“Publicationism” and scientists’ satisfaction depend on gender, career stage and the wider academic system

Abstract

The biological sciences have experienced a significant increase in journals and hence in publications in recent decades. The increasing number of research contributions reflects the “publish-or-perish” culture of science. The resulting pressure to publish may affect the publishing and working behaviour of researchers. However, the pressure to publish and the satisfaction while publishing scientific results may vary between genders and across career stages. Little effort has been taken to understand how scientists are affected by this pressure and how it may differ among groups of scientists. Therefore, we anonymously interviewed almost 1000 scientists from tshe field of the biological sciences, including female and male researchers at all career stages, to investigate potential negative effects of the pressure to publish, but also positive feelings (i.e. satisfaction) resulting from publishing. We assessed basic personal attributes (i.e. age, gender, career stage), and the personal attitude and feeling towards publishing. Our data indicates that “publicationism”, an index of stress arising from the pressure to publish, depends on age and gender. Female scientists suffered stronger from publicationism (publicationism score=2.577) than male scientists (score=2.364). Publicationism decreased with increasing age (drop of 0.19 index points), and was more intense for scientists from the United States (score=2.91) than for Germans (score=2.20). Most scientists felt satisfied when contributing to science by publishing their work and satisfaction lasted longer with increasing age. Our data show a weak negative correlation between publicationism and satisfaction. Thus, publishing in the biological sciences produces an ambivalent situation, which positively stimulates older, experienced scientists, but which may stress young researchers, in particular females. Publicationism further depends on the academic system and employer of the scientist.