The research found that 62 percent of participants – communication and media scholars – had experienced mental health problems at some points in their lives, in line with other studies investigating mental health in academia but higher than the general population. Other studies also found lower wellbeing levels in academia compared to the general population and higher levels of stress compared to other professional contexts.

Dr Hanitzsch, Chair and Professor of Communication in the Department of Media and Communication at LMU Munich, tells QS Insights Magazine that the inspiration for initiating research on the topic came from both his personal experience and the realisation that researchers themselves sometimes spread misperceptions of academic work that may be detrimental.

“When you scroll through social media, you see people’s successes. But how many times do people say, ‘Oh, all the papers I submitted got rejected’? People only speak about their successes, and this gives you a very biased image of what is going on,” he says.

Age is Just a Number

Pressure to publish has been blamed for negatively affecting research quality and originality and even fuelling misconduct. In past issues of QS Insights Magazine, the publish or perish culture was highlighted as one of the causes behind the ongoing problem of predatory and unethical publishing, now exacerbated by Generative AI.

Research has also documented its negative influence on academics’ mental health.

Its effect is particularly evident for early-career researchers (ECRs).

According to a qualitative report gathering the views of UK researchers, pressure to publish starts early in a researcher’s career.

“[…] if you don't have publications during PhD time you won't be able to get a post-doc, you won't be able to get funding and you're done,” said a participant, condensing the experience of many PhD students around the world.

Continual pressure of this kind, the report reads, “was considered to be damaging to researchers’ mental health and wellbeing – often leading to researchers leaving the sector and, in a small number of extreme circumstances, taking their own life.”

Dr Bonginkosi Mutongoza, a lecturer at the University of Fort Hare, conducted research into the mental health effects of the publish or perish culture among early career researchers in South Africa. His research found that the pressure to publish was resulting in mental health challenges as ECRs “pushed themselves beyond their limits.”

Speaking to QS Insights Magazine, he mentions several instances of burnout and mental health difficulties he has witnessed or heard of in his academic community. “It’s almost like in academia boundaries don’t exist,” he says.

“This is something that must cause all institutions to come to a standstill and rethink their work cultures.

“It's an environment where one is constantly being told ‘you're not enough’. You need to do more. You need to work more. You need to push more. Once you've published a paper, when is the next one coming in? After you publish the next one, when is the next one coming in? When are you going to a conference?”

He always urges the PhD students and ECRs he mentors to get enough sleep and guard their personal time, he says.

As pressure to publish is particularly linked to incentives or promotion, Dr Mutongoza says it fizzles out as academics progress in their career.

While career progression is less of a worry as researchers attain higher academic positions, such as tenure, many other demands emerge. “The number of plates that you are spinning has a tendency to creep up over the years as your research expands,” Dr Johnathon Anderson, a research scientist and Associate Professor at the University of California Davis, and a start-up co-founder, explains.

Publish and Perish

“It can be an extremely rewarding career...but burnout is a real thing in academia. The job requires one's total focus, which often comes at the neglect of other parts of their lives,” says Dr Anderson, speaking of the “tremendous pressure” academics are under to constantly publish papers and obtain external funding.

“The pressure to deliver is high. And if you don't deliver, then you're asked to move on. And if you're asked to move on, that's the end of your research career. So, it's a huge investment, but it's very risky.”

But even if the risk pays off professionally, the price may still be high.

The original phrase, publish or perish, only concerned the professional context: either you publish, or you lose your job. But awareness is growing that professional success attained via intense stress will still have negative consequences.

In Dr Hanitzsch and colleagues’ research, 43 percent of respondents were at severe or very severe risk of burnout.

“Everyone is speaking about publish or perish as if one thing goes at the expense of the other. But for many scientists, both are actually true. They kind of perish psychologically, despite publishing quite a lot,” Dr Hanitzsch says.

According to a study he co-authored, working conditions are not exactly conducive to a healthy work-life balance. Asked what it takes to be successful in academia, 77 percent of the media and communication researchers that participated in the study agreed that working overtime and on vacation is ‘a must’. More than a third said that prioritising work over other things in life is necessary to make it in academia. Unsurprisingly, 73 percent said that they found it hard to balance their professional and private lives.

“Probably none of these roles come with a nice work-life balance. But that pressure to publish pushes boundaries even more, and that puts our health at risk,” explains Dr Marie-Helene Pelletier, a psychologist and executive coach who has been working with academics for two decades.

Putting boundaries in place is hard, because publication count often becomes tied to one’s identity as a sign of professional success.

Things can snowball from pressure to publish to burnout. The pressure can increase stress, which decreases the cognitive resources for attaining the goal to publish and all the other tasks academics need to perform, and this can affect mood, Dr Pelletier explains.

“You get exhausted, a bit hopeless, cynical about whether your goals are even possible – and then your performance starts decreasing. This is the definition of burnout.”

She urges academics to notice warning signs.

Changes in behaviour, such as being more impatient, taking longer to make a decision, struggling to concentrate, or feeling numb, isolated, or powerless, need attention.

“When you notice these signs, you want to step back. And often you need to step back with someone,” Dr Pelletier explains.

“Whether it's a trusted peer, a mentor, or an executive coach, you need someone to support you because it’s hard to look at this on your own. It's useful to have another perspective.”

Tenure Pills

Work stress is rarely talked about even among colleagues, says the researcher quoted in the introduction.

“You're supposed to put on a brave face. Everyone has a tendency to suffer in silence and mitigate this in different ways,” they say.

“There's pretty rampant abuse of stimulant drugs, to help pull the long hours and stay hyper focused, especially as folks enter middle age,” they say.

“I have seen that happen to colleagues. This would be things like Adderall, Modafinil, those kinds of stimulants. Alcohol is common too, to take the edge off.”

Another researcher recalls: “Everybody was on Adderall. It’s common.”

A quick look at Reddit confirms this is a topic of discussion with a user referring to Adderall as the ‘tenure pill’.

This is not a new issue. There are some fairly old articles and research reporting the use of these substances among some students and professors, including a 2008 informal survey of 1,400 Nature readers which found ‘large-scale use’ of cognition-enhancing drugs.

There is no data available to comprehensively quantify the phenomenon, and while this could plausibly be just a minority, it should still be a concern as it’s another sign that the work culture is unsustainable.

In some instances, it’s not even prescription drugs but caffeine and energy drinks.

Another researcher who wished to remain anonymous remembers the stress of the end of their PhD during the pandemic, when they faced intense pressure to publish and were concerned about their future career amid the competition.

“I got into a very toxic relationship with energy drinks until it became very bad,” they say.

The challenge with performance-enhancing drugs is that some will consider them as “a way to maintain a 'competitive edge',” Dr Pelletier explains. “Some associate them with a safe, normalised practice that only has benefits, which is not the case.”

Exercise, sleep and nutrition are healthier ways to enhance cognitive performance, she explains.

Systemic Issues

Unsurprisingly, this work culture impacts retention as well.

“It's not uncommon for academics to switch careers once they've had their fill of the rat race. There is massive attrition along the way,” Dr Anderson says.

In the study by Dr Hanitzsch and colleagues, 44 percent of survey participants reported they had considered leaving academic work within the next 12 months.

Since the publish or perish culture has well-documented negative effects, a key question emerges: why haven’t things changed yet?

According to Dr Hanitzsch, this is the question everybody in academia is asking.

“I think the problem arises from the way the system is constructed. The individual scholar and people in leadership positions have very limited leverage to change that system – we’d have to change the entire research culture.”

There are some efforts to implement a healthier research culture in the field he works in, he says, but more needs to be done.

Dr Mutongoza also points to the fact that the issue is systemic and, sometimes, academics themselves perpetuate it.

“Universities are chasing numbers – research publications, new enrolments, the best researchers, etc. Very few people want to be open about this. Who is going to produce those numbers? It’s their staff, their students,” he says.

“We have professors who come from a system that told them: ‘to become a professor, you need to publish. If you don’t, you are nothing in this game.’ As a result, those people force the same thing on the next generation of researchers.”

Support is crucial, but it’s not available or accessible.

In research by Dr Hanitzsch and colleagues, only 13 percent of participants said they had access to sufficient mental health services offered by their organisation.

According to a report by the UK charity Education Support, common barriers to accessing wellbeing support were a lack of time due to workload and inflexible schedules. Over half (59 percent) of the participants in the research also said they feared they would be seen as weak if they sought help, and 71 percent either agreed or strongly agreed that it would harm their careers.

Together with accessible and effective support, the problem needs to be tackled at the source. And beyond addressing mental health stigma and the glorification of overwork, the concept of productivity itself needs to be rethought.

“We need to start a serious conversation about necessary changes to our academic culture, including dealing with a potentially toxic publications arms race,” the study by Dr Hanitzsch and colleagues reads.

“This aspect relates to rethinking standards and criteria applied to measure scholarly ‘productivity.’ Despite many organisations claiming to pay attention to a range of other experiences, publication output often trumps other qualities.”

If you or someone you know is experiencing mental health difficulties, support is available: https://www.nature.com/collections/gnlwffjgtr/support