such as research assistance) for the purpose of writing a text-
book. I can only say that economists like me are fortunate that the POP
culture was not around in 1948 when Paul Samuelson wrote his textbook,
Economics, which has been translated into 41 languages and sold over four
million copies. Textbooks are used for teaching, and since teaching is a
peripheral activity under POP, it is no wonder that textbooks do not count.
Even research books do not count, although the most influential works
in my field were published as books. There is indeed a very long list of
influential research books in economics; books that have shaped the dis-
cipline. These books include The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith), Das
Kapital (Karl Marx), Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (David
Ricardo), Principles of Economics (Alfred Marshall), Value and Capital
(John Hicks), The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
(J.M. Keynes), A Monetary History of the United States (Milton Friedman
and Anna Schwartz), Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (John von
Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern) and Foundations of Economic Analysis
(Paul Samuelson).
Writing books has an advantage over writing articles. There is less
concern about space constraint, and once a contract has been obtained
after the approval of a proposal, the author can write things without
fearing retaliation or stupid comments made by an incompetent referee.
Hence innovative work is not impeded as in the case of journal articles.
Yet, writing a book is not rewarding under POP. Molinié and Bodenhausen
(2010) note that the ‘noble art of book writing’ is threatened by the current
obsession with citations. Book citations are not counted for the purpose of
calculating the h-index based on data from the Thomson Reuters’ Journal
Citation Report. One A* paper is valued more highly than a 500-page
book.

2.9 THE ADVERSE EFFECT ON TEACHING AND

NON-RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

Academics are supposed to perform three functions: teaching, research

and community service. However, what matters in the present environment

MOOSA TEXT.indd 34 06/12/2017 08:53

 Research quality and dissemination of knowledge ­35

is the publication of research findings. The best teacher in the world would
not get promotion and will find it difficult to keep his or her job or find
another. An academic could contribute significantly to a noble cause that
serves the community, but again that does not matter. The marketability of
academics depends on one section of their CVs, the list of publications. For
example, an academic who spends months on the ground to help farmers
in Papua New Guinea will not boost his or her marketability – on the con-
trary, that is time taken away from doing article-producing research. To
have 200 papers on your CV is valued more than saving 200 lives.
The pressure to publish, for fear of perishing, detracts from the time and
effort that can be devoted to teaching undergraduate courses and mentor-
ing graduate students. Academics hate teaching because the opportunity
cost of teaching is the time spent on writing papers. One of the worst
things that can happen to a contemporary academic is a student knocking
on his or her door to ask a question. The rewards for exceptional teaching
rarely match the rewards for (even mediocre) research, which encourages
academics to spend time on the latter at the expense of providing poor-
quality teaching. Teaching and the intergenerational transfer of knowledge
resulting from good teaching becomes a burden when universities are sup-
posed to be primarily teaching institutions. Universities do not focus on
teaching ability when they hire new staff and simply look at the publica-
tions list. Bauerlein (2011, p. 1) questions the outcome of these practices
and whether or not published research is worth the investment, arguing
that ‘[t]here is a glaring mismatch between the resources these universities
and faculty members invest and the impact of most published scholarship’.
Spooner (2014) suggests that the publish-or-perish culture distorts the
whole academic enterprise by tabulating the worth of scholars through a
very simplistic calculation that considers only publications and research
grants. Activities such as alternative forms of scholarship, teaching, and
even acting on one’s research findings are devalued or discarded com-
pletely. By surveying demographers (a multidisciplinary group of research-
ers in fields covering sociology, epidemiology, geography, anthropology,
economics and history), Van Dalen and Henkens (2012) report that pub-
lication is valued above all other accomplishments and is rewarded at the
expense of other academic responsibilities. The results of the survey show
that ‘scientists find publishing in international refereed journals and being
cited by other scholars the most rewarding element in their job’ and that
‘making insights visible by writing articles for newspapers rank among the
least appreciated elements of their work’.
We have already come across the proposition that a research-active aca-
demic is necessarily a better teacher than a non-research-active one. This
claim cannot be true, because a good teacher must spend time developing

MOOSA TEXT.indd 35 06/12/2017 08:53

 36 Publish or perish

and updating teaching material and looking for new ways to convey the
message to students. This in itself is research, but not the kind of research
that is conducted to obtain publication. A good teacher must spend time
responding to students’ queries, which would be hampered by the desire
to allocate as much time as possible to getting a paper in print. The time
constraint prevents a research-active academic from checking his or her
lecture notes before the lecture or to respond to emails from students.
Furthermore, some research-active academics have the tendency to spend
teaching time boasting about their research to students, in an exercise of
self-glorification, rather than following the prescribed course syllabus.
Berlinerblau (2015) refers to the ‘contradiction’ that ‘[w]hile teaching
undergraduates is, normally, a large part of a professor’s job, success in our
field is correlated with a professor’s ability to avoid teaching undergradu-
ates’. Berlinerblau offers this groundbreaking idea:

I submit a re-visioning of an American college professor’s job description: The

successful candidate will be skilled in, and passionately devoted to, teaching and
mentoring 18- to 22-year-olds, as well as those in other age groups. Additionally,
she or he will show promise as an original and creative researcher.

In this sense, the ability to teach should be put ahead of the ability to
get papers published. In a letter to the editor of the Chronicle of Higher
Education, Kathryn Blanchard (2015) defends teaching and teaching staff
while referring to a ‘few intellectual snobs with obscure tastes’ (research-
only staff). The change of emphasis, according to Blanchard, is tantamount
to not caring about the education of other people’s children any more.
We come to the end of this chapter with a rather sombre note. The ability
to publish journal articles is valued above all other accomplishments and
is rewarded at the expense of other academic responsibilities. The primary
victim of the status quo is teaching – more specifically, students attending
universities to be taught. As Berlinerblau (2015) puts it, ‘Somewhere along
the way, we spiritually and emotionally disengaged from teaching and men-
toring students’. Under POP, teaching is left for the juniors and casuals
while the ‘smart people’ do research and obtain grants. What has happened
to the quest for optimal resource allocation?

MOOSA TEXT.indd 36 06/12/2017 08:53

 3. 
Consequences of POP: The journal
industry and authorship pattern
3.1 EXORBITANT JOURNAL FEES AND PRICES

Publish or perish (POP) has led to excess demand for journal space as aca-
demics strive to publish and not perish. Whenever there is excess demand
for something, prices rise – in this case the word ‘price’ means both journal
subscription costs and submission fees (also various forms of administra-
tive fees, including publication and handling fees). This is a case of highly
inelastic demand where publishers’ revenues rise as prices go up because
universities cannot stop subscription to certain journals, no matter what
the subscription cost is. There is no question that the cost of journal
subscription has outpaced inflation, just like the cost of healthcare and
education.
According to Hartemink (1999), journal subscriptions account for
more than 75 per cent of the annual budget of his institution’s library.
The problem is even more severe in developing countries where libraries
have smaller budgets. In 1998, for example, the library of the University of
Technology in Papua New Guinea slashed the subscription to more than
300 international journals following year after year of price hikes, a frozen
library budget, and a depreciating currency (Hartemink, 1999). What is
ironic is that libraries in developing countries may be funded in part by
development aid.
As for fees, it has been no less than a heist. Some journals charge fees
of up to $800. Some journals charge fees for each resubmission and give
as many revise-and-resubmit opportunities as possible to the extent that
by the time the paper is accepted, the total cost could well be over $1000.
Some journals charge submission fees, handling fees and publication fees.
Some journals do not charge submission fees, opting instead for publica-
tion fees amounting to $150 per published page. Some journals charge sub-
mission fees, which have to be paid in advance, then reject the paper within
24 hours on the grounds that ‘it is not suitable for this journal’. Some
journals give the author the choice of paying a higher fee for an express
service, delivering referees’ reports within four weeks as opposed to eight
months. There is no limit to the tricks used by journals to extract money

37

MOOSA TEXT.indd 37 06/12/2017 08:53

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 LEAVE IT TO BEAVER.

PIPELINE PEOPLE. Consumers Power Co.

Made by Portafilms. 14 min., sd.,
color, 16 mm. © Consumers Power Co.;
8Apr69; MP19505.

PIPES ARE PIPES. See

HARRIGAN AND SON.

THE PIPES OF NAN. See

WESTINGHOUSE PLAYHOUSE.

PIPING SAFETY IS NO ACCIDENT. Apprentice

& Journeyman Training Trust
Fund. 35 min., sd., color, 16 mm.
A Vihlene production. © Apprentice
& Journeyman Training Trust Fund of
the Plumbing, Heating and Piping
Industry in Southern California.
15Dec65; MP15754.

THE PIQUE POQUETTE OF PARIS. Mirisch-Geoffrey

D-F. Released by United
Artists Corp. 6 min., sd., color,
35 mm. © Mirisch-Geoffrey D-F;
24Aug66; LP35604.

THE PIRATE. See

COLT .45.

THE PIRATE AND THE PATRIOT. See

 THE GREAT ADVENTURE.

PIRATE ON HORSEBACK. See

THE ADVENTURES OF JIM BOWIE. Production no. B-22.

THE PIRATES. See

MISCHIEF MAKERS. 1024.

THE PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER. Hammer

Film Productions, London. Released
by Columbia Pictures Corp. 87 min.,
sd., Eastman color by Pathé, 35 mm.
Megascope. From a story by Jimmy
Sangster. © Hammer Film Productions;
1Aug62 (in notice: 1961); LP22997.

THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE. Contemporary

Productions, Canada. 3 reels, sd.,
b&w, 16 mm. Produced in association
with Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
© Contemporary Productions, Inc.;
1Oct61; LP21672.

PIRATES OF SAN FRANCISCO. See

DEATH VALLEY DAYS. 7219.

PIRATES OF TORTUGA. Clover Productions.

Released by Twentieth Century-Fox
Film Corp. 97 min., sd., Color by
DeLuxe, 35 mm. CinemaScope. Based on
a story by Melvin Levy. © Clover Productions,
Inc. & Twentieth Century-Fox
 Film Corp.; 20Sep61; LP20643.

PISTOL PACKIN' WOODPECKER. Universal-International.

Released by Universal
Film Exchange. 1 reel, sd., Technicolor,
35 mm. (A Walter Lantz Woody
Woodpecker cartune) © Universal-International;
2Mar60; LP19261.

PISTOLERO'S PROGRESS. See

THE LAST CHALLENGE.

PISTOLS FOR TWO. See

STATE TROOPER.

PIT AND THE PENDULUM. Alta Vista Productions.

Released by American
International Pictures. 80 min.,
sd., Color by Pathé, 35 mm. Panavision.
Based on the work by Edgar
Allan Poe. © Alta Vista Productions;
5Aug61; LP21143.

PITCHED BATTLE AT BLUEBELL ACRES. See

M-SQUAD.

THE PITCHER AS A FIELDER. Astro.

6 min., sd., b&w, 16 mm. (Junior
all stars) © Astro, Inc.; 1Apr62;
MP12389.

THE PITCHER AS A FIELDER. Astro.

6 min., sd., b&w, 16 mm. (Junior
 all-star training camp sports instruction
series) © Astro, Inc.; 14Mar62; MU7122.

PITCHER-CATCHER. See

GILLETTE CO. TELEVISION COMMERCIALS. ARARG-5-60.

PITCHFORK. Ralston Purina Co. Made by

Cascade Pictures of Calif. 30 sec.,
b&w, 35 mm. © Ralston Purina Co.;
20Jun66; MU7702.

PITCHING. Ethan N. Allen. 11 min.,

sd., b&w, 16 mm. (Baseball Instruction
series) © Ethan N. Allen; 1Apr60; MP10939.

PITCHING: SECRETS OF THROWING. Astro.

7 min., sd., b&w, 16 mm. (Junior all
stars) © Astro, Inc.; 1Apr62; MP12388.

THE PITCHMEN. See

THE RIFLEMAN.

PITCHWAGON. See

RAWHIDE.

PITFALL. See

LASSIE.

RESCUE 8.

PITHING. See
 THE FROG: PITHING.

PITIFUL PENELOPE IN SEARCH FOR MISERY.

Terrytoons. Released by Twentieth
Century-Fox Film Corp. 7 min., sd.,
color, 35 mm. (A Terrytoon cartoon)
Color by DeLuxe. © Terrytoons, a
division of CBS Films, Inc.; 2Sep64;
LP28931.

PIXIE AND DIXIE.

For titles beginning with Pixie and
Dixie See HUCKLEBERRY HOUND SHOW.

PIZZA, BURGERS OR CHICKEN DELUXE.

Chevrolet Motor Division. Made by
Jam Handy Organization. 48 sec.,
sd., Eastman color, 35 mm. © Chevrolet
Division of General Motors
Corp.; 17May62; MU7184.

THE PIZZA SHOW. See

DECEMBER BRIDE.

A PLACE AMONG THE MONUMENTS. See

DR. KILDARE.

A PLACE FOR ABEL HIX. See

HAVE GUN—WILL TRAVEL.

A PLACE FOR LOVERS. C. C. Champion &

Les Films Concordia. Released by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 89 min., sd.,
 color, 35 mm. Freely adapted from
the play Amanti, by Brunello Rondi.
© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.; 31Dec68;
LP36698.

A PLACE IN THE SUN. Chevrolet Motor

Division. Made by Jam Handy Organization.
11 min., sd., color, 16 mm.
Ektachrome. © Chevrolet Motor Division,
General Motors Corp.; 19Aug64;
MU7479.

A PLACE OF MY OWN. See

THE SKYLINE SERIES.

A PLACE OF STILL WATERS. See

STAGECOACH—WEST.

A PLACE TO BELONG. See

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

A PLACE TO DIE. See

THE GALLANT MEN.

A PLACE TO GO. See

THE DONNA REED SHOW.

A PLACE TO HIDE. See

EYEWITNESS.
 FRED ASTAIRE'S PREMIERE THEATRE.

A PLACE TO PUT A LIFE. See

EMPIRE. No. 3.

A PLACE TO STAND. Ontario Dept. of

Economics & Development. Released by
Columbia Pictures Corp. 18 min., sd.,
color, 35 mm. (Musical travelark,
no. 53) A T.D.F. Production. © Her
Majesty the Queen in Right of Ontario,
as represented by the Minister of
Economics & Development; 1Feb68 (in
notice: 1967); MP18667.

A PLACE TO STAND. Ontario Government

Dept. of Economics & Development.
Canada. Made by TDF Productions.
18 min., sd., color, 35 mm. © Her
Majesty the Queen in Right of Ontario
as Represented by the Minister of
Economics & Development of the Province
of Ontario; 18Sep67; MP18028.

PLACE VALUE: ONES, TENS, HUNDREDS.

Coronet Instructional Films. 11 min.,
sd., b&w, 16 mm. © Coronet Instructional
Films, a division of Esquire,
Inc.; 8Dec61; MP11999.

PLAGUE. See

THE GREAT ADVENTURE.

PLAGUE CARRIER. See

 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF WYATT EARP. D-13 (124)

THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES. Seven

Arts Productions & Hammer Film Productions.
Released by Twentieth
Century-Fox Film Corp. 90 min.,
sd., color, 35 mm. Color by DeLuxe.
© Hammer Film Productions, Ltd.;
12Jan66; LP32698.

A PLAGUE ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES. See

THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER.

PLAIN, UNMARKED ENVELOPE. See

THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW. 8228-29.

A PLAIN WHITE ENVELOPE. See

BREAKTHRU.

PLAINS AND PLATEAUS. Indiana University.

10 min., sd., color, 16 mm.
© Indiana University; 17May68; MP18485.

THE PLAINSMAN. Universal Pictures Co.

92 min., sd., color, 35 mm.
© Universal Pictures Co., Inc.;
1Oct66; LP35476.

PLAN FOR PREVENTION. See

SAFETY MANAGEMENT FILM SERIES.

A PLANAR RESPONSE. See

DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS. Course program 30.

PLANARIA. Thorne Films. 2 min., si.,

color, 8 mm. (The invertebrates,
no. 503) © Thorne Films, Inc.;
2Feb69 (in notice: 1968); MP19022.

PLANE MAYHEM. See

WINKY DINK AND YOU. No. P-28.

PLANE STUPID. See

OUT OF THE INKWELL.

PLANES. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

14 min., sd., color, 16 mm.
© Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;
14Dec61; MP12045.

THE PLANET MOUSEOLA. Paramount Pictures.

6 min., sd., color, 35 mm. (Noveltoon
cartoon) © Paramount Pictures Corp.;
1Nov60; LP17412.

PLANET OF THE APES. Apjac Productions.

Released by Twentieth Century-Fox Film
Corp. 112 min., sd., color, 35 mm.
Panavision. Based on the novel by
Pierre Boulle. © Apjac Productions,
Inc. & Twentieth Century-Fox Film
Corp.; 30Dec67; LP35407.

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES. American International

 Productions. 86 min., sd.,
color, 36 mm. Color prints by Pathé.
Based on the story One night of 21
hours, by Renato Pestriniero.
© American International Productions;
27Oct65; LP32040.

THE PLANETS. See

SPACE SCIENCE: THE PLANETS.

PLANETS IN ORBIT—THE LAWS OF KEPLER.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Films. Made
by Institut für Film und Bild.
10 min., sd., b&w, 16 mm. © Encyclopaedia
Britannica Films, Inc.; 19Feb60
(in notice: 1959); MP10529.

PLANING A CHAMFER. See

WOODWORKING SERIES: HANDTOOL OPERATIONS, SET 2.

PLANKTON AND THE OPEN SEA. Encyclopaedia

Britannica Films. 19 min., sd.,
color, 16 mm. (Biology program, unit
1: Ecology) © Encyclopaedia Britannica
Films, Inc.; 27Sep62; MP12978.

PLANKTON: PASTURES OF THE OCEAN.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Films.
10 min., sd., color, 16 mm. (Basic
life science series: Plant and animal
relationships) Produced in cooperation
with Osborne Laboratories of
Marine Science. © Encyclopaedia
Britannica Films, Inc.; 11Nov65;
 MP15677.

PLANNED FAMILIES. Allend'or Productions.

20 min., sd., color, 16 mm.
© Allend'or Productions; 29Nov65;
MP17673.

THE PLANNED PICNIC. See

WESTINGHOUSE PLAYHOUSE.

PLANNED REPETITION. General Learning

Corp. Made by the David Coffing Co.
7 min., sd., color, 16 mm. (Teaching
skills for secondary school teachers)
© General Learning Corp.; 31Dec68;
MP19759.

PLANNED REPETITION. General Learning

Corp. Made by the David Coffing Co.
7 min., sd., color, 16 mm. (Teaching
skills for elementary school teachers)
© General Learning Corp.; 31Dec68;
MP19774.

PLANNING A PROGRAM. See

IBM S/360 MODEL 20 INSTALLATION PROGRAMMING.

PLANNING AN APPLICATION. See

IBM S/360 MODEL 20 INSTALLATION PROGRAMMING.

PLANNING THE STORY. Milner-Fenwick.

25 min., sd., b&w, 16 mm. (Starting
tomorrow) © Ealing Corp.; 1Jan68;
 MP18290.

THE PLANT. See

THE DANNY THOMAS SHOW.

PLANT AND ANIMAL RELATIONSHIPS. See

THE DESERT COMMUNITY.

DISCOVERING THE FOREST.

LIFE BETWEEN TIDES.

THE MARSH COMMUNITY.

PLANKTON: PASTURES OF THE OCEAN.

PLANT-ANIMAL COMMUNITIES: ECOLOGICAL

SUCCESSION. Coronet Instructional
Films. 14 min., sd., b&w, 16 mm.
© Coronet Instructional Films, division
of Esquire, Inc.; 2Jan68; MP17860.

PLANT-ANIMAL COMMUNITIES: INTERRELATIONSHIPS.

Coronet Instructional Films.
13 min., sd., b&w, 16 mm. © Coronet
Instructional Films, a division of
Esquire, Inc.; 18Jan65; MP15077.

PLANT-ANIMAL COMMUNITIES: PHYSICAL

ENVIRONMENT. Coronet Instructional
Films. 11 min., sd., b&w, 16 mm.
© Coronet Instructional Films, a
division of Esquire, Inc.; 3Feb64;
MP14512.
PLANT-ANIMAL COMMUNITIES: THE CHANGING
BALANCE OF NATURE. Coronet Instructional
Films. 11 min., sd., b&w,
16 mm. © Coronet Instructional
Films, a division of Esquire, Inc.;
1Feb63; MP13576.

PLANT LIFE. See

ANGIOSPERMS—THE FLOWERING PLANTS.

BACTERIA.

EVOLUTION OF VASCULAR PLANTS: THE FERNS.

THE GROWTH OF PLANTS.

ORIGIN OF LAND PLANTS: LIVERWORTS AND MOSSES.

PHOTOSYNTHESIS.

SIMPLE PLANTS: THE ALGAE.

PLANT LIFE SERIES. See

ABOVE THE TIMBERLINE: ALPINE PLANTS.

AIR PLANTS.

BUDDING OF A YEAST PLANT.

CARNIVOROUS PLANTS.

FROM FLOWER TO FRUIT.

 GEOTROPISM.

GERMINATION OF A SEED.

GROWTH OF MOLDS.

GROWTH OF MUSHROOMS.

GROWTH OF WOODY PLANTS.

MAKING CUTTINGS.

PHOTOTROPISM.

PRODUCTION OF OXYGEN BY GREEN PLANTS.

WATER PLANTS.

PLANT NUTRIENTS AND GROWTH. Coronet

Instructional Films. 13 min., sd.,
b&w, 16 mm. © Coronet Instructional
Films, a division of Esquire, Inc.;
3Feb69; MP19161.

THE PLANT ORGANISM. See

BIOLOGY SERIES III. Film no. 1.

PLANT SCIENCE FILM STUDIES. Iowa State

University of Science & Technology.
Approx. 3 min. each, si., color,
16 mm. © Iowa State University
a.a.d.o. Iowa State University of
Science & Technology.

Diatoms in a food web. © 15May68 (in

 notice: 1967); MP18539.

Electron microscopy, the study of sectioned

biological material. 15 min.
© 15May68; MP18532.

A fresh water algal bloom. © 15May68

(in notice: 1967); MP18540.

Killing weeds with 2, 4-D. © 15May68

(in notice: 1967); MP18543.

The microscope. (Electron microscopy

series) © 15May68; MP18533.

Photosynthetic pigments in some major

plant groups. © 15May68 (in notice:
1967); MP18542.

Prairie seasons. © 15May68 (in notice:

1967); MP18537.

Preparation of specimen supports.

(Electron microscopy series)
© 15May68; MP18535.

Specimen fixation and embedding.

(Electron microscopy series)
© 15May68; MP18534.

Sporangial germination in phytophthora

infestans. © 15May68 (in notice:
1967); MP18538.

Transpiration rates. © 15May68 (in

notice: 1967); MP18541.
 Ultramicrotomy. (Electron microscopy
series) © 15May68; MP18536.

PLANT SCIENCE FILM STUDIES. See

APICAL DOMINANCE.

EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROOT SYSTEM.

EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHOOT IN QUERCUS.

EFFECT OF RED AND FAR-RED LIGHT ON

INTERNODE LENGTH.

EFFECTS OF RED AND FAR-RED LIGHT ON

SEEDLING DEVELOPMENT.

THE FLOWERING STIMULUS, LOCATION OF

THE PHOTORECEPTOR.

THE FLOWERING STIMULUS, TRANSLOCATION

BETWEEN SPECIES.

THE FLOWERING STIMULUS, TRANSLOCATION

OF THE RESPONSE FACTOR.

GROWTH AND REPRODUCTION IN SAPROLEGNIA.

HETEROTHALLISM IN PHYCOMYCES.

ISOLATION OF PHYTOCHROME.

LIBERATION OF ZOOSPORES IN THE ALGA STIGEOCLONIUM.

OXYGEN LEVELS DURING AN ALGAL BLOOM.

 PATHWAYS OF WATER IN HERBACEOUS PLANTS.

PATHWAYS OF WATER IN WOODY PLANTS.

PHOTOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF PHYTOCHROME.

PHOTOTROPIC RESPONSE IN COLEOPTILES.

POLLEN RELEASE IN ZEA MAYS.

POLLEN TUBE GROWTH.

POLLINATION IN ZEA MAYS.

ROOT NODULE FORMATION.

SPORE DISPERSAL IN EQUISETUM.

SPORE DISPERSAL IN THE FUNGI-COPRINUS.

STOMATAL OPENING AND CLOSING.

PLANT SUCCESSION. McGraw-Hill Book Co.

15 min., sd., color, 16 mm. (General
science series) Eastman color.
© Leonard Bender; 10Sep63; MP13523.

A PLANT THROUGH THE SEASONS. See

THE APPLE TREE.

PLANT TROPISMS AND OTHER MOVEMENTS.

Coronet Instructional Films. 11 min.,
sd., b&w, 16 mm. © Coronet Instructional
Films, a division of Esquire,
 Inc.; 1Apr65; MP15232.

PLANT YOU NOW, DIG YOU LATER. See

GILLIGAN'S ISLAND.

THE PLANTATION SOUTH. Encyclopaedia

Britannica Films. 16 min., sd., color,
16 mm. © Encyclopaedia Britannica
Films, Inc.; 24Mar60 (in notice: 1959);
MP10532.

PLANTS AND ANIMALS. See

DESERT DWELLERS: PLANTS AND ANIMALS.

PLANTS ARE DIFFERENT AND ALIKE. Coronet

Instructional Films. 11 min., sd.,
b&w, 16 mm. © Coronet Instructional
Films, division of Esquire, Inc.;
6Mar67; MP16917.

PLANTS LIVE THROUGH THE WINTER. Coronet

Instructional Films. 10 min.,
sd., b&w, 16 mm. © Coronet Instructional
Films, a division of Esquire,
Inc.; 1Mar68; MP18108.

PLANTS OBTAIN FOOD. Indiana University

Audio Visual Center. 15 min., sd.,
color, 16 mm. Eastman color. © Indiana
University; 25Jul62; MP13163.

PLANTS THAT GROW FROM LEAVES, STEMS AND

ROOTS. Coronet Instructional Films.
11 min., sd., b&w, 16 mm. © Coronet
 Instructional Films, a division of
Esquire, Inc.; 4Oct60; MP11121.

PLANTS THAT HAVE NO FLOWERS OR SEEDS.

Coronet Instructional Films. 11 min.,
sd., b&w, 16 mm. © Coronet Instructional
Films, division of Esquire,
Inc.; 1Nov67; MP17590.

PLANTS THAT LIVE IN WATER. Coronet

Instructional Films. 11 min., sd.,
b&w, 16 mm. © Coronet Instructional
Films, a division of Esquire, Inc.;
16Jun66; MP16224.

A PLAQUE FOR MAYBERRY. See

THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW.

PLASTER CASTS AND SPLINTS: PREPARATION,

APPLICATION, REMOVAL. Johnson &
Johnson. Made by Sturgis-Grant Productions.
27 min., sd., color,
16 mm. © Johnson & Johnson; 21Jun65;
MP15600.

PLASTERED IN PARIS. Mirisch-Geoffrey

D-F. Released by United Artists Corp.
6 min., sd., color, 35 mm. © Mirisch-Geoffrey
D-F; 5Apr66; LP35596.

PLATE GLASS. See

[ALBERTO-CULVER CO. TELEVISION COMMERCIALS]

A PLATE OF DEATH. See

 SHOTGUN SLADE.

PLATINUM HIGH SCHOOL. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Made by Albert Zugsmith Productions
in association with Fryman
Enterprises. 93 min., sd., b&w, 35 mm.
Based on a story by Howard Breslin.
© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc., Albert
Zugsmith Productions, Inc. & Fryman
Enterprises, Inc.; 21Mar60 (in notice:
1959); LP15776.

THE PLATINUM HIGHWAY. See

TARGET: THE CORRUPTORS.

PLATINUM ON THE ROCKS. See

GENERAL ELECTRIC THEATER.

PLATO'S APOLOGY, THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS

OF SOCRATES. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Films. 30 min., sd., color, 16 mm.
(Classical Greece, lesson 2) Eastman
color. © Encyclopaedia Britannica
Films, Inc.; 29Oct62; MP13395.

PLATTER PIRATES. See

M-SQUAD.

THE PLATTER-PUSS PLOT. See

DICK TRACY.
PLAVONIA, HAIL AND FAREWELL. See

THE ROGUES.

PLAY ACTING. See

THE DU PONT SHOW WITH JUNE ALLYSON.

Production no. 3412

PLAY-BACK. See

GILLETTE CO. TELEVISION COMMERCIALS.

PLAY BALL. See

THE DONNA REED SHOW.

MISCHIEF MAKERS. 1080.

PLAY BALL, PLAY SAFE. Aetna Life &

Casualty Co. 14 min., sd., color,
16 mm. Produced in cooperation with
Babe Ruth League Baseball & the
Cincinnati Reds of the National Baseball
League. © Aetna Life Insurance
Co.; 1Dec65; MP15679.

PLAY DIRTY. Steven, S.A. [England]

117 min. © Steven, S.A.; 2Jan69
(in notice: 1968); LF32.

PLAY, GYPSY, PLAY. See

F TROOP.

PLAY IT BLUE. See

 TARGET: THE CORRUPTORS.

PLAY IT COOL. Coronado Productions.

Released by Allied Artists Pictures
Corp. 82 min., sd., b&w, 35 mm.
A Julian Wintle-Leslie Parkyn production.
© Coronado Productions
(England) Ltd.; 22Mar63 (in notice:
1962); LP24142.

PLAY IT GLISSANDO. See

ROUTE 66.

PLAY IT, SAM. See

DON'T CALL ME CHARLIE!

PLAY THE GAME. See

THE SMITHSONIAN.

PLAY THEM AS THEY LIE. National Educational

Films. 17 min., sd., color,
16 mm. © National Educational Films,
Inc.; 26Jan57; MP10953.

THE PLAYBOY OF CAPITOL HILL. See

THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER.

PLAYGROUND DAREDEVILS. See

KID'S STUFF.
THE PLAYGROUND INCIDENT, DO UNTO OTHERS. See

JOT. Episode no. 9.

PLAYGROUND SAFETY. Coronet Instructional

Films. 10 min., sd., b&w,
16 mm. 2d ed. © Coronet Instructional
Films, division of Esquire,
Inc.; 2Nov66; MP16535.

THE PLAYHOUSE. Buster Keaton.

West Germany. 1 reel, sd., b&w,
16 mm. NM: revisions & additions.
© Buster Keaton; 1Mar62 (in notice:
1961); LP26787.

THE PLAYHOUSE. Buster Keaton Film Corp.

2 reels, si., b&w, 16 mm. NM: revisions.
© Buster Keaton; 7Oct49; LP16452.

PLAYHOUSE 90. Columbia Broadcasting

System. Approx. 90 min. each, sd.,
b&w, 16 mm. © Columbia Broadcasting
System, Inc.

The cruel day. © 28Feb60 (in notice:

1961); LP21184.

The rank and file. © 1Jun59 (in

notice: 1961); LP21422.

Tomorrow. © 11Mar60 (in notice:

1961); LP21183.

PLAYING POLITICS. See

 COMEDY CAPERS.

THE PLAYMATE. See

THE DONNA REED SHOW.

PLAYOFF. Zavin Productions. 26 min.,

sd., color, video-tape. © Zavin
Productions; 13Feb69; MU7998.

THE PLAY-OFF. See

GENERAL ELECTRIC THEATER.

THE PLAYPEN. American Art Films.

86 min., sd., color, 35 mm. From
the story Fleshpot playpen, by
Warren St. Thomas. © American Art
Films, Inc.; 12Apr67; LP35675.

PLAYS FOR THE LIVING DRAMA. See

EYE OF THE HURRICANE.

PLAYS FOR THE LIVING STAGE. See

EYE OF THE HURRICANE.

THE PLAYWRIGHT. See

HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE.

PLEASANT SURPRISE. Procter & Gamble Co.

1 min., sd., b&w, 35 mm. © Procter &
Gamble Co.; 23Jan64; MU7376.
A PLEASANT THING FOR THE EYES. See

BEN CASEY.

PLEASE BELIEVE ME. See

ZORRO. 7227.

PLEASE BUY MY VIOLETS. See

PETTICOAT JUNCTION.

PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES. Euterpe.

Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 111
min., sd., Metrocolor, 35 mm. CinemaScope.
Based on the book by Jean
Kerr. © Loew's, Inc. & Euterpe, Inc.;
28Jan60 (in notice: 1959); LP15353.

PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Approx. 30 min. each,
sd., color, 35 mm. Based on the book
by Jean Kerr. Produced with the NBC
TV Network. © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.

A-hunting we will go. © 1Oct66;

LP34938.

And what does your husband do?

© 3Dec66; LP34944.

At home with the faculty. © 8Oct66;

LP34551.

The big brass blonde. © 21Dec65;

LP34247.
Big man on campus. © 22Mar66; LP34263.

The big train. © 26Dec65; LP34246.

Black is the color of my love's eye.

© 29Oct66; LP34550.

The cupid machine. © 31Dec66; LP35071.

The day the play got away. © 22Apr67;

LP34937.

Dinner on the rocks. © 5Oct65; LP34255.

Don't fool around with the man upstairs.

© 23Nov65; LP34250.

The end of the trailer. © 12Nov66;

LP34942.

The guardian. © 24Dec66; LP34945.

Help wanted desperately. © 4Mar67;

LP34932.

The holdouts. © 15Oct66; LP34939.

How about two gorillas? © 21Sep65;

LP34244.

How not, Hausfrau. © 15Mar66; LP34264.

It's Lad by a nose. © 14Dec65; LP34248.

Just for laughs. © 10Dec66; LP35548.

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