Neoliberal policies of performativity played a crucial role in creating a higher education system where 'publish or perish' and more recently 'publish or no degree' is the norm in many contexts. These neoliberal manifestations have moulded institutional cultures and practices, transforming higher education institutions into commercial enterprises where competitiveness is promoted (Croucher & Lacy 2022) and a new form of governance based on principles of performativity reigns (Mula-Falcón et al., 2022). By putting pressure on scholars to comply with performative values (Aguinis et al., 2020), this transformation has encouraged scholars to prove their worth through publication performance most often measured by research quantity, impact and reach (Sandy & Shen, 2019) to benefit from research funding, promotion and tenure opportunities (Casadevall & Fang, 2012), also accelerating institutionalization of publishing during candidature (Lei 2019).

Influenced by these developments, the task role of doctoral students and early career researchers has undergone a significant transformation in way that require them 'to be, or to quickly become, proficient and prolific writers' (Aitchison et al. 2012, 435) in early or preparatory stages of their faculty careers (Horta and Santos 2016; Xu 2022). This study focuses on the metaphorical images doctoral students and early career researchers use to describe the publishing process and themselves as novice authors in relation to their publishing experiences while also exploring conceptual themes that emerge from these metaphorical images.

The paper is guided by the figured world and socialization theories. We conceptualize socialization as a process bound to influence inexperienced scholars’ publication experiences (Ramirez, 2016) and their conceptualizations of the publishing process and themselves as novice authors. It is a means through which inexperienced scholars (i.e. doctoral students and early career researchers) get to know the figured world of publishing, a socially constructed realm where certain acts, capitals, discourses and outcomes are privileged over others (Holland et al., 1998). A “discursive social practice embedded in a tangle of cultural, historical practices that are both institutional and disciplinary” (Kamler and Thomson, 2008, p. 508), publishing is loaded with many challenges for inexperienced scholars whose attempts at ‘becoming’ are coupled with the threat of ‘unbecoming’ (Archer, 2008). This is a truism particularly in higher education systems characterized by the use of publications as a basis for recruitment, promotion and funding decisions (Lei, 2021).

The study employs qualitative methodology and uses data generated through semi-structured interviews conducted with 6 early career researchers and 5 doctoral students situated in a context characterized by neoliberal orientations of performativity. Metaphorical images were generated by asking participants to select metaphors that describe themselves as novice authors. Before we asked participants to determine a metaphor that would describe themselves as novice authors, we asked them for a historical timeline of their publications (if any) and inquired about their publishing experiences through a range of questions generated throughout the interviews based on their answers. Following this stage, metaphors were initiated from participating scholars and scholars-to-be, who were also asked to elaborate on their chosen metaphor. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. First, all initiated metaphorical images were coded and a list of metaphors was prepared. The list was used to group metaphors into conceptual themes, which were abstracted following the analysis of metaphors according to its parts – the target (also called topic), source (also called vehicle) and the ground. Following this stage, metaphors were discussed in relation to participants’ publishing experiences.

Several important findings have emerged from our analysis. Metaphorical images of inexperienced scholars reveal the role systemic inequalities embedded in the socialization process play in how they conceptualize the publishing process and themselves as novice authors. Ethically questionable publication practices increasingly evident in different geographies, lack of supervisor support and unsupportive peer review processes were among the most noticeable challenges participants faced, reflected in negative visualizations of publishing as swamp or war and of novice authors as Don Quixote or scattered Lego pieces. Feelings of loneliness, being torn between doing what’s ethical vs what’s profitable, despair and exhaustion prevail in these constructs. The negative influence of these challenges on conceptualizations of publishing and novice authorship was found to be significantly reduced when participants had access to the support of a peer with accumulated cultural capital valued in the figured world of publishing acquired through education or experience.

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