Publish AND Perish

Here is an article that I believe is worth reading seriously: Pressure to 'publish or perish' may discourage innovative research, UCLA study suggests (psypost.org) 

Underlines a point that I make repeatedly:

"Yes, we need to be a research active academia; Yes, we need to publish globally and make an impact; BUT we *must* avoid the trap of indulging in what I like to call shallow-hubu-bubu research just to build numbers. That leads to what are known as mickey-mouse papers which no one reads or respects. Such research only serves to distract us from serious academics, which is: high quality research and high quality teaching."

The article also resonates with my view that tenure and career progression policies at academic institutions need to encourage a bit of risk taking and allow researchers to gamble a bit with tougher problems. Results not coming "quickly" or "numbers" not getting generated prolifically shouldn't be as much of an issue as it seems to be today. Quite on the contrary, if the effort is genuine and sustained, this is probably a sign that someone is on to something serious.

The question of course arises: How do we judge whether the effort is genuine and sustained?

One way to address this concern is: Presentations of one's research every five years or so in front of domain experts as well as the academic community at large. Among other things, this might also spark off interesting academic interactions and collaborations.

We need to bring back the spirit of qualitative evaluations and appraisals to some extent. I'm convinced of that.

[Plus any tenure/career-progression policy at universities that doesn't explicitly consider teaching and theses guidance quality simply needs to be put in the dustbin. Our students are our first commitment. Period.]