I retired last year from a full-time faculty position at a university in Japan. Over my years in academia, I became increasingly thankful that I worked at an in

I retired last year from a full-time faculty position at a university in Japan. Over my years in academia, I became increasingly thankful that I worked at an institution that didn’t pressure faculty to meet quantitative goals such as the number of papers published or the impact factor of journals. While I probably didn’t publish as much as I would have if I had been under such pressure, I am happier about what I did write and publish. I often met academics from other institutions, though, who complained about pressure from higher administrators to raise their publication numbers, and I occasionally met administrators who seemed to see their primary job as being to raise the numbers of the faculty and researchers under them. I am proud that my university was the first in Japan to sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, which advocates assessing research on its own merits, not on quantitative metrics [1]. [1] https://sfdora.org https://sfdora.org