PUBLISH OR PERISH is a well-worn adage in academia. Teachers anxious to gain appointment at the college or university level and those seeking to secure a tenured appointment know the importance of having their work validated particularly by a peer-reviewed publication or a respected publishing firm.

For several years I was a member of the Promotion and Appointment Committee at the University at Albany, a SUNY institution. In reviewing a candidate’s thick dossier covering an academic career, we members also paid special attention to student ratings for a teacher, and the record of Community Service.  For example, on what university committees had the candidate served?  What kinds of service did the candidate perform for the profession, for the local city or state?  

Of these three criteria—publication, teaching performance, and community service—committee members informally acknowledged the most important criterion was publication.  To illustrate its importance, Barack Obama was never considered as a candidate for tenure at the School of Law, University of Chicago where he was a lecturer because his publication record was so poor.   

Digital changes in book publishing and in professional journals make selecting the best candidates for appointment and promotion even more difficult than in past years.  Publishing e-books and real books have become so easy today.  I once knew the names of a few vanity presses.  Now there are so many more of them.  Also. self-publishing has gained a new legitimacy. Large booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble are anxious to make digital books available to their customers.

Today, available options are different for an author whose work cannot find a publisher.  Karen McQuestion, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal, tried for ten years to interest a publisher in her novel. Having failed, she decided to produce an online version, and in eleven months her e-book, A Scattered Life, sold 36,000 copies.  This cautionary tale raises two questions.

First, was it wise for the author not to accept the decision of the New York publishing world?  The money McQuestion put up to publish the novel has been paid back and yielded her a profit. But there was no guarantee of that. Traditionally authors expect an advance rather than an expenditure after completing a manuscript. A candidate seeking promotion as a tenured professor has even more at stake in terms of future earnings and maintaining a reputation as a scholar.  Would she be justified in seeking to support her dossier by paying for the publication of her professional work?

Second, were the New York publishers mistaken? The large sale of Karen McQuestion’s novel raises doubt about the decisions of the gatekeepers of publication.  A paperback edition will soon be published, and a Hollywood producer has paid for a film option.  Obviously, the decisions of publishers can be mistaken.  The decisions of committee members on promotion and appointment committees at universities can also be mistaken.  

Perhaps it’s time to overhaul "Publish or Perish." We readers  know that much of what has been published on paper does not represent high quality work. Publishers must publish to stay in business. Professional journals must keep to their schedule of publication. Always suspect, the need for Publish or Perish seems outmoded in the new Age of "Digital Publication."