Returns to articles versus pages in academic publishing: Do salary-setters show 'article illusion'?

- Academic labor market rewards publishing articles and pages.
- Salary of University of California economists used to test articles versus pages.
- More articles raises salary, conditional on the number of quality-adjusted pages.
- Controlling for citations and diversity of research portfolio does not change this relationship.
- 3 Economics Letters worth $13,700 more than full-length article in equal rank journal.

The academic labor market rewards idea splitting, where researchers publish several short articles rather than one long one. There is a significant positive effect on salary from publishing more articles, conditional on the total number of quality-adjusted pages ever published.