'Publish or perish'. Everyone seems to agree that this phrase describes how science works today, and no-one much likes it. But what exactly is wrong with it?
As I see it, there's two issues here - the publishing, and the perishing. They're separate problems, and only loosely linked. The
perishing
is really pretty straightforward. In science today, 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, there are less posts available. So not all of the people entering science will be able to succeed in this career, and some of them will 'perish' and end up without a career in science. So there's competition for jobs and advancement. Perishing is an inevitable consequence of the demographics. It's linked to publishing only by accident, as it were; today, scientists happen to be assessed mostly by ...
