Sadly. In a lot of areas, there is a lot of pressure to just...publish. I don’t think quality is they key anymore, just as long as you get something out there so you can check off a box.
Not to say there isn’t good quality research, there is just a lot of lackluster/bad/politically driven research, and the peer review process...well, it isn’t any better, and worse in some areas.
Agree!
It really goes back to two questions: (They are related too!)
1. “How do I measure academic (college & university) contribution\production?”.
The difficulty of coming up with metrics to decide tenure always comes down to someone’s judgment. Which leaves the “judging person\committee” open to all sorts of lawsuits.
2. Pressure to rapidly increase the number of women & minorities in the faculty lounges (and to some extent in the student body!)
The pressure to do it “now now” is enormous. Letting time sort it out is not allowable. So its increased by creating a myriad of questionable academic disciplines. “Studies this & studies that” where intellectual (or any sort even emotional!) discipline is a dirty word.