Publishing

Publishing
The negative side of the motivation goes like this:
Publishing is necessary. It is a precondition for any board-exam, and whoever wants to do a residency is morally obliged to direct her/his energy towards sitting the board exam, which implies publishing in order to meet the exam requirements.
Whoever might want to have a career in academia will need publications in quantity (and quality) as the competition. If you want to go into private practice, your own publications are mostly not necessary. Over the last years, I have heard students/doctoral students/postdoc say about themselves that they want to have a career in science. Nevertheless, they were unproductive in terms of publications. This is a way of deceiving yourself, like saying that you are a cook but never prepare a meal.
Two publications per year are, during the postdoc stage, rather average than extraordinary. As soon as you know you want to work in science/academia, you have to focus on publishing (and finding help for publishing).

Whoever accepts a job at a university accepts a situation in which the workload is mixed, which means scientific output in the form of manuscripts and grant applications are part of it.

The skill to organise your workload in such a way that writing publications or grant applications is possible is one of the evaluation criteria for a university employee, and will be part, for example, of a reference letter.

Whoever participates in a Zoo Research Camp or does a doctoral project at our Clinic, has, in theory, a good position to apply for a next assignment – a doctoral project, a postdoc assignment, a residency – because a good impression in the past is the best ingredient of a job application. However, a student who did not write up her/his project, a doctoral student who did not submit a manuscript from this work to a scientific journal – such a person has a worse chance to get a job. You would not employ a person for a surgery job who has proven that he does not like to cut and suture. Similarly, for a university position (like a doctoral position or a residency), we would not prefer a person who has proven, in the past, that she/he does not like to publish.

This does not mean that those of our doctoral students that did not publish their work were not very pleasant, committed, engaged, and good vets. It just means they were not qualified for a university position.

The positive side of the motivation goes like this:
Publishing is cool, once you have done it you will be proud of it, it will boost your ego. It will mean that you are part of a group of people who do something the human race is known for: pass on knowledge in written form – contribute to the human meme pool.
A publication is like the mouth-to-mouth propaganda among your clients that you can do a good surgery – propaganda that you are a good scientist. It is an a posteriori appreciation of the work you did, of your commitment. Within the faculty, a publication is a good propagation of the authors; within the university, a publication is a contribution to propagate the faculty; internationally, a publication helps to propagate the university.
Additionally, a publication contributes to the conception of your workplace as cool, active, and productive. It is the active opposite of complaining how horrible your workplace is. For many people, a publication is a statement that you are proud of your work.
And, a note on the side, if you have kids, and they learn to read – take them to a large library, have them be amazed at the millions of books in there, then go to a shelf where volumes of a journal are stored, pull out one of these million books, open it at the appropriate page, and have your kid read your name there.

But finally, and most importantly, there is the content of a publication. Some publications are really cool, some are exceptionally cool and elegant, they contain knowledge that is valuable, presented in a superb way, stimulating to the mind, and maybe even having an effect on other people, animals, cases. To contribute such knowledge is gratifying in itself, and sometimes, it may not only be just one more contribution to the human meme pool, but also an important or, at least, a beautiful one. Other people will read it. Others will use it.

Someone who realizes that writing does not come easy for her/him should not despair. This just means that such a kind of job is not for you, like someone who can’t keep pace simply is not born to be a drummer. You can practice if you want, but maybe your gifts are just somewhere else.
Always remember: most people who are really happy in this world are so without having published a thing.