Research Quality vs. Research Quantity

I recently read on LinkedIn how a department head bragged about how many papers his team published in highly ranked journals over the past year. This mentality has to stop because it does not lead to more, but to less quality. In fact, quantity competes with quality. Often “motivated” by the disincentive systems of their universities, many academics waste their time writing lots of papers that no one ever will cite. They should rather invest this time in writing one great paper. This can take years, but is worth doing. For example, Mark Granovetter is a highly acclaimed academic who some consider worthy of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Google Scholar counts almost 150,000 citations of his work. Yet, 70% and 84% of these citations refer to just 2 and 5 of his great papers, respectively. So if you ever sit on an assessment committee or make bonus decisions, do not just count the number of publications in certain journals per year. You might then overlook academic leaders like Granovetter.