[JohnKemeny]

This is only true to some extent, having myself been on a fair number of hiring committees.

While the institution and national agencies measure impact in terms of number of "level 1/level 2" papers, colleagues don't care at all about this value. What's important is number of single-author papers, number of papers without their advisor, number of different small group collaborations, and most of all, having papers accepted in the top venues.

A person with 50 shit papers will not even be considered for the job.

[ajsnigrutin]

Sure, but the same group of people that complains about (the publishing of) papers, is then in a position to change that, but doesn't. All those people that went through this process and complained, then (well.. a few years later) sit in univeristy comitees that decide what the hiring (and scoring) rules are, what are the requirements fo TAs, for professors and tenures, etc., and decide, that the "pain of publishing" is an ok thing to subject new generations to.

edit: i'm from slovenia, univeristies here are "autonomous" (not a direct part of the government.. except for being government funded), and they decide all the internal rules themselves.

[cvwright]

The problem is that academia is otherwise a pretty cushy job. It attracts a lot of people who want the prestige and like to talk, but don’t actually want to do any work.

Peer review and the paper chase are the least bad solution that we’ve come up with to address this.