Academics at play: Why the “publication game” is more than a metaphor

Nick Butler,Sverre Spoelstra

doi:10.1177/1350507620917257

Abstract

It is increasingly common to describe academic research as a “publication game,” a metaphor that connotes instrumental strategies for publishing in highly rated journals. However, we suggest that the use of this metaphor is problematic. In particular, the metaphor allows scholars to make a convenient, but ultimately misleading, distinction between figurative game-playing on one hand (i.e. pursuing external career goals through instrumental publishing) and proper research on the other hand (i.e. producing intrinsically meaningful research). In other words, the “publication game” implies that while academic researchers may behave just like players, they are not really playing a game. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, we show that this metaphor prevents us, ironically, from fully grasping the lusory attitude, or play-mentality, that characterizes academic work among critical management researchers. Ultimately, we seek to stimulate reflection about how our choice of metaphor can have performative effects in the university and influence our behavior in unforeseen and potentially undesirable ways.

Highlights

Academia is often characterized as a game that involves players and rules
We suggest that the metaphor of the publication game hides what is most central to the analogy and, that our respondents are more captured by the spirit of play than the metaphor of the publication game implies
How does metaphorical game-talk among our respondents influence the way they relate to their own work? Second, what happens when we start to understand critical scholars as players of a game? As we will show, when our respondents speak about the “publication game,” they implicitly accept the distinction between the literal and the figurative: precisely because academic game-playing is understood metaphorically, our respondents can assert that they do not really play a game. It is this belief that we seek to subject to scrutiny in this article, and it is on this basis that we suggest that play theory–to which we turn–has a lot to offer our analysis of academic work

Summary

Introduction

Academia is often characterized as a game that involves players and rules. For example, scholars are said to be involved in a “publication game” (Townsend, 2012), a “publish-or-perish game” (Martin, 2014), or a “research game” (Lucas, 2006). The metaphor of the publication game– which features prominently in our interviews with academics in the field of critical management studies (CMS)–implies that while researchers may behave just like players, they are not really playing a game. Critical scholars often approach their work with the same type of mentality as players of a game, to the extent that it is no longer possible to determine what is done in the pursuit of instrumental career goals and what is done in the pursuit of more scholarly objectives. Our main point is that the metaphor of the publication game prevents us, ironically, from fully grasping the “lusory attitude” (Suits, 2005), or play-mentality, that characterizes academic work among critical scholars. By continuing to view the publication game solely as a metaphor, we risk overlooking the damaging effects that this playmentality has on the production of knowledge in the field of CMS

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion