Publication stress amongst scholars and faculties: a concern of mental health

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the seemingly entrenched culture of “publish or perish” on academics’ and lecturers’ mental health in academia. From an autoethnographic perspective, personal experiences of stress, anxiety and burnout are articulated and considered in terms of broader system issues within academia. Design/methodology/approach Using personal reflections on publication pressure and combining that with the broader existing literature on mental health in academia, this paper, like the ones mentioned above, has been written with autoethnography as the research mode. Autoethnography is a research method that allows for profoundly exploring personal experiences but frames them in a broader academic context, thereby allowing for a qualitative analysis of academics’ mental health challenges. Findings The pressure to publish in high-impact journals puts a person under a level of mental health stress that includes feeling anxious, feeling like an impostor and suffering from burnout. Therefore, this very unfitting competitive environment requires institutional support and strategies to mitigate the stress associated with publication. Originality/value This paper offers an autoethnographic view of the mental health difficulties in academia, providing a firsthand account of the emotional toll of academic publishing. This paper fleshes out the burgeoning discourse surrounding mental health within higher education by connecting personal experiences with systemic issues, pointing to changes in culture and structure.