Hard disagree. With a caveat -- I do acknowledge that for an important number of professional academics your statement may be true, and I have heard a former po

Hard disagree. With a caveat -- I do acknowledge that for an important number of professional academics your statement may be true, and I have heard a former post-doc at ETH Zurich describe their papers as career points (so also a grain of truth at elite institutes). But for most of the academics I have known and worked with, publications are taken quite seriously, and institutional knowledge is freely shared. There is an incentive to reduce the content in papers, but it is out of respect for the reader (a paper is not a textbook) and an honest attempt to limit the discussion to the core hypothesis of the work. You have 6 pages to 1) describe the content of 6*100 pages (the 100 other relevant papers on the topic), 2) present your addition to this body of knowledge, 3) discuss the insights your work brings, again referring to the content of 600 pages. and those 600 pages you are summarizing are as information-dense as your work.