Publish or perish

The core mission of most universities is to publish and disseminate scholarship; hence, higher education institutions in the US have made it imperative for faculty members to publish in order to survive and prosper. Lately, the publish-or-perish mantra is becoming an academic motto for faculty in institutions of higher learning in the Philippines. In fact, this mantra has reached the academic portals of this university. “Publish or Perish” refers to the pressure to publish work constantly in order to further or sustain one’s career in the academe. The competition for tenure track faculty positions in the academe puts increasing pressure on professors who are scholars to publish new work frequently.

Much has been said and written on the need for educators to publish their results. While educators with publishing responsibilities differ in their ability to conduct research and vary in their personal attitude toward publishing, the failure to publish by them is widespread throughout the academic circle and research organizations. Five reasons or categories are identified which may impede publishing scientific word. The categories are: (1) The research is not worthy publication; (2) Educators are too busy to publish; (3) They are very critical of their own work; (4) They cannot take criticism and are willing to have their work scrutinized by others, and (5) They have miscellaneous excuses.

While this is not an exhaustive enumeration, these five reasons provide some of the more familiar reasons for perishing. The reasons for not publishing may change during an educator’s career or may vary with each study and data set. All professors in the college must publish their work. There could have never been research had it not been published. However, if the work is not published, then it was not done. When unpublished, the research goes unnoticed, there is no definite result of the work (a thesis is not an adequate final publication product), the data from the work are only found in the library of the institution where it was done, and the research is hard to reference and obtain. So, the research is nearly nonexistent and may as well not have been done.

Institutions of higher learning as well as granting agencies are pleased to give financial support to scholars who publish, and they are happy to see that their funds resulted in work reported in refereed journal articles.

Therefore, it is imperative that college professors must contribute to disciplinary knowledge through publishing their research work that must result in a journal article. The proof of good research and scholarship in higher education is a resulting publication in a leading journal such as this one. So, why aren’t you publishing your work?

(Edward L. Padama, EdD., teaches Sociology, Philippine History, General Psychology, and Humanities at the FEU-East Asia College, Sampaloc, Manila)