Publish or perish: a study on academic misconduct in publishing among Chinese doctoral students

Abstract Publishing is a critical avenue for scholars and a significant challenge for Chinese doctoral students. This study employs online ethnography to examine discussions on academic publishing anomie in the ‘Graduated Group’, including interviews with 10 doctoral students to explore the dynamics of academic misconduct. Under the high-pressure environment of ‘publish or perish’, the aspiration of ‘academia as a career’ is being replaced by the means of ‘publishing as a profession’. As the tension between the growing demand for academic publications and the limited availability of journal space intensifies, doctoral students resort to riskier publishing strategies. Utilizing Merton’s anomie theory, this study identifies three types of academic misconduct: innovative, rebellious, and ritualistic. These behaviors, which deviate from the original intent of evaluation systems, reflect students’ helplessness under performance metrics and their rational risk assessment, highlighting the need to address these challenges to protect the academic ecosystem.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  British Journal of Sociology of Education

• Publication date

  2025-02-18

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/01425692.2025.2454315
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Publish and flourish: investigating publication requirements for PhD students in China

  2023cited by this paper
• Does the tenure track influence academic research? An empirical study of faculty members in China

  2023cited by this paper
• Conducting doctoral research in China: an exploration of international students’ motivation to study at Chinese universities

  2023cited by this paper
• What drives Chinese scholars to publish in international journals? Motivations and implications

  2021cited by this paper
• How the publish-or-perish principle divides a science: the case of economists

  2020cited by this paper
• Bounded rationality and the Brexit negotiations: why Britain failed to understand the EU

  2020cited by this paper
• Students of Academic Capitalism: Emotional Dimensions in the Commercialization of Higher Education

  2020cited by this paper
• Academic Integrity from China to the United States: The Acculturation Process for Chinese Graduate Students in the United States

  2019cited by this paper
• FROM THE DIVISION OF LABOR IN SOCIETY

  2019cited by this paper
• The PhD Experience: A Review of the Factors Influencing Doctoral Students’ Completion, Achievement, and Well-Being

  2018cited by this paper
• Journal Retractions: Some Unique Features of Research Misconduct in China

  2018cited by this paper
• Contemporary trends in professional doctorates

  2018cited by this paper
• On academic capitalism

  2018cited by this paper
• From product to process. The reform of doctoral education in Europe and China

  2018cited by this paper
• Publishing, patenting, and standardization: Motives and barriers of scientists

  2018cited by this paper
• Publish or perish: how Central and Eastern European economists have dealt with the ever-increasing academic publishing requirements 2000–2015

  2017cited by this paper
• Evidence

  2017cited by this paper
• Mining Chinese social media UGC: a big-data framework for analyzing Douban movie reviews

  2016cited by this paper
• Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice

  2016cited by this paper
• Publish or Perish mantra in the medical field: A systematic review of the reasons, consequences and remedies

  2016cited by this paper
• The struggle to make sense of doctoral study

  2015cited by this paper
• Statistical relationships between journal use and research output at academic institutions in South Korea

  2015cited by this paper
• Scientific Dishonesty

  2015cited by this paper
• Understanding the changing faculty workforce in higher education: A comparison of non-tenure track and tenure line experiences

  2015cited by this paper
• Impact-oriented science policies and scientific publication practices: The case of life sciences in Japan

  2015cited by this paper
• Perceptions of the UK’s Research Excellence Framework 2014: a media analysis

  2014cited by this paper
• ‘Teach us how to do it properly!’ An Australian academic integrity student survey

  2014cited by this paper
• Students’ Academic Cheating in Chinese Universities: Prevalence, Influencing Factors, and Proposed Action

  2013cited by this paper
• Doctoral Student Satisfaction: An Examination of Disciplinary, Enrollment, and Institutional Differences

  2012cited by this paper
• Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications

  2012cited by this paper
• Attitudes and Behaviors Related to Academic Dishonesty: A Survey of Taiwanese Graduate Students

  2012cited by this paper
• Coercive Citation in Academic Publishing

  2012cited by this paper
• Living with the H-Index? Metric Assemblages in the Contemporary Academy

  2012cited by this paper
• Honorary and ghost authorship in high impact biomedical journals: a cross sectional survey

  2011cited by this paper
• University research funding and publication performance--An international comparison

  2010cited by this paper
• Publish or perish in China

  2010cited by this paper
• Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists' Bias? An Empirical Support from US States Data

  2010cited by this paper
• Empirical analysis on chinese academic plagiarism

  2009cited by this paper
• Rethinking doctoral publication practices: writing from and beyond the thesis

  2008cited by this paper
• Coauthorship linkages between universities and industry in Japan

  2007cited by this paper
• Behavioral Ethics in Organizations: A Review

  2006cited by this paper
• The Field behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communities

  2002cited by this paper
• The Cost of Managerialism: The Implications for the "McDonaldisation" of Higher Education in Hong Kong.

  1999cited by this paper
• Academic Duty

  1998cited by this paper
• Deviancy from the norms of science: The effects of anomie and alienation in the academic profession

  1993cited by this paper
• Crime and the American Dream

  1993cited by this paper
• Science as a Vocation in the 1990s: The Changing Organizational Culture of Academic Science.

  1990cited by this paper
• Merton's “social structure and anomie”: The road not taken

  1988cited by this paper
• Efficiency in academe: Comparative advantage vs. "publish or perish."

  1985cited by this paper
• Durkheim's Theory of Anomie

  1974cited by this paper
• Publish or Perish--A Defense.

  1969cited by this paper
• Suicide

  1968cited by this paper
• Social Structure and Anomie

  1938cited by this paper
• Suicide: A Study in Sociology

  year unknowncited by this paper

• Exploring PhD students’ utilization of generative AI in academic writing for publication purposes: Insights for EAP

  2026cites this paper
• From tool to partner: generative AI usage patterns and research performance among doctoral students

  2026cites this paper
• Why the Scholarly Publishing Community Has Failed to Contain Predatory Journals? An Institutional and Systemic Analysis

  2025cites this paper
• How Managing up Fuels Doctoral Students’ Work Engagement: The Roles of Passion and Motivation

  2025cites this paper
• Designing research and publication ethics assignments for doctoral students in higher education institutes

  2025cites this paper
• Exploring the Ethical Implications of Using Generative AI Tools in Higher Education

  2025cites this paper
• What determines PhD graduates’ employability in Chinese academia? A graduate capital perspective

  2025cites this paper
• Coping with Pressure: Research Misconduct and Ethical Sensemaking among Indonesian Social Science Faculty

  2025cites this paper
• Autoethnographic insights into accelerated PhD completion: navigating macro and micro context for organizational performance scale

  2025cites this paper
• Fifty Years of Retracted Medical Publications From 1975 to 2024: A Comprehensive Analysis of Trends, Reasons, and Countries Using the Retraction Watch Database

  2025cites this paper
• Fraudulent Research Falsely Attributed to Credible Researchers—An Emerging Challenge for Journals?

  2025cites this paper