Publish or perish revisited: Persistence, academic labour, and institutional logics in scholarly publishing

Abstract

Academic publishing is increasingly guided by performance-based evaluation systems that demand continuous output from academics at different career stages.

Existing literature has examined publication pressure, productivity, and research assessment, but persistence in academic publishing continues to receive insufficient attention. It is often conflated with individual motivation, resilience, or publication volume.

Drawing on labour process theory and institutional logics, persistence is redefined as an ongoing form of academic labour influenced by institutional logics and evaluative governance.

A conceptual model was developed to explain how persistence emerges through the interaction among institutional logics, labour conditions, and adaptive publishing practices.

The paper identifies sustained scholarly engagement, compliance-driven publishing, and fragile or interrupted participation as different persistence patterns while explaining how evaluation systems create opportunities, constraints, and unequal career outcomes.

This paper contributes to higher education policy by clarifying how evaluation systems organise publishing labour and by identifying institutional conditions required for sustainable and ethically grounded scholarly participation.

Keywords

academic publishing, academic labour, institutional logics, publication persistence, higher education policy

Citation