The Perils of Publishing
by Chris Cumo
WERE GOD AN Ivy Leaguer, his 11th commandment would be publish
or perish. The words reverberate through academic libraries and archives. In the Darwinian competition for jobs and promotions, ostensibly victory crowns the scholar with the longest Curriculum Vitae.
Sociologist Pierre van den Berghe, himself the author of
seven books, admits in Academic Gamesmanship (Abelard
Schuman, 1970) that “Scholarly publication is … an extremely
elaborate and patient exercise in [V]ita construction.”
He urges new Ph.D.s to “Rush into print, at least in the early
stages of your professional career.”
Western Michigan University medievalist Larry Simon tells
adjuncts they are dead if they stop publishing. He assumes
that they must have started publishing years earlier, that
publishing is an academic’s raison d’etre, that once a scholar
always a scholar. Publishing must be the essence of the academy,
for what else could justify the light or nonexistent teaching
loads of the superstars?
Examine the career of Michael Darcy, the fictitious but believable
assistant professor in Richard Mandell’s The Professor
Game (Doubleday, 1970). Darcy has a Ph.D. from The University
of Chicago and impeccable social graces. At South Indishois
State University he is an uninspired teacher and rigorous
grader, foibles he could easily have overcome had he been
a prolific writer. But by the end of the novel, he has only
two articles and four book reviews to show for four years
of featherweight teaching duties. The gray eminences in his
department deny him tenure.
All work and no play may make Jack a dull boy, but at least
he will have job security. The exemplar of this logic is paleontologist
Edward D. Cope, who published more than 1,000 articles, on
the strength of which he rose in 1895 to chair the Department
of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania.
Do publications still hold so much sway in the halls of higher
education?
“The world has no need of yet another book, unless it is
a conscientious piece of work and adds to the sum of knowledge,”
write Jacques Barzun and Henry Graff in the fifth edition
of The Modern Researcher (Harcourt College Publishers,
1992).
Cary Nelson warns scholars in Manifesto of a Tenured Radical
(New York University Press, 1997) that publications may hinder
or brand one as a feminist or existentialist or whatever,
making it easy for a search committee to jettison one as a
poor match with the research interests of the department.
Publications are also dangerous because they transform one
from a young Turk with no track record, and thus unlimited
potential, into someone with no new mountains to scale.
Not only might the power of publications be waning in academe,
but they will also not help you win a job outside the academy,
even with organizations that have an academic ethos. A candidate
for a postdoctoral or permanent research post with the USDA
needs at least a few articles to fortify his CV, according
to USDA epidemiologist Raymond Louie. He has been with the
department since 1966 and recalls that when he began his career,
publications were rare for an applicant for a junior position.
Today, they are so prevalent that their absence from a CV
is enough to disqualify a candidate. But because everyone
publishes now, a CV festooned with article citations
seldom lifts one above the crowd. The CVs grow longer
as candidates compete against one another in an arms race
with high stakes and few winners, admits Louie. Publications,
by becoming ubiquitous, are falling from the lofty perch.
More illuminating still, some corporate employers deem academic
publications irrelevant. Miles Johnson, a media information
specialist at the Ford Motor Company, will not look twice
at an applicant who has published books and articles on an
esoteric subject. Ford hires interns and permanent staff who
have published their prose in magazines or newspapers. Even
the school newspaper is good enough for Johnson, so long as
the prose in it catches the reader’s attention and does not
require great effort to follow.
“We’re looking for people who have a background in journalism
rather than in any kind of academic publishing,” he says.
The same is true at Qwest, where recruiter Michelle Keller
favors applicants savvy in technology. “We look to hire people
with solid computer skills,” she says. Qwest’s slogan is “ride
the light.” Its recruiters do not have time to gauge the thickness
of CVs or count the number of articles listed.
The ornaments of academe do not dazzle those in the world
of fiber optics. Mergers and microchips have overturned the
conventional wisdom that one must publish or perish. It is
perfectly possible for one to publish and then perish. Not
a very comforting thought, but a sobering one nonetheless.
