Across the world, universities increasingly rely on quantitative indicators to evaluate academic performance. Publication counts have become one of the most influential criteria for faculty recruitment, promotion, research funding, and institutional assessment. In many higher education systems, particularly in low- and lower-middle-income countries where standardized criteria simplify administrative decision-making, identical publication thresholds are frequently applied across broad disciplinary groups. Although such policies are transparent and easy to implement, they assume that research productivity is directly comparable across all academic disciplines. This assumption deserves critical re-evaluation.
Pakistan provides an informative case study because its academic promotion framework has historically prescribed fixed publication requirements irrespective of disciplinary differences. For example, promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor requires the same minimum number of publications (mostly ten research publications) regardless of whether the applicant belongs to Medicine, Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Psychology, Arts and Humanities, or Dentistry etc…. While Pakistan serves as the empirical example, the underlying question extends far beyond a single country: Can a universal publication threshold provide an equitable measure of academic performance across disciplines with fundamentally different publication cultures?
To address this question, publication productivity across Pakistan's 26 major subject areas was examined using Scopus-indexed articles and reviews published between 2021 and June 2026. The findings reveal remarkable heterogeneity in disciplinary publication output. Medicine produced approximately 41,000 publications during the study period, followed by Engineering (38,442), Materials Science (27,166), Physics and Astronomy (26,354), Computer Science (25,809), Agricultural and Biological Sciences (24,774), Chemistry (24,020), Environmental Science (20,301), Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (19,271), Mathematics (18,698), Chemical Engineering (15,906), Social Sciences (15,116), Energy (10,757), Business, Management and Accounting (8,237), Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics (7,647), Earth and Planetary Sciences (6,168), Immunology and Microbiology (5,408), Health Professions (5,258), Economics, Econometrics and Finance (5,132), Decision Sciences (2,954), Psychology (2,886), Nursing (2,788), Arts and Humanities (2,764), Veterinary (2,231), Neuroscience (1,831), and Dentistry (1,562).
The variation is striking. Medicine generated more than 26 times as many publications as Dentistry, while Engineering produced almost 14 times the output of Arts and Humanities. These differences alone suggest that publication activity varies fundamentally across disciplines and that identical publication requirements may systematically advantage some fields while disadvantaging others.
The same pattern emerged when research productivity was examined at the individual author level. Between 2021 and 2025, Agricultural and Biological Sciences included 18 researchers with at least 100 publications, Chemistry had 19, and Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology had six researchers who exceeded the 100-publication threshold. Physics and Astronomy contained 127 researchers with at least 50 publications, followed by Materials Science (99), Engineering (98), Medicine (91), Computer Science (66), Mathematics (66), Environmental Science (36), Chemical Engineering (23), Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics (13), Energy (10), Social Sciences (5), Business, Management and Accounting (2), Earth and Planetary Sciences (2), Psychology (2), Dentistry (2), Decision Sciences (1), Economics, Econometrics and Finance (1), Health Professions (1), Immunology and Microbiology (1), Nursing (1), Veterinary (1), and Neuroscience (1). Notably, Arts and Humanities did not have a single researcher with 35 publications, Dentistry had no researcher with 40 publications, Psychology's most productive researcher published 32 papers, and Neuroscience's most productive researcher published only 23 papers during the study period.
Taken together, the discipline-level and author-level analyses provide consistent evidence that publication productivity differs substantially across research fields. Importantly, these differences should not be interpreted as reflecting disparities in researcher ability, commitment, or scientific quality. Rather, they arise from fundamental differences in disciplinary research ecosystems. Publication frequency is influenced by collaboration patterns, authorship practices, project duration, funding opportunities, laboratory infrastructure, ethical approval processes, journal availability, and accepted scholarly outputs. Biomedical sciences, engineering, chemistry, and physics often involve large collaborative teams and extensive journal ecosystems that facilitate frequent publication. In contrast, disciplines such as Arts and Humanities, Psychology, Dentistry, Mathematics, and several social science fields commonly involve smaller research groups, longer research cycles, specialized publication outlets, and scholarly outputs such as books, monographs, software, or creative works that are inadequately captured by journal publication counts alone.
The variation is striking: Medicine generated more than 26 times as many publications as Dentistry, while Engineering produced almost 14 times the output of Arts and Humanities.
The evidence presented here indicates that publication productivity is inherently discipline-dependent. Differences are observed not only in the total volume of publications generated by each field but also in the publication trajectories of individual researchers. Therefore, a universal publication threshold cannot reasonably be expected to provide an equitable measure of academic achievement across diverse academic disciplines.
Academic promotion systems should therefore evolve from universal numerical requirements toward discipline-sensitive evaluation frameworks. Rather than requiring identical publication counts from every researcher, universities and higher education authorities should establish field-specific benchmarks derived from national publication patterns and periodically updated as research ecosystems evolve. These benchmarks should be complemented by additional indicators, including publication quality, field-normalized citation impact, competitive research funding, graduate supervision, scientific leadership, patents, software, datasets, books, artistic outputs, and other scholarly contributions that reflect disciplinary norms. Expert peer review should remain central to ensuring that academic achievements are interpreted within the appropriate disciplinary context.
The objective is not to reduce standards or provide preferential treatment for particular disciplines. Rather, it is to ensure that excellence is evaluated equitably. Equal numerical requirements do not necessarily create equal opportunities. The recommendations presented in this article represent an important first step toward more equitable academic evaluation. We argue that universities and higher education authorities should move away from applying identical publication requirements across all disciplines and instead adopt field-specific publication benchmarks that reflect the research culture of each major subject area.
Nevertheless, discipline-specific standards based on the current 26 broad subject areas may ultimately represent only an intermediate stage in the evolution of research assessment. Modern scholarly communication is increasingly specialized. Within the Scopus classification system, these 26 broad subject areas encompass more than 300 individual research subcategories (as per Scopus subject areas classification), each representing a distinct research community with its own publication patterns, collaboration networks, journal ecosystem, funding environment, and scholarly outputs.
For example (based on Scopus classification), Medicine alone comprises 49 subcategories, including Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine, Dermatology, Oncology, Surgery, Public Health, Transplantation, Psychiatry, and Radiology, among many others. Nursing includes 24 subcategories, Social Sciences 23, Health Professions 17, Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 16, Mathematics 15, Arts and Humanities and Earth and Planetary Sciences 14 each, Computer Science and Environmental Science 13 each, Agricultural and Biological Sciences 12, Business, Management and Accounting and Physics and Astronomy 11 each, Neuroscience 10, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science 9 each, Chemistry and Psychology 8 each, Dentistry and Engineering 7 each, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics, Energy, and Immunology and Microbiology 6 each, and Economics, Econometrics and Finance, Decision Sciences, and Veterinary contain fewer specialized subcategories. These figures illustrate the remarkable diversity that exists even within the current broad disciplinary classifications.
Furthermore, the publication cultures of subcategories within the same major discipline can differ substantially. Within Medicine, for example, publication patterns in Cardiology, Dermatology, Oncology, Public Health, Surgery, and Transplantation are unlikely to be identical. Similarly, Computer Science encompasses Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, Human–Computer Interaction, Computer Vision, Information Systems, and Computer Networks, each characterized by different collaboration practices, publication venues, and research dynamics. Comparable heterogeneity exists across Engineering, Materials Science, Environmental Science, Social Sciences, and virtually every other major subject area.
Consequently, the long-term evolution of research assessment may extend beyond discipline-level benchmarks toward increasingly refined, subcategory-specific evaluation frameworks. Rather than applying a single publication requirement to all researchers within Medicine, Engineering, or Computer Science, future promotion systems may ultimately establish expectations that are aligned with the publication characteristics of individual research specialties. Such frameworks would provide a more accurate reflection of disciplinary diversity while further improving fairness and transparency in academic evaluation.
This article does not advocate the immediate implementation of subcategory-specific promotion thresholds. Instead, it proposes a progressive roadmap for evidence-based reform. The broader message extends well beyond Pakistan. Many universities, particularly in low and lower middle-income countries, continue to employ uniform publication thresholds because they are simple to administer and straightforward to monitor. However, simplicity should not come at the expense of fairness.
One important point deserves clarification. Larger disciplines such as Medicine and Engineering naturally have more researchers, which partly explains why they produce more publications than smaller fields. However, the central issue is not whether one discipline is inherently more productive than another. The real question is whether it is fair to expect researchers from fundamentally different academic environments to meet exactly the same publication target for promotion. Publication patterns are shaped by factors such as team size, collaboration practices, research timelines, funding opportunities, journal availability, and even the types of scholarly outputs that are valued within each discipline. These differences mean that identical numerical publication requirements do not necessarily represent equivalent academic expectations.