Somewhere in a journal database, there is a paper that could have been more. Maybe it mapped a disease pattern, flagged a harmful environmental variable, or documented the evanescence of an Indigenous oral tradition. Peer-reviewed, indexed, timestamped, and by every measure possible, it passed. However, where that work ultimately lands—whether on the desk of a policymaker, the counter of a fellow researcher, or the hands of the community it was written for—is a separate matter entirely.
The pressure to publish meaningful research that meets international standards and land it in the right journals has gradually shaped what Filipino researchers are allowed to study, how they are supposed to discuss it, and who, if anyone, they are actually writing for.
A numbers game
At its core, “publish or perish” is a system that ties academic survival to research output—a pressure felt by students and veteran faculty alike. As deadlines tighten, Philippine universities reveal a pattern where research topics drift toward advisers’ established interests rather than students’ own.
Oftentimes, this change stems from the short timeframe given to produce theses, with the resulting work reflecting that rush. A one- or two-term deadline sounds manageable only until the topic becomes intricate, requires fieldwork, or involves months of experiments where undesirable results force researchers to pivot.
In the end, the work gets done, submitted, and quietly filed away. Research, then, becomes something to complete, not pursue.
It is hard to blame students when research is treated as a rite of passage rather than something worth caring about. Already exhausted by coursework, students entering their thesis term are thrust into a timeline that barely leaves room for genuine curiosity. The culture surrounding academic research runs deeper than any single course, and its consequences extend beyond the classroom.
Dr. John Amtalao of the Departamento ng Filipino puts the alternative simply, noting that research should be “an enjoyable thing to do” and that it is only possible when students have the space to pursue topics that interest them. Under current conditions, students must carve out that space themselves because the system leaves none to spare.
Further up the chain, pressure creates openings for predatory journals that charge submission fees while offering little to no peer review, baiting those who need publication credit quickly.
Despite efforts such as the Commission on Higher Education’s list of journals to avoid and university seminars on similar issues, the need for such guidance demonstrates the pressure’s detrimental force on academia.
Hidden in the archives
The irony of publish-or-perish culture is that while it drives a large volume of research, much of that work never leaves the digital archives of academic journals. “We do research for ranking now…for the reputation. It’s part of the ranking system, but at the same time, it’s for you to add to your resume, portfolio, or citations,” Amtalao points out. “I think that’s a sad part of research, which [is] hindi talaga siya na-aabot ng [mga] tao.”
(…that people cannot reach them.)
Structural limitations worsen the gap between production and application. Faculty face tight schedules, limited institutional mobility, and a lack of dedicated funding to bring research into actionable public dialogue.
Amtalao recalled a 2019 joint project with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) that stalled over administrative requirements between state and private institutions: “We were not able to continue such a project because of my collaborator…there was an issue regarding the memorandum of agreement [and] how the NCCA budget will be given.”
While collaborations with private universities are generally more straightforward, he notes that state-level collaboration introduces another layer of bureaucracy. Separately, he shares a long-standing wish to conduct ethnographic research with Indigenous communities, but time, budget, and tedious processes remain barriers.
Reclaiming local research
Given these limitations, the path forward lies in reform and rethinking what impact truly means in Filipino academia. Amtalao proposes that “we need to have our own portal publication for all the kinds of research [where] Filipino scholars [and] researchers submit…a common portal for Filipinos where we can submit our research.”
He envisions the portal spanning diverse fields and local languages, evaluating papers not by international marketability, but by how they improve Filipinos’ quality of life. As such, he argues that local languages alongside Filipino must be institutionalized as legitimate vehicles for academic inquiry.
“There’s always politics in submission, and we don’t use the language we use…[which is sad] because we can’t publish our research in either Filipino or Tagalog…I think there must be a wider perspective about how we look at language as intellectualization,” Amtalao highlights.
Other nations offer a blueprint for this linguistic autonomy. Amtalao points to Thailand’s reputable academic publications that accept papers written entirely in Thai, noting that their research infrastructure is ultimately built to serve “the people that are affected by that research.”
While setups like DLSU Sentro sa Pagsasalin, Intelektuwalisasyon, at Adbokasiya, or SALITA, and other similar organizations help bridge these language gaps, a broader national effort is required to treat local translation and multilingual publishing as serious academic work in their own right.
Making room for change
Some of the constraints Amtalao describes have more practical solutions than others. Narrating his struggles to secure the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples’ consent before conducting fieldwork with Indigenous communities, Amtalao highlights a significant gap: while health researchers can readily tap government grants to cover consent-related costs, humanities researchers rarely receive the same support.
Closer to the classroom, guidance should not end at assigning a topic and deadline. Step-by-step support allows educators to identify struggling students, adjust workloads, and reduce burnout. When evaluating a paper’s success, universities should treat dissemination and public impact as seriously as citation counts, making good research one that reaches public hands and not just sits on untouched shelves.
Somewhere along the way, the publish-or-perish culture stripped research of its purpose, and the cost falls hardest on those least equipped to absorb it. Students rush deadlines, researchers publish into the void, and communities remain unstudied or, worse, studied without seeing tangible results. The system is not beyond repair, but fixing it means demanding more from the institutions that built it and returning research to the people it was always meant to serve.