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.