Abstract
The main purpose of the article is to challenge the alarmingly widespread slogan “Publish or Perish”, which, according to many, succinctly captures the neoliberal spirit of modern scientific culture. In a psychological sense, this slogan has become viral, carries powerful destructive potential and fuels a feeling of being trapped and hopeless in academic circles. If we use the terminology of E. Fromm, then, in its essence, appealing specifically to death, and not, say, to dismissal, a change of profession or anything else, it is an expression of a necrophilic mental tendency, has great infectious and enchanting power, affects the deep structures of the human psyche and catalyzes the destructive mechanism dormant in it, directed against life and such fundamental manifestations as spontaneity, ease, spontaneity, anti-mechanism. There is an urgent need to contrast it with a biophilically oriented principle, which the article proposes in the following formulation: “Publish to live fully”. Justification of this imperative is not only an important theoretical task of studying publication activity as an organic component of intellectual activity, but also a practical issue of mental health and quality of life of scientific and teaching staff. It is stated that a true intellectual cannot help but strive to publish the results of his research, therefore, all encouragement for publications should be considered very useful, however, fatal harm can be caused by the abuse of negative motivation, manifested in the establishment of strict deadlines, the number of mandatory articles, and the imposition of certain ratings. journals, threats to deprive them of funding, not to hold a competition for a position, etc. Excessive negative motivation is a powerful stressor that pushes people to academic fraud, other immoral acts, and sometimes even suicide, when the ominous meaning of the “Publish or Perish” attitude is literally realized. The article also calls for overcoming the general obsession with highly rated journals, especially foreign ones, to which, for political reasons, domestic authors have very limited access.
Keywords
- slogan “Publish or perish”
- necrophilic orientation
- biophilic orientation
- publication activity
- intellectuals
- academic fraud
- education
- rational knowledge
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