“publish or perish” refers to the pressure to publish academic work in order to succeed in academia.
if academicians do not publish frequently enough they risk losing their tenure. This has caused a greater junk - useful ratio.
Muzafer Sherif talked about Publication Quality vs Volume, said that publish or perish was a huge problem (called it ratio of chaff to wheat)
“It’s difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964,” he said. “Today I wouldn’t get an academic job. It’s as simple as that. I don’t think I would be regarded as productive enough.”
- Physicist Peter Higgs namesake of Higgs boson said that the pressure to publish could have have prevented him from both making his ground-breaking research contributions and attaining tenure.
It reflects the importance of scholarly output as a measure of productivity, quality, and impact.