Publish or perish? The curse of the researcher

The idea of this post is to think about the need and urgency to publish in journals for an academic. To begin with, publishing regularly in good journals (peer-reviewed journals, covered in relevant indexes) is vital to upgrade your career as an academic.

This thing of publishing is a pimple I found when I finished my doctoral dissertation and started to take an interest in lecturing and academic career. I believed that to be smart and handsome (so to speak), to have a PhD and an MBA would be enough to get you hired at any university or business school. But it does not.

So there are two types of complementary reasons to publish in journals:

Reasons first class, politically correct, which editors love:

• to improve the world and the science, producing solutions for our human problems.
• because you are passionate about your research and you want to broadcast it.
• as a reward in itself and a certification that your research activity is good enough.

Pragmatic reasons for pirates of the Caribbean, and survivors of the academic jungle:

• to improve your curriculum and stand out.
• to find a tenure position, or just a professor job.
• to meet the requirements of the tenure, and not be fired.
• to raise funds for your future research.

But, what are your objectives for publishing? Do you meet the rules? Or publishing is above anything else? Even jeopardizing your reputation in the publishing industry?

Research is fine, you learn, meet people and have fun (rich man), but many times the process of publishing is the other side of the coin (poor man). Gaudeamus helps you to improve the process of publishing in journals.