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  • Writer's pictureJason Thatcher

On the perils of counting papers & research rankings to scholarly life.

Updated: Aug 16, 2022

On the perils of research productivity papers and rankings.

A student recently asked me: "what I thought was the most damaging paper to the field? The least interesting? That created a path dependency that hurt the field's progress?"


I suspect they thought I would say TAM and its derivatives. It's not - at that moment in time - it was brilliant. Fred's intuition that usability and utility mattered was groundbreaking.


I replied: it was the papers on research productivity and tenure - that appeared in ISR and MISQ - they created anchors that limited aspirations of a generation of assistant professors - and they continue to - they told people that two or so great papers was enough - and while they also commented on ideas - people remember the "n".


The conversation progressed - with the student commenting - that it was ironic, coming from me, because I write a lot of papers - there was a lot of laughter - esp. when I blushed after the comment.


I was thinking about the conversation today - after talking to a new student - the problem, I think, with rankings, comparisons of productivity, and bold statements about the "n" required to tenure - it detracts from two things: ideas and aspirations.


Publishing "n" number of papers in the "right" journals doesn't mean that you published anything worth reading. We should be focused on ideas - directing attention to "n" and outlets - detracts from the broader endeavor of developing ideas.


Focusing attention on a "sufficient n" to earn tenure limits aspirations. It directs attention to reaching a threshold of papers, that may or may not be enough to earn tenure, and more importantly, may or may not say anything important.


Saying something important is not a function of an "n" of papers - it's a function of a body of work - that sometimes requires just one paper to sum up and other times requires many more.


So what to do? Maybe, as a field, and as professors, we need to get back to talking about the ideas - and stop focusing on "n" - so that we get back to teaching young faculty to focus on their ideas and aspirations - because those are what change the world - and professors are paid to change the world.




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