Publications, Contributions, and the Social Dilemma of Scholarly Productivity: A Reaction to Aguinis, Debruin, Cunningham, Hall, Culpepper, and Gottfredson (2010)

In their article What Does Not Kill You (Sometimes) Makes You Stronger: Productivity Fluctuations of Journal Editors, Aguinis et al. (2010) find that major journal editors publish fewer journal articles (for a while) after being editors. The real story in Aguinis et al. (2010) is how the academic community defines what constitutes productivity for a scholar. Aguinis et al.'s (2010) apparently narrow focus on publications as scholarly productivity may reflect a reluctance by the academic community to acknowledge the critical importance of nonpublication scholarly contributions. If nonpublication contributions are necessary for the success of academia, that success is more likely when the nonpublication contributions that provide the foundation for publication excellence are measured, acknowledged, and rewarded.