2.1 Introduction to Publish or Perish

Publish or Perish (PoP) is a software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations. It was first introduced in October 2006 and has been continuously improved and updated since. Its name is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the pressure to publish work constantly to further or sustain a career in academia. However, its main function is to empower individual academics to present their case for research impact to its best advantage.

Publish or Perish uses Google Scholar queries to obtain citation information, which is then analyzed and converted to a number of statistics. To use Publish or Perish, you need a working Internet connection. The results are available on-screen and can also be copied to the Windows clipboard (for pasting into other applications) or saved to a text file (for future reference or further analysis).

Publish or Perish runs on Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms. For detailed instructions on how to install Publish or Perish for various platforms, see the main Publish or Perish webpage (http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm). The webpage Publish or Perish in the news also provides an overview of the extensive news coverage for Publish or Perish as well as examples of its frequent mentioning on blogs and library websites.