Publish or Perish: Perceived Benefits versus Unintended Consequences

Imad Moosa’s thought-provoking book explores the contemporary doctrine that plagues the academic sphere: the principle of publish or perish. This book identifies the pressures placed upon academics to either publish their work regularly, or suffer the consequences, including lack of promotion, or even redundancy.

Imad Moosa argues that this concept is a result of globalisation and the neo-liberal idea of treating higher education as a private good. Providing one of the first extensive analyses of this doctrine, the author identifies the overwhelmingly negative unintended consequences stemming from the pressure to publish research. He explores the detrimental effects of this burden, which includes the impact of drawing away the focus from educating students, to the declining quality of published research. The hazardous activity of journal ranking and resource-wasting research evaluation programmes are also considered, with the author ultimately proposing that the solution to this controversial issue is to go back to days gone by, prior to the dominance of the free market ideology.

Innovative, provocative, and timely, this book will be a stimulating read for academics worldwide, as well as non-university researchers, university administrators, policymakers and government officials operating within the fields of higher education, science, and technology.