The publish-or-perish culture has intensified global competition in academia, shaping
career trajectories, institutional rankings, and access to research funding. However,
behind this pressure to publish in top-tier journals lies a deeper crisis; the crisis of
authorship inequality, and rising dominance of elite scholars. These trends have a huge
negative impact as they are instrumental in the erosion of researcher well-being. In this
presentation, I will present findings from a six-decade analysis of authorship trends in
management and organization studies, highlighting how structural inequalities shape
knowledge production. This presentation will especially focus on the field of industrial
and organizational psychology. The research demonstrates that a small group of elite
institutions and scholars dominate high-impact journals, creating significant barriers for
researchers from less prestigious backgrounds. Editorial gatekeeping, preferential citation
practices, and institutional biases reinforce this dominance, making top-tier publishing

increasingly inaccessible. While diversity and inclusion initiatives are often promoted as
solutions, they paradoxically benefit the scientific elite, as high-status scholars continue
to control research agendas and publication standards. Beyond the systemic inequalities,
this culture of prestige-driven publishing takes a severe toll on the mental health and job
satisfaction of researchers. The pressure to publish frequently and in elite outlets
contributes to burnout, job insecurity, and an erosion of intrinsic motivation for scholarly
work. Academics, especially early-career researchers, often feel trapped in a cycle where
success is defined not by intellectual contributions but by meeting rigid, metric-driven
expectations. I will conclude by discussing possible reforms, including greater
transparency in peer review, a shift away from journal prestige as the primary measure of
academic success, and policies that prioritize quality over quantity in research evaluation.