Publish or perish revisited: Persistence, academic labour, and institutional logics in scholarly publishing

Academic publishing is increasingly guided by performance-based evaluation systems that demand continuous output from academics at different career stages. Existing literature has examined publication pressure, productivity, and research assessment, but persistence in academic publishing continues to receive insufficient attention. It is often conflated with individual motivation, resilience, or publication volume. Consequently, there is still no clear account of how academics develop, sustain, or break down when trying to publish under evaluation-driven systems and uneven work conditions. Drawing on labour process theory and institutional logics, persistence is redefined as an ongoing form of academic labour influenced by institutional logics and evaluative governance. Building on studies of higher education, academic labour, and research evaluation, a conceptual model was developed to explain how persistence emerges through the interaction among institutional logics, labour conditions, and adaptive publishing practices. Four research questions guided the discussion. Different persistence patterns, including sustained scholarly engagement, compliance-driven publishing, and fragile or interrupted participation, were identified and discussed, with an explanation of how feedback loops connect evaluation outcomes to future opportunities and constraints. The paper explains how recurring patterns of disengagement, ethical risk, and unequal career outcomes across academic systems occur by shifting attention from individual endurance to institutional Organisation. A policy-relevant critique of evaluation systems that reward visible persistence while overlooking and under-supporting the labour that sustains scholarly publishing was offered. This paper contributes to higher education policy by clarifying how evaluation systems organise publishing labour and by identifying institutional conditions required for sustainable and ethically grounded scholarly participation.