Call for Abstracts
The Neoliberal University as a Research Factory: Academia in an Age of Metrics, Bureaucratisation and Institutional Pressure
18-19 September 2026 at the University of Latvia (Riga, Latvia and hybrid)
Online participation is possible
Accommodation may be provided for speakers without institutional support
Up to eight €250 travel bursaries may be available to selected participants without institutional support
Across the world, universities are increasingly evaluated through systems of measurement, rankings and bibliometric indicators that seek to quantify and rank ‘excellence’, ‘impact’ and ‘productivity’. While, in some cases, we can observe more contextual and mixed approaches to research evaluation, and in a minority, a total rejection of the ranking exercise, the majority of evaluation exercises remain heavily based on metrics. Quantitative indicators increasingly determine academic careers, funding allocation, promotion criteria and institutional reputation through publication metrics and international rankings.
Under pressure to rapidly align with perceived ‘international standards’, to outsource and/or simplify evaluation processes, a growing number of universities and governments have come to equate quality with measurable outputs: the number of articles produced, citation counts, journal rankings, SCOPUS quartiles and so on. While citations, journal rankings and productivity may be considered indicators of research performance, they are certainly not the only indicators of research quality.
Moreover, quantitative criteria can often be manipulated. Citation cartels and reciprocal citation practices (“I cite you, you cite me”) can significantly influence journal rankings and visibility. At the same time, disciplines operate at different speeds. Some fields, such as philosophy or anthropology, are low-speed and produce far fewer publications per year than ‘faster’ disciplines such as medicine or biology (Polese, 2019). Yet evaluation systems often struggle to account for these differences.
These developments are being exacerbated by the rapid mainstreaming of AI and LLMs. While such tools can support research, they may also contribute to increasing pressure for ever-greater output, raising questions about quality, originality and the production of low-value or repetitive research.
Consequences of metric-driven academia
We suggest that the growing reliance on metrics has at least four significant consequences.
First, it intensifies pressure to publish with no notion of ‘how much is too much’. Researchers may feel the pressure to compete with highly productive colleagues within their own discipline, while slower disciplines face pressure to adopt publication patterns characteristic of faster ones. To take one example, between 2015 and 2021 MDPI increased its number of journals from 148 to 206, while the number of published papers grew from 17,379 to 233,936. Similar patterns hold across other publishers. This is to say that, unless universities increased their research staff thirteen-fold over the same period, this points towards a broader phenomenon of academic overproduction. We know that quality needs time. If in the same period it used to take to produce one article you now produce three, four or five, there is a clear risk that quality will drop. Moreover, who has the time to read this huge new volume of articles?
Second, contemporary evaluation systems increasingly reward what is termed ‘productivity’, often measured by publication counts. This rests on the assumption that scholarly output can continue to expand indefinitely and that ‘more is better’ when it comes to scholarship. This has resulted in the fragmentation of research through practices such as salami slicing, where findings are distributed across multiple articles rather than published as a more coherent single piece of work.
Third, these dynamics continuously raise expectations regarding what constitutes ‘normal’ academic productivity, with clear implications for researcher mental health. Regions seeking to catch up with global leaders are encouraged to produce more. Departments compare themselves to increasingly productive competitors. Doctoral and postdoctoral researchers face growing expectations regarding publication records, while established academics may find themselves judged against standards shaped by very different institutional environments and disciplinary cultures.
Fourth, growing demand for publications has contributed to the flourishing of predatory and semi-predatory, as well as pay-as-you-publish journals, business-track publishing models, paper mills and other commercial enterprises that profit from the pressures on researchers. In such contexts, publications may increasingly be judged by where they appear rather than by their contribution.
Who wants this?
Rather than attributing these developments to an ‘evil machine’, it is fully possible to regard them as a case of ‘empty cockpit pilot’ (cit. Luyendijk, 2015) where everyone follows, convinced that someone’s in charge. We can see all this as a practical application of to the theory of unintended consequences. Individual researchers, teams, departments and institutions seek to maintain competitiveness, prestige and visibility. Yet the accumulation of many short-term decisions can generate systemic outcomes for which no single actor feels responsible.
Scientists, however, are among those most directly affected by these developments, and have an important role to play in shaping the future of research evaluation and academic practice. For this reason, we propose a hybrid workshop that creates space for discussion, critique and policy reflection. We particularly welcome three types of contributions:
1. Empirically based studies
Research examining how academia is evolving, including studies of mental health, academic labour, career trajectories, precarity, citation practices, publication pressures, coping strategies, prestige-building mechanisms and other aspects of contemporary academic life.
2. Critical analyses of academic practices
Papers exploring (un)ethical academic practices, the commercialisation and exploitation of academia by extra-academic actors, predatory publishing, paper mills, research evaluation systems and their consequences, open science, research integrity and related issues. While recognising important initiatives such as Plan S and OpenAIRE, we are also interested in discussions of how they might be extended or strengthened.
3. Policy oriented contributions
Papers proposing practical responses to the challenges outlined above, whether at institutional, national or global levels, including reforms to research evaluation systems, academic governance and the protection of academic freedom. We welcome reflections on stakeholders, governance arrangements, incentive structures and possible reforms that would allow researchers to focus on scientific quality, intellectual creativity and making a positive contribution to society, rather than primarily on gaming metric performance.
We welcome contributions from all world regions. National case studies, comparative analyses and cross-regional perspectives are particularly encouraged.
Practical arrangements
Online presentations are welcome.
Meals will be provided for all in-person participants.
Accommodation (two nights in Riga) may be covered for participants without institutional support (please check with your institution first, since that would allow us to fund those with no support).
Up to eight travel bursaries (€250) will be offered to selected speakers who do not have institutional support.
If interested, please send a presentation title, abstract (up to 300 words) and short bio (3-5 sentences) to Dr Liam O'Farrell at liam@edu.lu.lv by 21 June 2026. We endeavour to respond by the end of June to allow sufficient time for travel arrangements where necessary. If you are requesting accommodation or to be considered for a travel grant, please also include this in your email and confirm you are unable to access funding from your institution.
NB: we do not plan a publication coming out of this workshop. The goal is to discuss, compare, debate and take our time in a pressure-free environment rather than ‘producing’. Follow-up initiatives depend on the outcomes of the discussions and interactions at the workshop.
Cited works
Luyendijk, J. (2015) Swimming with sharks: My journey into the world of the bankers. Guardian Books.
Polese, A. (2023) The unsustainability of the “pay-as-you-go” publishing model, https://researchwhisperer.org/2023/03/07/unsustainability-of-pay-as-you-go/
Polese, A. (2021) “Open access at no cost? Just ditch academic journals”, Research Whisperer
Polese, A. (2019) The SCOPUS diaries and the (il)logics of academic survival: A short guide to design your own strategy and survive bibliometrics, conferences and unreal expectations in academia. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag
This workshop is organised by the ORCA project (grant ID: 101182752), funded under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme.