The publish, perish, repeat cycle

At the end of the semester, the corridor outside the faculty office is quiet.

Doors are half closed. Inside, a lecturer sits before a screen, scrolling through a document with tracked changes. On the desk are three thin journals, a file of forms, and a printed sheet listing required publications for the next promotion round.

The language on the sheet is calm.
Minimum number. Acceptable outlets. Impact factor. Deadline.

No one raises their voice about it. The work continues. Another paper is revised. Another abstract is sent out. The rhythm is steady. It has the feel of routine, not crisis.

The assumption beneath this routine is that measurement is neutral.
Count the papers. Rank the journals. Add the scores. The result will reflect merit.

The contradiction is harder to see. Once counting becomes the centre, what counts begins to change.

The phrase “publish or perish” once sounded dramatic. Now it feels procedural. It has been absorbed into forms and checklists. It no longer threatens. It instructs. Promotion depends on output. Grants depend on output. Even basic respect within a department can depend on output.

So output becomes the work.

A lecturer who once lingered over a difficult idea learns to break it into smaller units. One study becomes two papers. A careful project becomes a quick survey. The goal is not deception. The goal is survival. Each year has its target. Each target has its date.

The cold sentence is this: the system does not hate scholarship; it prices it.

When time is limited and expectations are fixed, depth looks expensive. A slow, risky project may take years and produce one strong paper. Three modest papers in that time are safer. They travel better through committees. They sit more comfortably in tables and charts.

There is an unspoken rule here.
Do not return empty-handed at appraisal.

It does not matter if the semester was filled with heavy teaching loads, failing infrastructure, or endless meetings. What matters is the column labelled “publications.” Blank space in that column has a way of cancelling other labour.

Over time, academic life begins to resemble an endurance test. Not because anyone designed it to exhaust, but because the metrics reward those who can keep producing under strain. The colleague who writes at dawn before lectures. The one who submits a manuscript from a hospital waiting room. The one who treats weekends as overflow space.

This is often described as dedication. It is also adaptation.

An ordinary detail shows the shift. Conference attendance once meant conversation in hallways, long debates over coffee, the slow testing of ideas. Now it often means a certificate of presentation, another line on a report, a photo beside a banner. The proof of presence matters as much as the exchange itself.

None of this requires malice. Committees need criteria. Universities need ways to compare. Numbers offer clarity. They protect against favouritism. They create the appearance of fairness. A published paper is visible. An unpublished but thoughtful year is not.

Yet clarity can narrow vision.

When performance metrics dominate, certain questions fade. Is the work read? Does it shape practice? Does it change how students think? These are harder to count. So they recede into background noise. What remains are submissions, acceptances, citations.

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The uncomfortable insight is that many academics now plan careers the way athletes plan seasons. Peak years are mapped. Output is scheduled. Energy is rationed. Rest feels risky. Illness becomes an inconvenience rather than a signal.

In such a setting, repetition is not failure. It is strategy. Find a line of research that yields steady results. Stay within it. Avoid detours that may not pay quickly. Curiosity becomes something to manage carefully.

The phrase “publish, perish, repeat” captures this cycle without drama. Publish to avoid perishing. Then begin again. The finish line moves each year. The required number rises quietly. What was once exceptional becomes standard.

The effect is subtle. Conversations in offices change tone. Colleagues ask not “What are you thinking about?” but “What are you working on?” The difference is small. One invites reflection. The other invites output.

Students notice, even if no one explains it. Supervisors steer them toward manageable topics. Risk is trimmed early. A thesis becomes a pipeline for future articles. The logic is practical. It is also narrowing.

It would be easy to blame individuals for playing along. But refusal carries cost. A stalled promotion. A lost grant. A reputation for being unserious. Few can afford principled invisibility.

So the race continues without anyone announcing it as a race.

In the quiet corridor, the lecturer closes one document and opens another. A small correction is made. A paragraph is cut to meet a word limit. The journal guidelines are checked again. The paper is submitted. There is relief, brief and thin.

Soon there will be another deadline.

What is being reshaped is not knowledge itself. It is the tempo of those who pursue it.

Academic life begins to feel less like a search and more like a series of laps.

The thing being named is not corruption.
It is conversion.

Question: Are you ready to examine how energy trading patterns might be limiting your potential while keeping you dependent on systems you don't control? Discover the hidden conditioning that transforms your creative capacity into fuel for others' objectives in our comprehensive guide, The Energy Trap. This deeper analysis reveals how to transition from energy trading to system building for sustainable growth and genuine autonomy.

Thank you for reading.

~Solomon Fompun Domshak

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Solomon F. Domshak

The publish, perish, repeat cycle

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