Episode 6 – Publish or Perish with Dr Ruoying Zhou
Scroll through LinkedIn and you’ll see accepted papers, successful grants and promotions. What you rarely see are the rejections, the long review processes and the applications that didn’t come off.
In the sixth episode of Difficult Conversations, Dr Kike Ladipo and Dr Gez Williams talk to Dr Ruoying Zhou, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at the University of Leicester School of Business and the College of Business Early Career Researcher Representative. Ruoying explains how the pressure to publish changes from the PhD to early career and beyond, why it helps to see a rejection as a judgement of a manuscript at one point in time, and the support that makes the biggest difference: protected writing time, timely feedback from senior colleagues and an inclusive research culture. She also talks about the different roles mentors, collaborators and peers play, and why short-term pressure can push researchers towards safer, quicker projects.
Her advice for opening the conversation is to ask colleagues how their research is going, instead of how many papers they’ve published. If you’ve ever felt that everyone else is publishing faster than you, this conversation is a good place to start.
Listen to the episode
About our guest
Dr Ruoying Zhou is a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship. Her research focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship, with particular interests in university entrepreneurship ecosystems, dynamic capabilities, and the strategic implications of emerging technologies, including AI. She examines how organisations build capabilities to respond to disruption, foster innovation, and create economic and societal impact. She also supports research culture as the College of Business Early Career Researcher Representative, leading writing retreats and researcher development initiatives that support academic publishing and collaboration.
Useful links and resources
- Dr Ruoying Zhou, University of Leicester
- I-REACCH: Inclusive Research Environment Achieved through Culture Change
Timecodes
- 00:00 Welcome to Difficult Conversations
- 00:41 Introducing Dr Ruoying Zhou
- 01:51 What does publish or perish mean?
- 02:27 Why it can be a difficult conversation
- 03:32 The publishing pressures facing PGRs and early career researchers
- 05:03 How the pressure affects wellbeing, confidence and career decisions
- 06:00 The support that makes the biggest difference
- 07:42 Mentoring, collaboration and peer networks
- 09:19 Publishing on your own terms
- 09:59 Does the pressure ever disappear?
- 11:07 One change to academic publishing culture
- 12:04 How to start a conversation about publish or perish
- 13:20 Recognising that researchers work at different paces
- 15:54 What gives Ruoying hope
- 16:59 Closing reflections from Kike
- 18:57 Credits
Difficult Conversations is hosted by Dr Kike Ladipo and Dr Gez Williams, and produced by Chaos Created for I-REACCH, a Wellcome-funded project at the University of Leicester.
