Why Books Still Matter in Academic Psychology

I recently followed an interesting conversation about publishing in academic psychology on social media. A younger colleague had proudly presented a list of tips to increase scientific productivity and publish more research papers. Within minutes, several more experienced scientists told him that the mantra to publish as many scientific papers as possible might not be the best way to conduct meaningful psychological research.

Publish or perish

The more experienced scientists do have a point here, but so does the junior colleague. Early career researchers in psychology feel a lot of pressure to publish many research papers, as the number of papers, as well as the journals in which they are published, are major performance indicators when it comes to job applications in academia. This is where the often-cited remark, “Publish or perish!” comes from. If a scientist does not publish research papers at all, they are very unlikely to get a tenured faculty job.

Unfortunately, this pressure to publish has led to all sorts of problems in science, including behavior that has been termed “salami slicing.” In short, salami slicing means that somebody who conducts an empiric study tries to get as many publications as possible out of one project. Imagine somebody conducting a study on exercise and depression in 100 participants: 50 younger people and 50 older people. If the researcher decides to not write one publication with all 100 participants, but instead two publications, one with the 50 younger participants and the other with the 50 older participants, that would be considered “salami slicing.”

The logic behind salami slicing is that when applying for a faculty job (or just regarding general prestige), it looks better in one’s CV to have two rather than one publication. Unfortunately, it also leads to increasing fragmentation of the psychological research literature, with more and more papers covering research questions that focus on tiny details in very specific subgroups of the population. It also results in an increasing number of papers and makes it harder and harder to follow the literature on a specific research topic.

Researchers in psychology abandon the book.

Indeed, a recent study on publication practices in psychology and other social sciences (Savage et al., 2022) clearly shows that psychologists are abandoning long-format writing like books and publishing more and more short journal articles. In the study, the authors found out that between 2011 and 2019, the average number of articles that one faculty member in psychology published in a 5-year period increased from about 10 to about 13. In the same period, the average number of books published in a 5-year period decreased from 0.42 to 0.29. The authors then calculated the books-per-article rate change in percent and found out that it changed by -48 percent from 2011 to 2019.

Why books still matter

So, psychology researchers are clearly abandoning the book as a format for their publications. This may be directly related to the processes described above. In the time it takes to write one 12-chapter book, one could also write 12 (give or take a few) research articles. Thus, writing shorter-format articles will probably lead to more publications in one’s publication list than a book. Moreover, psychological research, in general, is increasingly focused on empirical, data-driven publications, given that more and more large-scale databases are available these days.

In general, data-driven research is, of course, a positive thing as it allows to comprehensively test psychological theories. However, it has been noted that fewer and fewer psychologists are willing to put testable theories out in their publications. This phenomenon has been termed the “Theory Crisis” in psychological research (Eronen & Bringmann, 2021) and is thought to represent one of the major challenges in psychological research in this decade.

Having good, testable theories of psychological constructs is at the core of research, and without proper theories to test, empirical research is in danger of turning into entirely data-driven fishing expeditions for significant results. I personally think that the “Theory Crisis” and the “Book Crisis” are likely not independent of each other. Back in 2007, when I started my Ph.D. on handedness and hemispheric asymmetries, I spent a lot of time reading classic books on my research subject. Books like Left Hand, Right Hand (2002) by Chris McManus, The Asymmetrical Brain (2004) by Kenneth Hugdahl and Richard J. Davidson, and The Lopsided Ape: Evolution of the Generative Mind (1991) by Mike Corballis gave me a theory-driven introduction to my research subject that few research papers could. Research papers are often limited in the number of words, and in order to develop a good theory, it is often beneficial to have a bit more space to write out novel ideas and describe all the relevant empirical literature that led to this novel idea. Moreover, papers tend to have a predefined format that does not allow for longer reflections of personal insights. As fewer and fewer psychologists are willing to take the time to write longer theoretical works, I am afraid the theory crisis will only get worse.

So, the next time you have a great idea, why not write a book about it? After all, what are the great psychologists of the past like Carl Gustav Jung and Siegmund Freud remembered for? Right: Their books.