The publication game leads to trivial pursuits

So what should we do?

A ranking of journals by practitioners would be a good start as I estimate that it would be a sobering experience for most '4*' editors. As Adam says in his article the sole criteria for publication often seems to be whether a piece of research is well analysed rather than its global importance or relevance. The result is that top journals, at least in management and business, are full of well analysed trivia.

There is a lot of confusion among academics concerning where to publish research results. I am of the view that research design should be aimed at contributing to existing knowledge and published on platform with adequate peer review, plagiarism mechanism and good editorship. Top-ranked journals have very high article rejection rates and thousands of researchers cannot depend solely on them. This is a fact that HE institutions worldwide should appreciate. There are many other publication platforms, apart from top-ranked ones, that publish good quality articles.

IF journalism is simply a giant ponzi scheme

I love the 'dissection of trivia with an ever-sharper knife' - great image. And great sentiments in the article. This is all bad enough and prominent enough in UK, Australia and USA - where at least there is some insight into the problem, even if no will to do anything about it. What about China, Taiwan, Singapore? They seem to have no insight, just a huge drive to hit the top journals and, moreover, only to publish 'original' research - so a well conducted systematic review does not count; they simply plough on, on the whole, without assessing the state of the art. There are some individuals who buck that trend - at personal cost to career advancement. Declaration of interests: I edit the highest cited academic journal in my field (nursing); reject 50% of the articles on submission and publish on 20% overall.

All right and important. I still would like to add one point, subdivided: (i) generally, doesn't result-oriented, mostly empirically-oriented ("evidence-based") research as standard expectation and kind-off methodological ultimate ratio contribute ver much to such competitive orientation even before it comes to considerations concerning publication? I suppose such research is more inclined to competition than "fundamental research" ("Grundlagenforschung"). (ii) isn't already the entire system of (mass)education as PRIMARILY "vocational training like education, driving (future) researchers into the direction of competition-driven instead of knowledge-enhancement driven? - This begins already when looking at the way of dealing with applications by students for courses - see some experience-based views at https://wp.me/p1qrWe-1qC