Publish or Perish?

As someone who has published a lot of articles from the time I was in graduate school I have a perverse fascination with the business of publishing in economic journals, citation patterns of articles, and critiques of the entire process.  See I was fortunate to teach at NYU from 1990-1998 and during that time I won the College of Arts & Sciences Teaching Award and also published 2 books, edited 4 books, and published over 50 articles in journals and books.  I absolutely loved teaching at NYU and working with Israel Kirzner and Mario Rizzo.  The students were great, the city was great, and the discussions over Austrian economics with Kirzner, Rizzo, Salerno, Butos, Koppl, Ikeda, Choi, Sautet and later David Harper were phenomenal.  But I proved the old academic saying of publish or perish wrong because I published and perished at the tenure and promotion stage.

The reason was straightforward.  I might have published, but none in the top tier journals that mattered for the T&P committee at NYU.  My best papers at the time were in journals like Public Choice, Journal of Economic Perspectives and Eastern Economic Journal.  Even if my papers received citations and some professional awards, the papers were not published in the  AER or JPE and I couldn't argue with that observation.  NYU made clear the T&P standards on the day I received the keys to my office in 1990, and that in 1997 there would be a high probability that I would need to turn in those office keys.  So I have no animosity toward NYU, nor to the high standards the department holds for its junior faculty (during my 8 years only 1 junior faculty member received tenure).*

But I have always looked for arguments and evidence which might raise some doubts on the standard that says that only publication in top tier journals can be interpreted as contributions to scientific knowledge.  We all know of cases where the top journals passed on major papers, e.g., Tullock's original paper on rent-seeking, and we know too well of the number of papers that appear in the AER that don't add to our knowledge in the least bit.  So I was thrilled when Mario Rizzo sent me this paper  (Download Prestigeous_Scholarly_Journals.pdf) today by Andrew Oswald  from Economica  (February 2007).  Oswald concludes that  it is dangerous to look at the prestige of the journal rather than the content of the article when making scholarly assessments of articles.  The publication process he discovers routinely pushes high quality articles (as measured by life-time citations) into lower tier journals, and lower quality articles into higher ranked journals.

So I will continue to publish articles and books (my rate of output has actually increased on articles since coming to GMU and my book output has declined slightly -- this is my 9th year at GMU and I have published 2 books, edited 3 multi-volume book collections, and published 75 articles, and my placement is in higher tier outlets) because I enjoy the learning process associated with research and writing, and I hope to track truth and communicate that truth to my peers.  The publishing process of peer review has its quirks, but it is for the most part helpful.   But what it doesn't do, is guarantee that one can look at the prestige of the journal as an accurate proxy of the quality of the article you are about to read.  That you have to do yourself --- and so should T&P committees.

* I tell my students that there are two interpretations of standards which young scholars within the Austrian tradition have to get used to --- (1) the senior faculty tell you that the standard of publication is a standard that they themselves could never live up to, and (2) since they don't measure up to the top tier journal standard they publish in the same journals as you do, but since they are trying to be in the top tier journals their articles look like the articles in the top journals and are on similar topics than what would be in the top journals, so they discount your articles in the same journals as their articles because your articles don't look like the articles in the mainstream top journals and they don't address the same topics as in the mainstream top journals.  The second bias is the more difficult one to deal with, but you just have to keep at it and publishing.  If you are in JEBO and they are in JEBO, it is a JEBO hit even if your paper is of a philosophical nature.

Comments

[Mario]

A student of mine (Paul Dower) made an interesting point about the length of time that it takes to make a reputation in the "middle" journals. If it is longer than in the "top tier" journals, then, assuming a relatively short discount rate on the part of department chairmen, deans and university presidents, it is "rational" (there goes that word again) for them to promote on the basis of top-tier journal publications.

[Econometron]

FYI Peter, your writing is possibly the most clear and concise among economists.

[Calca]

Peter,

Since I never took a class in Economics (I was a math major) I recently bought your textbook "The economic way of thinking". It's beautifully written. Great reading.