Publish or Perish

So you got a job. Now it's time to start worrying about tenure. In a nutshell, getting tenure means you have ~6 years to complete the following all-encompasing but non-exhaustive precise list of vague tasks:

• Publish n papers per year, with 0<n<∞.
• Of these paper, less than or equal to n of them must be in a journal of Impact Factor k, where k is undefined.
• Make a quantifiable contribution to your field.
• Be an excellent teacher.

And then you get tenure. But don't ask anybody for precise values of n or k, because they don't know either, and guessing is frowned upon. Seems clear enough, right?

In my apple-cheeked optimism, I believed that these vagaries were due to the fact that tenure is a holistic process; they are evaluating the whole person, including you contextualized body of work, colleagueship, and natural charisma. An institution wants to give tenure, and this system will allow as many loopholes as possible towards that end. Unfortunately, many would disagree with me on this point, and I suspect that they might be correct. They would say that in fact these vagaries are in place to allow an institution to deny tenure without fear of legal reprocussions

Today I heard a Korean mathematician exposit on what it means to get tenure at a research institution in South Korea, and my jaw nearly hit the floor. Once hired by the institution, a mathematician has precisely 5 years to accrue a minimum of 600 points. Points are earned in the following way (and in no other way):

• 100 pts: single author for SCI publication.
• 100 x ²⁄_n+1: first author for SCI publication, where n is the number of authors.
• 100 x ¹⁄_n+1: collaborating author for SCI publication, where n is the number of authors.
• 70 pts: single author for SCI(E) publication.
• 0 pts: all other publications.

Now, bear in mind, for a number theorist, publishing one paper a year anywhere is already really really hard. So as I'm looking at these requirements, I'm struck first by the difficulty of it (read: impossible), and next by the wonderful clarity of it. Maybe jumping for a hoop that's too far away is still easier than jumping for a hoop that you can't even see.

But this also called up a bunch of other questions in my mind, particularly relating to academic integrity. How do you maintain honesty and integrity in your research program when your head is so firmly on the chopping block, and you are put in a somewhat desperate situation? How do you resist the urge to publish several weak papers in lieu of one strong paper, thus clogging the market and obscuring results? How do you prevent people from scooping their coauthors and pushing younger weaker mathematicians off of their papers? Or maybe everyone just works that much harder?

This particular Korean mathematician closed by saying

It is no longer sufficient to 'publish or perish.' Now you need to 'publish, get cited, or perish.'

Oh dear, the exquisite pain. I love it too much.

<3